Dr.  Melanie Delapierre is a postdoctoral scholar in the Dynamics and Structures group in the Payload and Small Spacecraft Mechanical Engineering section at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.  Her research interests include deployment of large structures, topology optimization, and dynamics. She is advancing topology optimization capabilities at JPL through benchmarking and tool development. She has performed FEM simulations for a wide range of applications including mesh deployment simulations for the Lunar Crater Radio Telescope NIAC proposal (now selected for Phase II), impact simulations for the SHIELD low-cost Mars lander project, and viscoelastic simulations of the optical petals of the Starshade exoplanet detection mission. She received her PhD from the Space Structures Laboratory at Caltech where she studied the dynamics and stability of spinning membranes as novel space structures. She also helped develop the early-stage conceptual design of a space-based solar power plant in collaboration with a multidisciplinary team.