KGCOE National Council - Clayton Turner
Clayton Turner
Space Technology Mission Directorate, NASA
Acting Associate Administrator
As Acting Associate Administrator for the Space Technology Mission Directorate at NASA, Clayton Turner ’90 oversees executive leadership, strategic planning, and overall management of all technology maturation and demonstration programs executed from the Directorate enabling critical space focused technologies that deliver today and help create tomorrow.
Turner served as the Director of NASA’s Langley Research Center, Hampton, Virginia from 2019-2024. He has served the agency for more than 30 years.
After graduation from the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) in 1990, Turner began his career with NASA serving as a design engineer with the Lidar In-Space Technology Experiment project, where he spearheaded development of the laser aligning, bore-sight limit system.
Turner has received many prestigious awards such as the Presidential Rank Award, the NASA Outstanding Leadership Medal, the NASA Exceptional Engineering Achievement Medal, the Paul F. Holloway Non-Aerospace Technology Transfer Award, and RIT’s College of Engineering Distinguished Alumni award. He is an Associate Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) and he is also a member of the RIT Board of Trustees.