Catharine Anastasia Conley was NASA's 6th Planetary Protection Officer from 2006 through 2018.
Conley received her bachelor's from MIT, a Ph.D. in Plant Biology from Cornell University in 1994,[1] and obtained a postdoctoral fellow position at The Scripps Research Institute studying proteins involved in muscle contraction.
One of her experiments was on board during the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster.
The experiment, the fourteenth Biological Research In Canisters (BRIC-14), survived re-entry and the nematode cultures were still alive.
[7][8][9][10][11][12] A NASA re-organization opened the job for competition in 2017, and Conley was replaced by Dr. Lisa Pratt in February 2018.