Indian Genes

Rachana Reddy talks to Indian Genes on the latest in Satellite technology and development with great insight into the Space industry and what the future holds instore. Rachana has some very valuable information for the private sector and also guides students that may be interested in this field, preparing them for what to expect and what would be expected from them as well. This is a great conversation and covers more than just Space....a must listen !

This is the first interview Space Hero has given to any media house in Asia and Indian Genes is really happy to be bringing this to you.If you are a Space enthusiast, an explore or just a curious mind this could be your opportunity to win Televisions biggest Prize..a trip to the International Space Station !!We continue to create history here...at Indian Genes !Space Hero is the new frontier for the entertainment sector, offering the first-ever truly off-planet experience. It aims to reinvent the reality TV category by creating a multi-channel experience that offers the biggest prize ever, to the biggest audience possible. Space Hero is about opening space up to everyone – not only to astronauts and billionaires.Enjoy this informative and motivational conversation with the two founders of Space Hero, Deborah Sass and Thomas Reemer !!

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

Dr. Pandey, Director of India Operations for the 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.

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.

S2/EP3 - Jill Cornell Tarter is an American astronomer best known for her work on the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI).Tarter's astronomical work is illustrated in Carl Sagan's novel Contact. In the film version of Contact, the protagonist Ellie Arroway is played by 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 Symphony of Science music video, "The Poetry of Reality (An Anthem for Science)Tarter is the former director of the Center for SETI Research, holding the Bernard M. Oliver Chair for SETI at the SETI Institute. In 2002, Discover 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 extraterrestrial life. As a graduate student, she was inspired to do SETI research by the Cyclops Report. Stuart Bowyer gave her the report to read when Bowyer discovered that Tarter could program the then-outdated PDP-8/S computer that had been donated by Jack Welch for Bowyer's SETI project at Hat Creek Radio Observatory. She worked with Bowyer on the radio-search project SERENDIP and created the corresponding backronym, "Search for Extraterrestrial Radio Emissions from Nearby Developed Intelligent Populations". She was project scientist for NASA's High Resolution Microwave Survey (HRMS) in 1992 and 1993 and subsequently director of Project Phoenix (HRMS reconfigured) under the auspices of the SETI Institute. She was co-creator with Margaret Turnbull of the HabCat 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

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

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. 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!

Darsh is our Star guest and an Astrophysicist, based in Oxford UK. He talks 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 insights and thoughts as well on the amazing universal puzzles that make for great and engaging listening. He has been a true achiever 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 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 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 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, 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, to understand the early universe and exploring novel mathematical/statistical techniques.Darsh has also been a 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.

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