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Jeffrey W. Umland is a leading aerospace engineer whose work has been central to advancing our understanding of Mars’ deep interior and the future of planetary sample return. His primary research areas encompass planetary science instrumentation, robotic deployment systems, and Mars exploration mission architecture. Umland’s most significant contribution is his leadership on the SEIS (Seismic Experiment for Internal Structure) instrument for NASA’s InSight mission, a landmark achievement detailed in his highly cited 2019 paper (375 citations). This six-axes seismometer, equipped with a Very Broad Band (VBB) sensor, was the first to directly measure “marsquakes,” revealing the planet’s crust, mantle, and core structure after a 42-year gap since the Viking landers. He also played a key role in developing the InSight lander’s robotic arm and instrument deployment system (62 citations), which precisely placed SEIS on the Martian surface. More recently, Umland has been instrumental in shaping the Mars Sample Return campaign (97 citations), a multi-mission effort to bring Martian samples to Earth for the first time. His work has fundamentally transformed planetary geophysics and set the stage for the next era of Mars exploration.