Lubos Brieda started his undergraduate education at Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne, FL where he majored in Space Science for two years before transferring to Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, VA to complete bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Aerospace Engineering. His thesis focused on numerical modeling of plasma thruster plumes and their interaction with spacecraft components. He then continued this work for several years at the Air Force Research Laboratory at Edwards AFB before leaving for the George Washington University in Washington, D.C. to complete a Ph.D in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. His dissertation focused on multiscale modeling of Hall effect thrusters, with side projects involving ablative vacuum arc thrusters, and cold atmospheric plasma jets used for medical applications.

While at GWU, Lubos started working part-time at NASA Goddard as a contamination control engineer. This eventually turned into a full time role routed through his consulting company PIC-C. In this capacity he has supported over two dozen NASA and private industry space missions, including Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS), GOES-R, JWST, and most recently Dragonfly. Through his company he also supported projects related to electric propulsion, fusion energy, and semiconductor manufacturing. Between 2020 and 2025 he worked as a part time lecturer at University of Southern California Department of Astronautical Engineering where he developed and taught courses on applied scientific computing, computational plasma dynamics, and spacecraft contamination control. He is an author of two textbooks: Brieda, L, Plasma Simulations by Example, CRC Press, 2019 and Brieda, L, Wang, J., Martin, R., Introduction to Modern Scientific Computing and Numerical Methods, CRC Press, 2024. He is also an associate editor for the Journal of Electric Propulsion and a member of the planning committee for the 2027 International Electric Propulsion Conference to be hosted by JPL.

In his spare time, Lubos and his wife enjoy traveling, running (trail and marathons), and hiking. During his own undergraduate days, Lubos got into highpointing which involves climbing the highest mountain of all US states. To date, he has completed all states except for Alaska. Lubos also enjoys kayaking and is hoping to get better at sailing.