Landau grew up in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. As a child, she watched Carl Sagan's TV series Cosmos, which helped inspire her love of space.^[2]

She earned a bachelor's degree in anthropology at Princeton University (magna cum laude) in 2006. As a Princeton student, she completed study-abroad programs at University of Seville and Universidad de León.^[3] During her junior year in Princeton, she was the editor-in-chief of Innovation, the university's student science magazine.^[2] In the summer of 2004, she became a production intern at CNN en Español in New York.^[3] She earned a master's in journalism from Columbia University, where she focused on politics.^[4]

Landau began to write and produce for CNN's website in 2007 as a Master's Fellow, and returned full-time in 2008.^[5] Here she co-founded the CNN science blog, Light Years.^[6] She covered a variety of topics including Pi Day.^[7][8][9] In 2012, Landau interviewed Scott Maxwell about the Curiosity rover at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory.^[10]

NASA career edit

In 2014, she became a media relations specialist at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where she led media strategy for Dawn (spacecraft), Voyager, Spitzer, NuSTAR, WISE, Planck and Hershel.^{[11][12][13][14][15][16]} She led NASA's effort to share the TRAPPIST-1 exoplanet system with the world on February 22, 2017.^[17][18] In January 2018, she was appointed a Senior Storyteller at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.^[2] In February 2020, she became a Senior Communications Specialist at NASA Headquarters.^[1]

Writing career edit

Landau has written for CNN, Marie Claire, New Scientist, Nautilus, Scientific American, Vice and The Wall Street Journal.^{[19][20][21][22][23]}

Landau interviewed astronomer Virginia Trimble for Quanta Magazine in November 2019.^[24]

• Elizabeth Landau on Twitter