Leon Alkalai Ph.D

Leon Alkalai Ph.D General Information

Biography

Dr. Leon Alkalai is a Co-Founder & serves as Chairman Of The Board at Continuum Space Systems. He is also a Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer at Breen Energy. Dr. Alkalai is the Founder and serves as Chief Executive Officer and Board Member at Mandala Space Ventures. He is a Co-Founder and serves as General Partner at Explorer 1 Fund. He is a Co-Founder and serves as Chairman Of The Board at Continuum Space Systems. He was a Co-Founder of Verrix. He is a recently retired Technical Fellow of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), California Institute of Technology where he spent 32 years after getting his Ph.D. at UCLA in 1989. During his career at JPL, he held numerous leadership positions and was responsible for the capture leadership of both the GRAIL mission to the Moon (2007) and the INSIGHT lander on Mars (2012). For both efforts, he received Distinguished Individual Achievement medals from NASA in 2011 and 2019 respectively. He was also heading up JPL strategic partnerships and strategic planning for the Laboratory. In 2021, he retired from JPL and created Mandala Space Ventures, a space-focused, Pasadena-based incubator for new start-ups in the emerging space economy. He is also the General Partner at the Explorer-1 Venture Fund which is also affiliated with the Mandala Space incubator. Recently, Mandala launched its first new venture called Continuum Space Systems, a Software as a Service (SaaS) company for the emerging digital space economy. He is the recipient of the NASA Individual Distinguished Achievement Medal for the formulation of the GRAIL mission to the (Earth's) Moon and for leading the JPL team to win the 2007 NASA Discovery competition. GRAIL successfully launched in 2011 and completed its gravity recovery from the Moon. He was also responsible for leading and winning the InSight mission to Mars proposal which won the (next) 2012 NASA Discovery competition. InSight launched on May 5th, 2018, and landed on Mars on November 26th, 2018. On October 29th, 2019 he received his second individual public achievement medal from NASA for the successful commissioning of the InSight Lander on Mars.