Lena Heffern

Lena Heffern, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the Department of Aviation and Aerospace Sciences at Metropolitan State University of Denver. Her expertise includes mechanical and nuclear engineering, physics, systems engineering, remote sensing and planetary science.

With over a decade of experience in space exploration, Heffern is a committee member of the NASA South Pole-Aitken Sample Return and eXploration science definition team. As a member, she shares her expertise on mission design and nuclear instrumentation to develop the SPARX lunar rover’s mission profile. A few of her published works include, “Observed correlation between local topography and passive neutron measurements from the Dynamic Albedo of Neutrons instrument on the Mars Science Laboratory rover,” and “Active neutron interrogation experiments and simulation verification using the SIngle-scintillator Neutron and Gamma-Ray spectrometer for geosciences.” 

Prior to joining MSU Denver, she was a senior systems engineer at Spire Global, where she was responsible for technical proposal strategy, system architecture and mission review oversight. Before Spire, she was also a senior mission systems engineer at the Laboratory for Atmospheric Space Physics at the University of Colorado Boulder. Heffern has previously taught higher education at Arizona State University, Grand Canyon University and Scottsdale Community College. 

Heffern earned her Ph.D. in Exploration Systems Design from Arizona State University, her master’s in science in Nuclear Engineering from the University of New Mexico and a bachelor’s in science in Mechanical Engineering and Physics from California State University.