WASHINGTON: Indian-American Bhavya Lal Appointed Acting Chief Of Staff Of NASA

WASHINGTON: Indian-American Bhavya Lal was on
Monday appointed by NASA as the Acting Chief of Staff of the US space agency.

Ms Lal
served as a member of the Biden Presidential Transition Agency Review Team for
the agency and oversaw the agency’s transition under the administration of
President Joe Biden.

In a
statement, NASA said Ms Lal brings extensive experience in engineering and
space technology, serving as a member of the research staff at the Institute
for Defence Analyses Science and Technology Policy Institute (STPI) from 2005
to 2020.

There,
she led analysis of space technology, strategy, and policy for the White House
Office of Science and Technology Policy and National Space Council, as well as
federal space-oriented organisations, including NASA, the Department of
Defence, and the intelligence community.

Ms Lal is
an active member of the space technology and policy community, having chaired,
co-chaired, or served on five high-impact National Academy of Science
committees.

She served
two consecutive terms on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
Federal Advisory Committee on Commercial Remote Sensing and was an External
Council member of NASA’s Innovative Advanced Concepts Program and the
Technology, Innovation and Engineering Advisory Committee of the NASA Advisory
Council.

Before joining STPI, Ms Lal was
president of C-STPS LLC, a science and technology policy research and
consulting firm. Prior to that, she was the director of the Center for Science
and Technology Policy Studies at Abt Associates, a global policy research consultancy
based in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

She
co-founded and is co-chair of the policy track of the American Nuclear
Society’s annual conference on Nuclear and Emerging Technologies in Space
(NETS) and co-organises a seminar series on space history and policy with the
Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.

For her
many contributions to the space sector, she was nominated and selected to be a
Corresponding Member of the International Academy of Astronautics, the
statement said.

Ms Lal
earned Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degrees in nuclear
engineering, as well as a Master of Science degree in technology and policy,
from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and holds a doctorate in public
policy and public administration from George Washington University. She is a
member of both the nuclear engineering and public policy honor societies.