Amila Cooray (he/him/his) is a Mechatronics Engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory working on Planetary Sampling and Handling for the Mars2020 (Perseverance) Rover mission. He joined JPL full time in 2016 after a six-month co-op from January to June in 2015. The entire time he’s been at JPL he’s been working on the Sampling and Caching System, testing the Robotic Arm, Adaptative Caching Assembly, and Corer (Drill) before launch and landing. He has received two awards for his contributions: The Leadership and Collaboration Voyager Award and The Discovery Award for Outstanding Performance a Testbed Lead. In addition, he is the Deputy Coordinator of SPECTRUM, JPL’s employee resource group for the LGBTQIA+ community and is on the organizing committee for Lab-Wide Diversity and Inclusion Actions. In his free time, Amila enjoys road tripping to various national parks, eating good food, and petting any and all dogs he comes into contact with.