Most Promising Engineer, Ph.D. - Government

Dr. Margaret Dominguez joined NASA as an Optical Engineer Intern in 2010 after earning her undergraduate degree at the Universidad de las Américas – Puebla in her native Mexico.

Over her short but promising career at NASA, she’s made what her superiors call innovative and signi­ficant contributions to some of America’s most high-profile projects like the James Webb Space Telescope and the Wide Field InfraRed Survey Telescope – or W-FIRST for short. And she did it all while completing her Ph.D. at the University of Arizona.

Specifically, Dr. Dominguez was instrumental in the development of the critical grating prism – or ‘GRISM’ prototype, as well as the Engineering Development Unit for W-FIRST.  This assembly provides the scientific capability to perform the dark energy, exoplanet microlensing, and near infra-red surveys, and its complexity requires precision modeling, alignment, testing to verify and characterize its performance.

Dr. Dominguez incorporated new alignment techniques that formed the basis of her Ph.D. dissertation – a dissertation which significantly advanced the state of the art in the areas of optical modeling and alignment/testing for critical optical elements like this.

“Without Dr. Dominguez, we would not be able to build the GRISM element for W-FIRST,” her group leader, Dr. Raymond Ohl, said. 

Dr. Dominguez is an active member of the NASA Goddard Hispanic Advisory Committee for Employees, and she was selected to be a TECHNOLO-Chica and a Latina SciGirl in programs funded by PBS, NSF, Univision, and the National Center for Women & information Technology.

She is also a STEM advisory board member at the Children’s Science Center in Fairfax, Virginia and regularly serves as a science fair judge in mnay of the Washington and Baltimore municipal school districts. Dr. Dominguez spent much of the early part of this year mentoring a Hispanic College student who was the first in family to attend college at a small liberal arts school in New England.

Her hobbies include doing outreach to teach others about optics and the important work done at NASA. She has been invited to give talks in the United States, Mexico, Spain and Peru to share her passion for science and technology and to help recruit more people into these fields.

She also enjoys traveling and when she is not at NASA, she teaches Jazzercise (dance fitness exercise instructor), watches movies and goes for walks with her husband, who is also an optical engineer at NASA Goddard.

Described as a hardworking, energetic, and devoted optical engineer with the utmost respect from her peers, Dr. Dominguez is the personification of a dedicated NASA employee.