Vandana Verma is the Chief Engineer for Robotic Operations for Mars 2020 Perseverance, and the Assistant Section Manager for Mobility and Robotics Systems at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. She specializes in space robotics, autonomous robots and robotic operations. She has worked on a number of Space Robotics and Artificial Intelligence research and technology development tasks and has designed, developed, and operated rovers on Mars, the Arctic, Antarctica, and the Atacama Desert.&nbsp;She has been working at NASA since graduating with a Ph.D. in Robotics from Carnegie Mellon University. She works on new space robotics capabilities from early design, through development, testing and launch, to landing and surface operations. As Assistant Section Manager for Mobility and Robotics she helps lead about 150 JPL roboticists developing new technology for future missions and working on a variety of JPL robotic missions. The Mars Ingenuity Helicopter technology is an example of the kind of innovation developed by JPL Robotics.Since 2008 she has been driving rovers on Mars (Spirit, Opportunity, Curiosity, and soon Perseverance) and operating the robotic arm and sampling system as a Rover Planner. She enjoys coding and has written flight software that runs onboard Curiosity and Perseverance, and simulation software used in operations. She works on autonomous robotic arm positioning and autonomous science targeting for Perseverance. She is a Helicopter Integration Engineer for the Mars Ingenuity helicopter.heck out my latest episode!

Indian Genes

Vandana Verma - Chief Engineer Robotic Operations NASA/JPL

Dr. James Beacham from CERN speaks to Indian Genes on all aspects of Time &amp; Time Travel in this very entertaining and informative discussion.

James Beacham - CERN

Dr. Pandey, Director of India Operations for the&nbsp;Taksha Terrestrial Analog Research Center (TTARC), is the Head of Amity Space Centre and the Centre of Excellence in Astrobiology at Amity University, India. As a part of this, he is leading an initiative to establish India’s first centre that will work towards studying the origins and distribution of life in the Universe. Prior to this, he has experience in building sample collection instruments for Mars and Venus surface missions while working at NASA Ames, USA. He received the NASA Spaceflight Awareness Team Award and NASA Ames Technology Transfer Award for two successful spaceflight experiments onboard the International Space Station and co-owns a registered NASA patent. Siddharth has led international expeditions to explore extreme environments in Ladakh and Lonar crater, Maharashtra, as sites to test experiments and systems for Mars exploration. He is a Director with the Mars Society Australia and is actively involved in planning analogue field projects in India and Australia. He has been engaged in education and public outreach activities and is motivated to use Space as a tool to spread awareness, social consciousness and inclusiveness within our communities.

Siddharth Pandey - Astrobiology

S2/EP4 - In this special episode, Indian Genes speaks exclusively to Mohini Jodhpurkar &amp; Piyush Khopkar.Mohini Jodhpurkar- 1st year PhD student in Dr Jim Bell’s lab at Arizona State University. There, she serves a student collaborator on the Perseverance rover’s science team,&nbsp;specifically working with the MASTCAM-Z instrument onboard. Currently, she’s working on investigating a part of Jezero Crater (the rover’s landing site) in depth and preparing for the rover landing mid-February! She has worked other martian and lunar projects besides that, including revamping old Apollo mission maps with newer high-resolution imagery. When she’s not doing research,&nbsp;Mohini&nbsp;loves to read, write, and make music!Piyush Khopkar - originally from Ujjain, MP, India. He did his Bachelor of Engineering from Mahakal Institute of Technology, Ujjain and Master of Science in Electrical Engineering from Unversity of Missouri-Columbia, USA. He currently lives in Boston, MA. He is a software engineer by profession. He is passionate about Space Exploration. He is part of the MOXIE and the Mars 2020 Science Team. MOXIE is one of the instruments aboard the Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover. He is also an active member of the NASA/JPL's Solar System Ambassador's program.

Mohini & Piyush - NASA/JPL & MOXIE

S2/EP3 - Jill Cornell Tarter is an American&nbsp;astronomer&nbsp;best known for her work on the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI).Tarter's astronomical work is illustrated in&nbsp;Carl Sagan's novel&nbsp;Contact. In the&nbsp;film version of&nbsp;Contact, the protagonist Ellie Arroway is played by&nbsp;Jodie Foster. Tarter conversed with the actress for months before and during filming, and Arroway was "largely based" on Tarter's work. She has also been featured in John Boswell's&nbsp;Symphony of Science&nbsp;music video, "The Poetry of Reality (An Anthem for Science)Tarter is the former&nbsp;director&nbsp;of the Center for SETI Research, holding the&nbsp;Bernard M. Oliver&nbsp;Chair for SETI at the&nbsp;SETI Institute.&nbsp;In 2002,&nbsp;Discover&nbsp;magazine recognized her as one of the 50 most important women in science.Tarter has worked on a number of major scientific projects, most relating to the search for&nbsp;extraterrestrial life. As a&nbsp;graduate student, she was inspired to do SETI research by the&nbsp;Cyclops Report.&nbsp;Stuart Bowyer&nbsp;gave her the report to read when Bowyer discovered that Tarter could program the then-outdated&nbsp;PDP-8/S&nbsp;computer that had been donated by Jack Welch for Bowyer's SETI project at&nbsp;Hat Creek Radio Observatory. She worked with Bowyer on the radio-search project&nbsp;SERENDIP&nbsp;and created the corresponding&nbsp;backronym, "Search for Extraterrestrial Radio Emissions from Nearby Developed Intelligent Populations".&nbsp;She was project scientist for NASA's&nbsp;High Resolution Microwave Survey&nbsp;(HRMS) in 1992 and 1993 and subsequently director of&nbsp;Project Phoenix&nbsp;(HRMS reconfigured) under the auspices of the SETI Institute. She was co-creator with&nbsp;Margaret Turnbull&nbsp;of the&nbsp;HabCat&nbsp;in 2002, a principal component of Project Phoenix. Tarter has published dozens of technical papers and lectures extensively both on the search for extraterrestrial intelligence and the need for proper science education. She had spent 35 years in the quest for extraterrestrial life when she announced her retirement in 2012

Jill Tarter - SETI

Abraham (Avi) Loeb&nbsp;is the&nbsp;Frank B. Baird, Jr., Professor of Science&nbsp;at&nbsp;Harvard University.&nbsp;He received a PhD in Physics from the&nbsp;Hebrew University of Jerusalem&nbsp;in Israel at age 24 (1980-1986), led the first international project supported by the&nbsp;Strategic Defense Initiative&nbsp;(1983-1988), and was subsequently a long-term member of the&nbsp;Institute for Advanced Study&nbsp;at Princeton (1988-1993). Loeb has written 8 books, including most recently,&nbsp;Extraterrestrial (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2021), and&nbsp;about 800 papers&nbsp;(with an&nbsp;h-index of 113) on a wide range of topics, including black holes, the first stars, the search for extraterrestrial life and the future of the Universe. He had been the&nbsp;longest serving Chair&nbsp;of Harvard's&nbsp;Department of Astronomy&nbsp;(2011-2020), Founding Director of Harvard's&nbsp;Black Hole Initiative&nbsp;(2016-present) and Director of&nbsp;the&nbsp;Institute for Theory and Computation&nbsp;(2007-present)&nbsp;within the&nbsp;Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics&nbsp;. He serves as Chair of the&nbsp;Board on Physics and Astronomy of the National Academies&nbsp;(2018-present) and is an elected fellow of the&nbsp;American Academy of Arts &amp; Sciences, the&nbsp;American Physical Society, and the&nbsp;International Academy of Astronautics. Loeb is&nbsp;a former member&nbsp;of the&nbsp;President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST)&nbsp;at the White House and a member of the Advisory Board for&nbsp;"Einstein: Visualize the Impossible"&nbsp;of the Hebrew University. He also chairs the Advisory Committee for the&nbsp;Breakthrough Starshot Initiative&nbsp;(2016-present) and serves as the Science Theory Director for all&nbsp;Initiatives&nbsp;of the&nbsp;Breakthrough Prize Foundation. In 2012,&nbsp;TIME magazine&nbsp;selected Loeb as one of the 25 most influential people in space and in 2020 Loeb&nbsp;was selected&nbsp;among the 14 most inspiring Israelis of the last decade.

Avi Loeb Professor Science Harvard

Darsh is our&nbsp;Star guest and an Astrophysicist, based in Oxford UK. He talks&nbsp;to Indian Genes in this episode giving us a clear understanding of the Big Bang and the latest updates in the field of Astrophysics.He does share a lot of interesting&nbsp;insights and thoughts as well on the amazing universal puzzles&nbsp;that make for great and engaging listening. He has been a true achiever&nbsp;and as he says, hard work is the only way to get there and he has put in a lot of that.Listing this episode would be quite an inspirational journey&nbsp;for students that want to get into this field orj ust non experts who are curious enough to know more.Dash holds a PHD from the University of Oxford in this field and has published several Academic papers on the subject.He has&nbsp;worked with Dr Ulrich Kolb on a robotic telescope based in Mallorca, Spain called PIRATE to collect and analyse astronomical data on exoplanets, was part of a project where&nbsp;Zinc-Bismuth and Aluminum-Indium monotectic alloys were developed in graphite crucibles and their phase transitions were analysed. The project resulted in a poster presentation at the Royal institution in London and a peer review paper in the International Journal of Thermophysics,&nbsp;Taught 6 courses ranging from 1st year introduction to physics to final year graduate courses in advanced quantum mechanics and electromagnetism for the University of Toronto.He also works with the University of Oxford,&nbsp;to understand the early universe and exploring novel mathematical/statistical techniques.Darsh has also been a&nbsp;Team leader in a group of 6 advising the Oxford Climate Action Network on how to establish collaboration between civic organisations in Oxford and the University of Oxford.

Darsh Kodwani Astrophysicist Episode 16

Mitul joined King’s College London as a post-doctoral researcher in Neuroimaging in 2003 with the aim of setting up a research group focussed on pharmacological neuroimaging using MRI methodology. He worked with positron emission tomography at Imperial College for a number of years as an MRC Training Fellow before moving to King’s. A Wellcome Trust Value in People Award enabled the transition. His work was recognised by the British Association for Psychopharmacology Young Investigator Award. At King’s my group brought quantitative methods to identify drug mechanisms and classify different compounds and used classic tracking methods (phMRI) to develop assays of drug modulation. These methods are utilised to understand existing compounds as well as assay novel compounds and we have tested various mechanisms, including in collaboration with the pharmaceutical industry.Currently, Mitul is Head of the Neuropharmacology Group and Section in the Department of Neuroimaging, Deputy Lead for the Neuroimaging Theme of the NIHR-Maudsley Biomedical Research Centre for Mental Health and Director of the IoPPN Centre for Innovative Therapeutics. Outside of King’s he has served on the Council for the British Association for Psychopharmacology as a member (2011-2014) and meetings

Mitul Mehta Neuroimaging Episode 15

Susmita Mohanty is an Indian spaceship designer, serial space entrepreneur and a climate action advocate.&nbsp;She is well known for her research on space related topics. She co-founded India's first private space start-up, Earth2Orbit in 2009.She is the only space entrepreneur in the world to have started companies on three different continents in Asia, Europe and North America.Susmita is one of the few people to have visited both the&nbsp;Arctic&nbsp;and&nbsp;Antarctica&nbsp;. She completed her bachelor's degree in&nbsp;Electrical engineering&nbsp;from&nbsp;Gujarat University&nbsp;and master's degree in&nbsp;Industrial Design&nbsp;from the&nbsp;National Institute of Design&nbsp;in&nbsp;Ahmedabad. She also completed Masters in Space studies from the&nbsp;International Space University&nbsp;in&nbsp;Strasbourg. She co-founded Moonfront, an aerospace consulting firm based in&nbsp;San Francisco&nbsp;in 2001, which marked her entry into space entrepreneurship.&nbsp;She also co-founded Liquifer System Group (LSG), an aerospace architecture and design firm in&nbsp;Vienna,&nbsp;Austria&nbsp;in 2004. She also served as one of the prominent members of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Aerospace Architecture for over a period of ten years while she was residing in&nbsp;California. In 2005, she was conferred with the International Achievement Award for promoting international cooperation. She was included in the elite list of 25 Indians to Watch by the&nbsp;Financial Times&nbsp;magazine in 2012 and also featured on the front cover page of&nbsp;Fortune&nbsp;magazine in 2017. She was nominated to the&nbsp;World Economic Forum's Global Future Council for Space Technologies for a period of three consecutive years from 2016 to 2019.&nbsp;She was included in the&nbsp;BBC's list of&nbsp;100 inspiring and influential women from around the world&nbsp;for 2019.ReplyForward

Susmita Mohanty Spaceship Designer Episode 14

In EP 13, we continue where we left off in EP 12 and Bernardo Kasturp dives deeper into consciousness and how this is central to our understanding of the world around us. He also answers questions posted on line and fascinates&nbsp;us with insights that are thought provoking&nbsp;and brilliant. THis is an episode that would be enjoyed as a continuation of EP 12 and we highly recommend&nbsp;that you listen in sequence.

Bernardo Kasturp Episode 13

In EP 12 Indian Genes talks to Bernardo Kastrup's who has been leading the modern renaissance of metaphysical idealism, the notion that reality is essentially mental. He has a Ph.D. in philosophy (ontology, philosophy of mind) and another Ph.D. in computer engineering (reconfigurable computing, artificial intelligence). As a scientist, Bernardo has worked for the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) and the Philips Research Laboratories (where the 'Casimir Effect' of Quantum Field Theory was discovered). Formulated in detail in many academic papers and books, his ideas have been featured on 'Scientific American,' the 'Institute of Art and Ideas,' the 'Blog of the American Philosophical Association' and 'Big Think,' among others.

Bernardo Kastrup Scientist & Philosopher Episode 12

Sara Seager is the Class of 1941 Professor of Planetary Science, Professor of Physics, and Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her past research is credited with laying the foundation for the field of exoplanet atmospheres, while her current research focuses on exoplanet atmospheres and the future search for signs of life by way of atmospheric biosignature gases. Professor Seager is involved with a number of space-based exoplanet searches including as the Deputy Science Director for the MIT-led NASA mission TESS, as the PI for the on-orbit JPL/MIT CubeSat ASTERIA, and as a lead for Starshade Rendezvous Mission (a space-based mission concept under technology development for direct imaging discovery and characterization of Earth analogs). Before joining MIT in 2007, Professor Seager spent four years on the senior research staff at the Carnegie Institution of Washington preceded by three years at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ. Her PhD is from Harvard University, and her BSc from the University of Toronto. Among other accolades, Professor Seager is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a 2013 MacArthur Fellow. In EP 11 Sara talks to Indian Genes on the latest on Exoplanet discoveries including the TESS mission and latest cutting edge research in her field.

Sara Seager MIT Professor of Planetary Science

Ashwing Vasavada from NASA, Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California and a CALTECH / UCLA star, has been involved with the Mars Rover Curiosity for over eight years now and has virtually spent that time living on Mars through the Curiosity mission. If anyone knows the conditions on Mars, then it is Ashwin and in this episode he discusses in detail, the history of NASA’s space missions as well as how they were conceptualized, designed and deployed. He also gives a first hand account on the various missions like Viking, Voyager, Hope &amp; Spirit, Perseverance and talks about NASA’s Mars 2020 missions and what could be expected moving forward. As the lead scientist for the Curiosity Rover Mission he explains the planning and technology that went into building the rover. He covers interesting facts like the engineering and design of the rover, its 17 cameras and lasers on board, and how this is used to collect rock samples, the difference between solar panels and nuclear powered rovers, how dust on the surface of Mars impacts these choices, the Chem Cam and how it was used, how and why airbags were used for the Hope &amp; Spirit landings and many more details on the project. Ashwin also tackles broader areas like the possibility of life on the surface of Mars or below the surface as per latest available scientific data from those missions. This is a comprehensive discussion on all NASA missions and a lot of details mentioned in this episode have never been heard before or available online. This is an opportunity to have all your questions answered and give you a better understanding of these missions as he breaks down and systematically takes you through all the stages of the Mars missions, also spending time to answer questions posed to him by students online. This is a historic podcast episode and one you do not want to miss. From all of us at Indian Genes, we do hope you enjoy this exclusive episode and look forward to you also checking out our previous episodes.

Ashwin Vasavada NASA Lead Scientist Curiosity Rover

India’s first space traveler, Wing Commander Rakesh Sharma, AC is a former Indian Air Force pilot who flew aboard Soyuz T-11 on April 3rd, 1984 with the Interkosmos program. He is the only Indian citizen to travel in space. He speaks exclusively to Indian Genes about his mission and the memories that he carries with him. Rakesh Sharma openly speaks his mind on values, ethics and responsibilities that go with space exploration and provides advice to students and future explorers, innovators and seekers. During the discussion he reveals interesting moments and memories from his mission that have not been shared before. This is an interview of a lifetime as you get to know the man behind the legend. A man that inspired an entire nation of 1.3 Billion.

Rakesh Sharma Astronaut & Only Indian Citizen to Visit Space

Narayan talks to Indian Genes about the current global set up in the Space sector and also discusses current compliance and law with regards to space research and travel. This discussion also covers ISRO and future opportunities&nbsp;in the Private Sector for Space Research and Travel.&nbsp;

Narayan Prasad Space Entrepreneur

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