<p>CAMBRIDGE -- By the way she strides across the room at Harvest restaurant, cellphone in hand and a no-nonsense look on her face, you can tell that Maria Zuber is on a tight schedule, and no wonder.</p>
<p>As head of the Department of Earth, Atmosphere and Planetary Sciences, she's the first woman to lead any department at MIT; as senior research scientist with NASA's Laboratory for Terrestrial Physics, she helped map Mars and made four trips last month to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., to assist the team in charge of the twin rover landings on Mars.</p>