Allen Chen is a systems engineer in the Entry, Descent, and Landing (EDL) Systems and Advanced Technologies group at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. (JPL). On the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) team, he is the lead for EDL operations and Flight Dynamics, co-leads the joint science/engineering Mars atmosphere characterization team. Chen has been a member of the MSL EDL Systems Engineering Team and the MSL Flight System Systems Engineering Team since his arrival at JPL in 2002. He also worked on the Mars Exploration Rovers project, performing EDL reconstruction analysis and testing. He holds a bachelor’s and master’s degree in Aeronautics and Astronautics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass. and an M.B.A. from the University of California, Los Angeles.