Mohini & Piyush - NASA/JPL & MOXIE

S2/EP4 - In this special episode, Indian Genes speaks exclusively to Mohini Jodhpurkar & 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, 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, Mohini 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.