Sona Hosseini

Seyedeh Sona Hosseini (born 1982) is an Iranian-American planetary scientist and researcher at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. She develops lightweight, compact and highly sensitive spectrometers for space missions.

Early life and education Hosseini grew up in Iran, and moved to San Antonio at the age of 2. She became interested in astronomy during a school trip to Johnson Space Center at the age of 7. At the age of 11, she moved back to Iran, where her parents encouraged her to explore astronomy through the Institute for Advanced Studies in Basic Sciences. She moved to the University of Zanjan for her graduate research, where she specialized in physics and astronomy. Her PhD included the mathematical framework and experimental protocol for constructing a spatial heterodyne spectrometer. She developed a visible spatial heterodyne spectrometer for detecting Sodium D-lines. A minor planet (28912 Sonahosseini), discovered in 2000, was named after her.

Research and career In 2015, Hosseini joined the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where she has studied low-density gas environments (e.g. exospheres, cometary tails). At JPL, she leads the development of next generation, miniaturized, high resolution spectrometers. In 2022, she was supported by the Nancy Grace Roman fellowship to work on far UV science investigations.

Awards and honors 2014 University of California, Los Angeles Young Scholar Award 2020 SPIE Early Career Achievement Award 2022 NASA Nancy Grace Roman Technology Fellowship