5 Most Prominent People Of Indian Origin Working At NASA
NASA
is the world’s most prominent space agency and a great place to work. Indians
are always supposed to have high curiosity and very hard workers. True to this,
many Indian origin scientists are currently working at NASA for accomplishing
scientific discoveries in the space.
Here’s a list of Indian’s who’ve worked at
NASA, let’s find about them:
5. Sharmila Bhattacharya
Sharmila was born in Lagos, Nigeria and
currently heads the Biomodel performance and behavior laboratory at NASA Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley. She is
a Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from Princeton University. Earlier in her
career, she was a payload scientist at Lockheed Martin (a defense company of
US). Sharmila’s dream of becoming a scientist at NASA was fueled by her father.
Bhattacharya is truly an inspiration for all young girls who believe in chasing
their dream and doing hard work.
4. Dr. Kamlesh Lulla
Kamlesh started his career with NASA at JSC
(Johnson Space Center) in the year 1998. He holds two PhDs and is an expert in
the field of Earth and Space sciences at NASA. Dr. Lulla is an internationally
acclaimed chief scientist and honored by the US government for his 25 years of
service in NASA. He has authored more than 200 scientific papers and also
co-authored a book titled ‘Wings In Orbit’. This book comprises of innovations
made in last 30 years at NASA. He is also a recipient of NASA’s highest honor
named as Exceptional Achievement Medal in 2005 and the 2012 Ellison Onizuka
Award. At present, Dr. Kamlesh is serving NASA as the director of the
University Research, Collaboration and Partnership office at JSC, Houston,
Texas (US).
3. Ashwin R. Vasavada
Ashwin is a Tamil Brahmin who bagged NASA Exceptional Achievement Medal in
2013. His research interests include geological study of Mars and study of
polar volatiles on Moon and the Mercury. Currently, he is a Senior Scientist at
JPL CA 91109. He is also an important member of space agency’s most ambitious
project mission – ‘Mars Curiosity Rover’. Ashwin holds a Ph.D. in planetary
science from California Institute of Technology (1998).
2. Dr. Meyya Meyyappan
Dr. Meyya Meyyappan is one of the
recipients of prestigious IEEE Pioneer Award in
Nanotechnology. He was awarded for his cutting edge contribution in the area of
‘carbon nanotube application development in the year 2011. He belongs to a
Tamil Brahmin family. He is currently chief scientist for Exploration
Technology at the center for Nanotechnology, NASA Ames Research center in Moffett
Field, CA 94035. He has published some material on the research topic such as
‘Nanoenabled Sensors for Security, Biomedical and Industrial Applications’
(NACNT).
1. Anita Sengupta
Anita
Sengupta is an aerospace engineer and currently working at NASA’s jet
propulsion laboratory (JPL) in Greater Los Angeles area as a project manager.
The expert NASA engineer contributed in designing parachute for ‘Curiosity rover’ which
landed successfully on Mars Surface. In her younger days she was fascinated by
science fiction and also loves motorcycle riding. As youth mentor, she
delivered a lecture on Mars exploration at Nehru Centre, Mumbai on August 11,
2013. Nowadays, she is working on an ultra –cold quantum gas experiment that is
scheduled to be launched into the ISS (International
Space Station) in 2016. Her career highlight was the successful
landing of rover on Red planet and she thinks that ‘Man can set foot on Mars
one day’.
