Mike Menzel is the NASA Mission Systems Engineer for the James Webb Space Telescope at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. He has held this position since he joined NASA in June of 2004. His involvement with the James Webb Project extends back to 1998 when he became the Chief Systems Engineer for Lockheed Martin's Pre-Phase A studies for the then Next Generation Space Telescope and later for Lockheed's Phase A James Webb Space Telescope contract. In 2001, he joined the Northrop Grumman James Webb systems engineering team. He holds a Batchelor’s degree in Physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and earned a Master’s degree in Physics from Columbia University.