NASA Announces New Heliophysics Director

NASA announced last week that Joseph Westlake will be the new director of its Heliophysics Division starting Jan. 16.

Westlake takes the helm from Deputy Director Peg Luce, who has been running the division since NASA promoted Nicky Fox to lead the Science Mission Directorate in February.

Westlake comes to the role after 12 years at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, where he most recently worked on the Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe mission and served as the principal investigator for the Plasma Instrument for Magnetic Sounding that will be included on the Europa Clipper spacecraft. He holds a doctorate in physics from the University of Texas at San Antonio.