Florence Tan wanted to work in the space business ever since she saw Star Trek re-runs on Malaysian TV in the mid-70s. She enrolled in the University of Maryland’s Engineering program and soon parlayed her early networking skills into an internship at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.

After graduating from UMD with a BSEE, she wrote software and designed and built electronics for five mass spectrometers that were sent forth into various quadrants of the solar system. Of those that did not blow up or go off course, one is resting on the surface of Titan, another is operating and orbiting around Saturn on the Cassini Orbiter, and another is on the Rover Curiosity, operating on the surface of Mars.

She is currently the Electrical Lead Engineer for the Sample Analysis on Mars (SAM) instrument on Curiosity, the Neutral Gas and Ion Mass Spectrometer (NGIMS) on MAVEN, the next Mars bound mission launching in November 2013, as well as the Neutral Mass Spectrometer (NMS) on LADEE, a moon orbiter mission launching in September 2013. Florence likes volunteering in local schools to encourage children to consider careers in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM).

Since graduating, while working full-time, she has gone back to school three times to earn an MSEE and MBA with high honors at Johns Hopkins University, and has also become a certified yoga teacher. Throughout her entire career, she has had the good fortune of having continued strong and unwavering support from her husband, children, parents and siblings.