Linda Billings

Linda Billings is a consultant to NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office on communication strategy and planning.

Dr. Billings earned her Ph.D. in mass communication from Indiana University. Her research interests include science and risk communication, social studies of science, and the history and rhetoric of science and space exploration. Her papers have been published in Acta Astronautica, Advances in Space Research, Biological Theory, Scientific American, Space News, Space Policy, and Theology and Science. She is a contributing author for several books, including First Contact: The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (1990), Societal Impacts of Space Flight (2007), and The Impact of Discovering Life Beyond Earth (2015).

Dr. Billings has worked in the aerospace community for 35 years, primarily in Washington, D.C. She was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2009. She now lives in Sarasota, Florida, with a cat named Fritzie, who she sometime thinks must have come from outer space.