NASA has named Indian-American Bhavya Lal, who oversaw the agency’s transition under the administration of US President Joe Biden, as the space agency’s acting chief of staff. As the senior White House appointee at NASA, she served as a member of the Biden Presidential Transition Agency Review Team for the agency, NASA said. Lal brings extensive experience in engineering and space technology, serving as a member of the research staff at the Institute for Defence Analyses (IDA) Science and Technology Policy Institute (STPI) from 2005 to 2020.

Before joining STPI, she served as president of C-STPS LLC, a science and technology policy research and consulting firm in Waltham, Massachusetts. Prior to that, she served as director of the Center for Science and Technology Policy Studies at Abt Associates Inc. 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.

For her many contributions to the space sector, she was nominated and selected to be a Corresponding Member of the International Academy of Astronautics. She 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 the George Washington University.