NASA appoints Indian-American Bhavya Lal as acting chief of staff

United States (US) space agency, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) on February 1 named Indian-American Bhavya Lal as the acting chief of staff along with other key positions. In a statement, NASA said, it has named appointees for senior agency positions. "Bhavya Lal joins the agency as acting chief of staff, Phillip Thompson will serve as White House liaison, Alicia Brown will serve as associate administrator for the Office of Legislative and Intergovernmental Affairs, and Marc Etkind will serve as associate administrator for the agency’s Office of Communications," read the satement.

Bhavya Lal had also served as a member of NASA’s transition review team for the incoming 46th US administration of President Joe Biden after serving as the research staff at the Defence analysis Science and Technology Policy Insitute (STPI). While elaborating on her appointment, NASA hailed Lal for bringing “extensive experience” in both engineering and space technology as the member of STPI from 2005 and 2020. She has led an analysis of space technology, strategy, and policy for the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and National Space Council along with federal space-oriented organisations including the US space agency, the Department of Defense, and the intelligence community.

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Bhavya Lal’s recent projects

NASA said that Lal applied her “expertise in engineering systems and innovation theory and practice to topics in space, with recent projects on commercial activities in low-Earth orbit and deep space, in-orbit servicing assembly and manufacturing, small satellites, human exploration, space nuclear power, space exploration, and space science. She has published more than 50 papers in peer-reviewed journals and conference proceedings".

Before joining STPI in 2005, Bhvya Lal served as the president of C-STPS LLC which is a science and technology policy research and consulting firm in Waltham, Massachusetts, US after serving as the director of the Center for Science and Technology Policy Studies at Abt Associates Inc. in Cambridge. Further, Lal has also served on at least five National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) Committees including the most recent one on Space Nuclear Propulsion Technologies that will be released in 2021.

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