Leena Singh

Dr. Leena Singh is a senior technical staff engineer in the Control and Autonomous Systems Engineering Group in MIT Lincoln Laboratory's Engineering Division. Her particular area of focus is the guidance and control of robotic aerospace systems, which she has worked on since her days as a graduate student. She works on concept design and analyses of novel space systems on missions ranging from the attitude control of spinning spacecraft, to the guidance and high-precision rendezvous control of spacecraft in exotic orbits, to fine estimation and control of pointing and tracking systems.

Prior to joining Lincoln Laboratory, Singh worked at Draper Laboratory as a technical staff member, group leader, and eventually division technical staff member, focusing on the guidance, navigation, and control of aeronautical and astronautical systems. At Draper, she developed her deep appreciation of aerospace platforms beyond her academic interests. She also worked on the stabilization and control of satellites in orbit; the targeting, guidance, and control of rendezvous systems with other space objects; reentry vehicles reentering and descending through planetary atmosphere and/or gravity fields from transorbital operations; and atmospheric aerodynamic vehicles (uncrewed aircraft and parafoils). Singh was the technical lead of the attitude determination and control system for NASA's Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System (CYGNSS) constellation of Earth-monitoring cube-satellites, which are still operational on orbit and providing weather data as planned.

Singh is a Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA); has served on the AIAA Guidance, Navigation and Control Technical Committee; and is currently a senior member of the Space Exploration Integration Committee. She was invited to the National Academy of Engineering's Frontiers of Excellence symposia for young engineers in 2012 and 2014. She has BS degrees in physics and mathematics, and MS and PhD degrees in aerospace engineering with a specialization in control systems theory.