Mary Hockaday is the associate director for Experimental Physical Sciences, one the leading technical directorates at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). She has a B.S. from the University of Hawaii and a Ph.D. in physics from New Mexico State University. In 1986, Hockaday joined the Fast Transient Plasma Group at LANL, as its only female experimentalist fielding and developing x-ray diagnostics for underground nuclear tests at the Nevada Test Site (NTS). Eventually, she turned her focus to applying high-powered lasers to the study of weapons physics issues and developing pulse power at LANL for weapons physics applications. In 1998, Hockaday returned to the NTS as diagnostic coordinator for a Subcritical event. Subsequently, she joined the effort to develop proton radiography which led to the first greater-than-10-frame radiographic "movie" of a hydrotest. From 2002 to 2004 she led the 500-person Dynamic Experimentation Division, and in 2006 she was named Deputy Associate Director of Weapons Physics and Program Director for Science and Inertial Confinement Fusion and High Yield (ICF) Campaigns. Hockaday served as LANL’s Institutional Deputy for the National Ignition Campaign and was the first chairperson of the national ICF Executives Committee which includes leaders from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratories, Laboratory for Laser Energetics, General Atomics and the Naval Research Laboratory. In 2014, Hockaday became an Association for the Advancement of Science Fellow and received a Distinguished Alumni Award from the New Mexico State University Alumni Association. She served as a member of the American Physical Committee on the Status of Women in Physics and is on the advisory committee for New Mexico State University’s Physics Department.