Joan Horvath is an engineer, educator and management consultant. She is a National University Community Research Institute fellow exploring her primary interests in the innovative and appropriate application of technology to teach and explain science and math effectively to nonscientists.
She is a core adjunct faculty member of National University’s College of Letters and Sciences and a faculty member at the University of Phoenix. Previously, she also was an adjunct faculty member at the Art Center College of Design and a senior lecturer for the Otis College of Art and Design.
Prior to being a consultant and educator, she spent 16 years at the NASA/Caltech Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where she worked in various areas, ranging from the technology transfer office to the Magellan spacecraft to Venus and TOPEX/Poseidon Earth science flight projects.
Joan holds an undergraduate degree from MIT in aeronautics and astronautics, and an engineering master’s degree from UCLA. She coauthored an art book on Saturn, authored a book about what scientists actually do, and is the author or coauthor of various technical papers. She is President of the MIT Class of 1981, VP of Communications of the MIT Club of Southern California, a member of the Executive Committee of Caltech’s entrepreneur forum, and a docent at the Huntington Botanical Gardens.
Updated July 9, 2013