LSIC Mission & Leadership

Jamie Porter, Ph.D. is the Director of the Lunar Surface Innovation Consortium (LSIC) and the Assistant Group Supervisor in the Space Environmental Effects Group at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL). Jamie leads the radiation team for the Dragonfly mission and APL’s contribution to the Europa Clipper Mission spacecraft. She’s a member of multiple instrument teams including the Europa Imaging System and Plasma Instrument for Magnetic Sounding on NASA’s Europa Clipper and the Particle Environment Package (PEP)-Hi instrument for the European Space Agency’s JUpiter ICy moons Explorer (JUICE) mission. She joined APL after completing postdoctoral work at the University of Tennessee, where she earned her Ph.D. and was the first Black woman to earn a doctorate degree from its Department of Nuclear Engineering. She was recently awarded the Science Spectrum Trailblazers Black Engineer of the Year Award, recognizing individuals who are creating paths for others in science, research technology and development.

Dr. Joshua Cahill is the Deputy Director of the Lunar Surface Innovation Consortium and a Senior Staff Scientist in the Planetary Exploration Group at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory. He is a multi-disciplinary planetary geologist with experience in the fields of lunar and terrestrial spectroscopy and radar remote sensing, geochemistry, and petrology. He is a Co-Investigator on NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) mission supporting both the Mini-RF synthetic aperture radar and the Lyman Alpha Mapping Project (LAMP) instrument payloads. For these instruments, he has supported various aspects of lunar surface observation targeting, calibration, mapping, and scientific analysis over the last 10 years. This includes utilizing Mini-RF observations to create some of the first global mapping perspectives of the Moon in S-band radar. Recently, Cahill became a Co-Investigator on NASA's Lunar Vertex, the first mission to visit the magnetic anomaly and lunar swirl, Reiner Gamma. Previously, Dr. Cahill served as a Co-Investigator supporting the NASA Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute (SSERVI) node, VORTICES, led by APL and studying volatile detection and processes on the Moon and other airless bodies. And during the precursor to SSERVI, NASA’s Lunar Science Institute (NLSI), he supported investigation of lunar polar and non-polar illumination studies of the Moon for detection of areas permanent shadow and near perpetual illumination. Dr. Cahill has participated in, or led, a number of instrument developments focused upon spectroscopy and radar over the last 15 years. Most recently, responding to NASA’s PRISM call to explore the floor of Schrödinger Impact Basin, he acted as Principal Investigator for a highly capable team that developed the Farside GLASS mission concept. Farside GLASS would be NASA’s first domestically led lander and rover mission to explore the far side of the Moon.

Dr. Angela Dapremont is a Post Doctoral Fellow at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. As a member of the Lab’s Planetary Exploration Group, Dr. Dapremont provides policy, strategy, and recruitment support to the Lunar Surface Innovation Consortium. Dr. Dapremont’s scientific research is focused on understanding the composition of terrestrial bodies in the solar system. Her research publications have incorporated datasets from numerous orbital remote sensing missions including the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM), the Context Camera (CTX), and the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera currently orbiting Mars. Dr. Dapremont also uses Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3) data to investigate lunar surface composition and is an Affiliate of the Lunar Trailblazer mission.