Session 10

Matthew Garrison

Matt Garrison received a BS and MS in aerospace engineering from Penn State University and has worked at NASA Goddard ever since. He began in the Thermal Engineering Branch, working on the James Webb Space Telescope and Lunar Reconnaissance orbiter before becoming Thermal lead for the Advanced Topographic Laser Altimeter System. He joined the Systems Engineering Education and Development program where he acted as the lead Instrument Systems Engineer on the L’Ralph instrument on the Lucy Mission from award through launch. Matt has recently been the payload systems engineer on DAVINCI and the principal engineer of the GSFC Planetary Science Projects Division. He is now working as the lead Project Systems Engineer for DAVINCI. On the side, Matt acts as a mentor through the Systems Engineering Education and Development program and teaches the risks and requirements module for the Product Development Lead training program.

On the personal side, I am from a small town in central PA. I met my wife in 9th grade, my mom and in-laws were friends in high school, and my little brother dated my sister-in-law in middle school. We got out of town. Now we live in Columbia where my wife teaches middle school Spanish and travel whenever we can find someone to dog-sit; we’ve made it to over a third of our national parks. I’ve run 20-some marathons and two ultras. My COVID hobbies were baking bread and woodworking.