Goddard Retirees & Alumni Association (GRAA)

(James) Ira Thorpe was born and raised in Santa Fe, New Mexico and spent his childhood exploring the mountains. He graduated from the Santa Fe Preparatory School in 1997 and enrolled at Bucknell University in Mechanical Engineering. Ira graduated summa cum laude from Bucknell in 2001 with degrees in Mechanical Engineering and Physics and moved to the Maryland suburbs of Washington, DC to study Physics at the University of Maryland. While at UMD, Ira was selected for a fellowship at NASA where he began research with the nascent Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) project in laser frequency stabilization. That experience was enough to catch the LISA and gravitational wave fever, and Ira decided to transfer to the University of Florida to pursue a Ph.D. developing technologies for LISA metrology. Ira arrived in Gainesville after a brief hiatus in Patagonia with the National Outdoor Leadership School where he spent three months backpacking and kayaking in the Chilean wilderness. Ira completed his Ph.D. at UF in 2006 and returned to NASA as a postdoctoral fellow to work on LISA. In 2009, Ira converted to a civil servant, and he has been working on LISA and gravitational waves ever since. He served as NASA representative to the ESA-led LISA Pathfinder mission from 2011-2018 and is currently the NASA Project Scientist for LISA. He lives in the Maryland suburbs with his wife and three children.