Sammy Kayali

Sammy Kayali is the Chief Financial Officer, Manager of Laboratory Operations Integration and Acting Director for Business Operations at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He was appointed this position in July 2020. Prior to this position, he served as the Director for the Office of Safety and Mission Success. Prior to that, he served as Deputy Director for OSMS, Deputy Manager of the GRACE Follow-on mission, and Mission Assurance Manager for the Juno mission.

Since joining JPL in 1988, Mr. Kayali has held several engineering and management positions at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory including Mission Assurance Manager for, the Prometheus Project, the Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter Mission, Manager of the Electronic Parts Engineering Organization, and Manager of the NASA Electronic Parts and Packaging Program.

Mr. Kayali’s specialty is in the area of compound semiconductor device reliability where he has over 30 publications, and a published book on the subject of GaAs MMIC Reliability. He is the recipient of the NASA Exceptional Service Medal, the NASA Exceptional Achievement Medal, and the Engineer’s Council Distinguished Engineering Achievement Award. He holds degrees from Texas A&M University and Sam Houston State University in Electrical Engineering and Solid State Physics.