Catharine Anastasia Conley was NASA's 6th Planetary Protection Officer from 2006 through 2018.

Education

Conley received her bachelor's from MIT, a Ph.D. in Plant Biology from Cornell University in 1994, and obtained a postdoctoral fellow position at The Scripps Research Institute studying proteins involved in muscle contraction. Conley conducted some of her research using the nematode ''

Caenorhabditis elegans ''Caenorhabditis elegans'' () is a free-living transparent nematode about 1 mm in length that lives in temperate soil environments. It is the type species of its genus. The name is a blend of the Greek ''caeno-'' (recent), ''rhabditis'' (ro ...

''.

NASA career

In 1999 Conley became a research scientist with the NASA Ames Research Center. Her research focuses on the evolution of motility, particularly animal muscle. One of her experiments was on board during the

Space Shuttle Columbia disaster The Space Shuttle ''Columbia'' disaster was a fatal accident in the United States space program that occurred on February 1, 2003. During the STS-107 mission, Space Shuttle ''Columbia'' disintegrated as it reentered the atmosphere over Texa ...

. The experiment, the fourteenth Biological Research In Canisters (BRIC-14), survived re-entry and the nematode cultures were still alive. Some scientific data was recovered. In 2006, Conley was appointed as NASA's Planetary Protection Officer (see Planetary protection), replacing John Rummel. A NASA re-organization opened the job for competition in 2017, and Conley was replaced by Dr. Lisa Pratt in February 2018.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Conley, Cassie Living people Cornell University College of Agriculture and Life Sciences alumni NASA people Scripps Research alumni Year of birth missing (living people)