David Miller

David W. Miller is an American aerospace engineer who is the current Jerome Hunsaker Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an elected Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics since 2015. He is currently on a leave of absence from MIT to be the Technologist for the Astronomy and Physics Directorate at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Previously, he served three years as a VP and the Chief Technology Officer to The Aerospace Corporation. He has worked on multiple NASA projects and served as NASA chief technologist at NASA headquarters in Washington, DC.

Early life and education Miller received both undergraduate and graduate degrees in aeronautical and astronautical engineering at MIT.

The laboratory has many research projects, include the SPHERES testbed on the International Space Station. The projects have also been on the JWST Product Integrity Team, and the NASA CubeSat Launch Initiative.

NASA career He served as the NASA chief technologist from 2014 to 2017.

He was the principal investigator for the Regolith X-ray Imaging Spectrometer (REXIS) for the OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample return mission, which launched in 2016.

He has been an advisor to or on steering committees for a variety of NASA projects: Space Infrared Interferometric Telescope (SPIRIT) of GFSC In-Space Assembled Telescope (iSAT) Study of JPL As of 2025, he works as the technologist for the Astronomy and Physics Directorate at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Industry positions

Miller was selected in 2018 to be the vice president and chief technology officer (CTO) of The Aerospace Corporation.

He spent five years on the Air Force scientific advisory board, two of them as the vice chair.