Alumnus of the Year
Dan Goebel

Dan Goebel is a senior research scientist and a fellow at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), where he serves as the chief engineer on the Psyche Mission, a $500-million initiative to explore a metal-rich asteroid between Mars and Jupiter. He is also responsible for the development of advanced electric propulsion systems and spacecraft technologies. Prior to joining JPL in 2003, Goebel spent 14 years at HRL Laboratories and Hughes Electronics, where he managed technology development for products that were later incorporated into commercial and defense satellite programs. Goebel is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a fellow of the National Academy of Inventors, the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, and the American Physical Society. He holds 59 patents and is an author of two textbooks on electric propulsion, as well as more than 300 conference and technical journal papers. Goebel earned a B.S. in physics, an M.S. in electrical engineering and a Ph.D. in applied plasma physics from UCLA. He is an adjunct professor of electrical and computer engineering, as well as mechanical and aerospace engineering at UCLA. In 2016, he won the UCLA Samueli Professional Achievement Award.