She urged students with interest in leadership to take an interest in what everyone on the team is doing.
“If you want to be successful on a team, you need to be knowledgeable,” she said. “Then you can relate to the problem. You can only do that if you put the time in. But you’ll be respected as a leader, because people will know you care about them.
“I identify with an empathic leader,” she said. But there are times, she said, when every leader has to say, “OK, I understand the problem. Now get it done.”
Fox also urged students to talk to those with different roles on the team.
“As a project scientist, the thing that made me efficient and effective was I talked to the engineers,” she said. “Part of it is showing an interest.”
Fox said talking to the engineers about the science objectives of a mission gave them greater understanding of the important role they played in the mission.
She remembered taking Eugene Parker — for whom the Parker Solar Probe was named — into the clean room, where the massive NASA spacecraft was under construction.
“Yes, I said, ‘Parker meet Parker,” she recalled with a laugh.
Fox said Parker got teary with emotion as he saw the powerful instrument his research had inspired.
Engineers in the room asked if they could meet Parker.
“One guy teared up and they had a two-hand shake,” she recalled. “And he said, ‘It’s such an honor to meet you.’ And Parker said, ‘No, it’s an honor to meet you. You’re the people who brought this amazing machine into being. Thank you so much.’
“That meant the world to the engineers,” she said.
Lab tours and research presentations
Fox’s day at UD started with a visit to the annual symposium of the Delaware Space Grant Consortium. The consortium, led by UD’s Matthaeus, includes students and researchers from the University of Delaware, Delaware State University, Delaware Technical and Community College, Wilmington University, Swarthmore University and Villanova University.
Sitting in the front row with Matthaeus and Professor Jim McDonald, deputy director of Delaware Space Grant, she listened to several presentations and interacted with the students before she was whisked away from Perkins Student Center for a trip to UD’s Science Technology and Advanced Research (STAR) Campus.
There, she met with Kelvin Lee, UD’s interim vice president for research, scholarship and innovation and director of the UD-based National Institute for Innovation in Manufacturing Biopharmaceuticals (NIIMBL).
NIIMBL is a Manufacturing USA Institute, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Commerce and based in UD’s Ammon Pinizzotto Biopharmaceutical Innovation Center. Its mission is to solve problems common to manufacturers of biopharmaceuticals and improve the speed and efficiency of producing safe, effective medicines. It pursues that mission through public-private partnerships, with more than 180 members, representing academia, industry, government and non-profit organizations.
Fox also met with Mark Blenner, associate professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering, who has sent yeast strains to the International Space Station. He is working on how to create things astronauts will need if they are working for months on the moon or on Mars. His research focuses on biomanufacturing nutrients, medicines and vitamins, and explores ways to turn waste products into useful materials.
Fox had a working lunch at the nearby FinTech Innovation Hub, where she heard about Qingwu Meng’s research into growing lettuce in space. Meng, assistant professor of controlled-environment horticulture, has sent experiments to the International Space Station to test the effects of different light sources on plant growth.
She also heard about the “rock stars of the universe” — magnetic massive stars — from UD astrophysicist Veronique Petit, who is working to find out where their magnetic fields come from.
And she heard from UD astronomer John Clem, who has launched massive, high-altitude research balloons from Antarctica to measure cosmic-ray electrons and positrons. The January launch of the Anti-Electron Sub-Orbital Payload (AESOP-Lite) mission set a NASA altitude record in Antarctica of 15,551 feet.
“There is no substitute for altitude,” Clem said. “The higher the altitude, the less the atmospheric background.”
Later, she visited the new Delaware Space Observation Center, directed by space plasma physicist Bennett Maruca and based in UD’s Harker Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering (ISE) Lab. Maruca’s students recently learned their satellite mission to study conditions in Earth’s upper atmosphere was accepted for launch by NASA in 2026 as part of its CubeSat Launch Initiative.
At the Center for Composite Materials, Fox talked with Professor Shridhar Yarlagadda about his work on the Hard Upper Torso (HUT) component of NASA’s next-generation spacesuit — the xEMU spacesuit — which is in development for astronauts working in space, outside of the protective environment of a spacecraft or space station.