Elizabeth Landau is a freelance writer and communications specialist in transition between Los Angeles and Washington, DC. She is a public affairs officer at NASA Headquarters and the senior storyteller at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. In her spare time, she contributes to Smithsonian, Scientific American, and other publications. She began her career as a Master's Fellow at CNN in 2007, and became a staff writer/producer at CNN.com in 2008. In 2011, she co-founded CNN Light Years, an online portal for CNN science coverage, and continues to edit and write content for it. She came to NASA in 2014. She graduated magna cum laude from Princeton University, and earned a Master's of Arts from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in New York.