Indian Origin’s Bhavya Lal appointed the Acting Chief of Staff of NASA
Washington, 2/2: Bhavya Lal a woman of Indian Origin has been appointed as the acting chief of staff of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration(NASA) on Monday.
She served as a member of the Biden Presidential Transition Agency Review Team for the agency and looked after NASA’s transition under the administration of President Joe Biden.
NASA in a statement 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 the 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 organizations, including NASA, the Department of Defence, and the intelligence community the statement added.
Lal is an active member of the space technology and policy community, she also 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.
She was also an External Council member of NASA’s Innovative Advanced Concepts Program and the Technology, Innovation and Engineering Advisory Committee of the NASA Advisory Council.
Ms Lal was president of C-STPS LLC, a science and technology policy research and consulting firm before joining STPI. Before 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-organizes a seminar series on space history and policy with the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.
Lal will also serve as the senior advisor for budget and finance at NASA.
