Sharmila Bhattacharya

Sharmila Bhattacharya is an Indian-American scientist born in Lagos, Nigeria, to Bengali Indian parents and raised in Kolkata, who serves as chief scientist for astrobionics at NASA Ames Research Center. She leads the Biomodel Performance and Behavior laboratory there, studying how spaceflight affects living organisms, and directed the FIT experiment examining fungal pathogenesis, tumorigenesis and immune effects in space that flew aboard Space Shuttle STS-121 in July 2006. Her work using fruit flies to model human illness and space radiation effects earned her NASA Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal in 2018, and she has served as a subject matter expert for the United States Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation.