Jessica Watkins

Watkins is a postdoctoral fellow at the California Institute of Technology who hails from Gaithersburg, Maryland, yet considers Lafayette, Colorado her hometown. During her postdoc work, she worked as an assistant coach to Caltech's women's basketball team. "Jessica brings us a deep well of knowledge about being an elite-level academic student in the STEM fields while at the same time being a world-class athlete," the head coach Sandra Marbut said.

She graduated from Fairview High School in Boulder, Colorado and earned a Bachelor's degree in Geological and Environmental Sciences from Stanford University as well as a Doctorate in Geology from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Watkins' hobbies include soccer, rock climbing, skiing, and creative writing.

Watkins has worked at the Ames Research Center and Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, and she is a collaborator on the Mars rover Curiosity.

As a postdoctoral fellow at Caltech, and as a collaborator on the Mars Science Laboratory Science Team, she participates in daily planning of the NASA JPL rover activities and uses its image data combined with orbital data to investigate the stratigraphy, geology, and geomorphology of Mars.

Watkins played rugby at Stanford for four years. She is a former American women’s national team rugby player for the sevens. She was part of the US team which reached the semi finals at the Women's Sevens World Cup in Dubai (2009) and was defeated by New Zealand. During the World Cup she was the leading try scorer for the US team.