Indian Origin Scientist in NASA

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’.