Col. Nicole Aunapu Mann, MD G ’99, was honored as one of the national USA TODAY’s 2023 Women of the Year, which celebrates women who have left a notable mark on their communities and throughout the nation. As NASA’s SpaceX Crew-5 mission commander, she was the agency’s first Native American woman in space.
Mann is officially registered with the Wailacki of the Round Valley Indian Tribes in California. During her mission to the space station, she brought along a dream catcher that her mother had gifted her, serving as a poignant symbol connecting her to her family and community.
Initiated into Tau Beta Pi in 1997 at the US Naval Academy, her work ethic was described as “off the charts.” Nicole later pursued a master’s degree in mechanical engineering with a focus on fluid mechanics at Stanford University. After attaining the rank of colonel in the U.S. Marine Corps, she served as a test pilot for the F/A-18 Hornet and Super Hornet, completing two deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. It was during these deployments that she earned the call sign “Duke,” the name by which NASA’s Houston Command Center referred to her during her conversation with USA TODAY from the International Space Station.
When asked about how she has been able to advance equity for all, she stated: “Growing up, I worked hard to become a Marine, to become a fighter pilot, to become an engineer and an astronaut. Not to be a female Marine or not to be a Native American engineer. But as I grew older and kind of opened up my perspective from just myself, I realized how important it is that we recognize diversity and how important it is that we reach out to the younger generation.”
Read the entire interview with Nicole on USA Today’s website.
Jenna R. Jambeck, Ph.D., FL A ’96, was named USA TODAY’s 2023 Woman of the Year in the state of Georgia as part of ‘Women Across America’, which honors local heroines. She is a Ph.D. environmental engineer at the University of Georgia, where she explores where plastic pollution comes from and how it ends up in the world’s oceans.
In 2010, Dr. Jambeck co-founded the Marine Debris Tracker, an app endorsed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Marine Debris Program. It gathers information on pollution through crowd participation and makes it publicly accessible as open data. In 2015, she released a groundbreaking research paper, which marked the inaugural attempt at quantifying the extent of plastic pollution in the Earth’s oceans. Her estimate was staggering, indicating a colossal 275 million metric tons of plastic in the oceans as of 2010.
When Dr. Jambeck and her team uncovered that 90% of plastic has never been recycled, the statistic was named the ‘International Statistic of the Year’ by the Royal Statistical Society in 2918, and shed light on how significant the plastic problem is. In 2022, she was the recipient of the McArthur Fellowship for her work and has received numerous honors and awards. Dr. Jambeck joined Tau Beta Pi as an undergraduate at the University of Florida in 1995, eventually obtaining her master’s and Ph.D. in Environmental Engineering Sciences there.
She stated when asked about overcoming adversity: “It hasn’t always been easy being a woman in engineering … in a lot of cases it’s not malicious intent by men in the workplace, but there would be things that if you’re not a woman, you’re not going to have the perspective of noticing what might be needed.”
Read excerpts from the USA Today interview with Jenna on Savannah Now’s website.
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