JPL's Got One in the (Nerd) Game

What does it take to go from defending planets to defending your nerd cred on national TV? JPL’s Moogega Cooper found out on King of the Nerds.

Client: NASA JPL Education

The Brief: When JPL engineer Moogega Cooper landed a spot in the finale of a reality competition show, I helped the JPL Education team seize the moment. I quickly developed this feature to showcase the human side of JPL’s work and highlight Cooper’s unique STEM career as a planetary protection engineer, engaging general audiences and inspiring students to follow in her footsteps.

Excerpt:

It's Moogega Cooper's second Nerd War and she's in uncharted territory. She's been picked to play "Shadow Raven" in a fantasy story line about a "dark cult trying to resurrect an elder god." It's not that she's unaccustomed to playing a hero of sorts. As a planetary protection engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., her job is quite literally to protect our planet and others in the solar system. It's just that this isn't her particular brand of nerdom—yet.

This summer, Cooper took a break from her day job at JPL analyzing contamination risks for distant spacecraft and testing the might of extreme organisms to spend a month entrenched in a world of nerd dancing, extreme gaming and superhero debates as part of King of the Nerds, a reality competition show airing Thursday nights on TBS.

"It's a show that gets 11 nerds from across this nerd spectrum, which includes 'cosplay,' the people who do costume play, people who like comic books, scientists and engineers," said Cooper.