Dr. Lena Attwater

Starburner Role: Linguist
Gender: Female
Height: 1.7 m (5 ft 8 in)
Weight: 95 kg (210 lbs)
Eye Color: Brown
Hair Color: Black/Gray
Birthday: 7/07/2081
Birthplace:  Elk Grove, CA, USA

Lena Attwater is the Linguistics Department Chair at Stanford University. While still an undergrad, Lena worked on a large project to bridge the communication gap with Mars. Researchers had already translated the Martian language before she was born. However, their language is impossible for humans to speak. Several software programs were written over the years to translate in real-time. The real breakthrough came when Lena’s group discovered that is actually very easy for Martians to mimic human vocalizations. Once they created a system to teach Earth’s major languages to Martians, relations between the worlds took off. The colonization and exploitation of the red planet also sped up exponentially. Galactocorp gladly funded the rest of Lena’s education.

She has been married for over forty years, has raised three children, and is the proud grandmother of seven grandchildren. She has made a small fortune over the years designing boutique languages. She combines two or more languages together to create unique dialects. It started as a hobby, but they were an instant hit with young people who were looking for a way to set their social group apart from everyone else.