​​Nagin has been exploring since she decided as a teenager that she wanted to work at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. She was born in Bangalore, India, and grew up in Kansas City, Kansas, and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.  She is a Systems Engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Nagin has held leadership and system engineering positions on interplanetary robotic missions including the Galileo mission to Jupiter, the Mars Exploration Rovers, the Kepler exoplanet hunter, InSight, the Mars Curiosity Rover, the 2020 Perseverance Rover, Mars Sample Return, Europa Clipper, and the Mars Oxygen ISRU Experiment (MOXIE) team. She is currently a Mission Lead on the Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover and a system engineer on the Europa Clipper mission.
 
Nagin is honored to be the namesake for Asteroid 14061. She has also received the NASA Exceptional Service Medal and two NASA Exceptional Achievement Medals. She is a U.S. Department of State’s STEM Speaker and has spoken to audiences around the world on the stories of the people behind the missions. Her lecture on Mars Time on the TED Talk website has been viewed more than two million times (https://www.ted.com/talks/nagin_cox_what_time_is_it_on_mars).
Before her time at JPL, she served in the US Air Force including duty as a Space Operations Officer at NORAD/US Space Command. Nagin holds engineering degrees from Cornell University and the Air Force Institute of Technology as well as a psychology degree from Cornell.
 
She is a past member of Cornell University’s President’s Council for Cornell Women and has served on the Boards of the Griffith Observatory Foundation and Impact Personal Safety: Self-Defense & Empowerment for Women.  Nagin sits on the Advisory Councils for the Women’s Rights Division of Human Rights Watch, the Planetary Society and Space for Humanity. She is a published children’s book author and an adjunct Professor of Practice at the Air Force Institute of Technology. She is a fellow of the Explorers Club and is on the Board of the world famous Adventurer’s Club of Los Angeles.