One step at a time: Chinmayee Govinda Raj, Ph.D., brings interdisciplinary expertise to NASA Artemis II
Chinmayee Govinda Raj, Ph.D., is a NASA Postdoctoral Fellow who conducts research for the Lunar Explorer Instrument for Space Biology Applications, or LEIA Project, at the NASA Ames Research Center. The LEIA Project will send microbes to the southern hemisphere of the moon on the upcoming Artemis II mission. Further Together host Michael Holtz talks to Govinda Raj about her fellowship, and the fact that she is an outlier in her family. She says everyone in her family is an artist of some kind, and she wanted a change of pace. She knew from an early age that she wanted to work for NASA, but suffered from imposter syndrome. Still she took her journey one step at a time to get where she is today. Listen to the conversation to learn more.
Center: Ames Research Center
Science may not be in Chinmayee Govinda Raj’s, Ph.D., DNA, according to her, but pursuing the field of engineering has brought her all the way to the NASA Postdoctoral Program (NPP).
“Everyone in my family is an artist of some kind,” she explained in a recent interview for Further Together, the ORAU Podcast. “My mother is a musician. My dad is a therapist, and my extended family is into dance, drama—you name it, and they're into that kind of artistic career. I think I wanted a slight change of pace, and that’s why I got into space science. I got into tiny engineering projects in the garage. I think I was eight when I decided I wanted to work at NASA.”
Govinda Raj conducts research for the Lunar Explorer Instrument for Space Biology Applications, or LEIA Project, at the NASA Ames Research Center. The LEIA Project will send microbes to the southern hemisphere of the moon on the upcoming Artemis II mission.
“We will be looking at the microbial response to the lunar gravity, which is very different from what it is on earth,” explained Govinda Raj. “Lunar radiation is also different from what it is on earth. So those are the changes that the microbes will have to adapt to, and we're trying to see how those adaptations happen. We are trying to see how the microbial growth changes when it is in a completely different atmosphere.”
The goal of studying these microbes is for Govinda Raj and her fellow researchers to eventually apply their findings to humans.
“NASA likes to do it one step at a time,” she said. “We want to send humans to space. We want them to survive there. We want them to have a habitation zone there. But humans are complex organisms. We're multicellular and we're very complex biologically. Sending a human and trying to understand these environmental stresses on humans is a much more complex task than doing it on single cellular organisms. We use yeast microbes, which are commonly used as model microbes for humans.”
Like NASA, Govinda Raj has also spent her life moving forward one step at a time. Even though she knew from a young age that she wanted to work for NASA, she sometimes faced imposter syndrome.
“There was a little bit of self-doubt every now and then because electronics and instrumentation is not a widely known field in India,” she explained. “It was a little bit of a daring move on my part that I rejected everything else and went into one singular path hoping that everything else will fall into place. There are times when I felt like ‘I am working so hard, I am doing so many things, I'm meeting so many people, I'm getting advice from so many people, but is this all going to work out?’ But I still chugged along. I just kept at it and hoped and prayed and did everything to make it work. So many proposals weren’t accepted. But you still keep at it and make the best of what comes your way. I think that has kept me afloat.”
After completing her undergraduate degree in instrumentation, Govinda Raj went on to earn her master’s degree in biomedical engineering, then her doctorate in chemistry.
“I had two pathways in front of me,” she said. “I could stick to engineering, organic to biology, but instead I did a chemistry Ph.D. I did my Ph.D. in analytical chemistry and space instrumentation. Those different pieces fit together perfectly at NASA, because that kind of interdisciplinary expertise is highly valued.”
Govinda Raj explained that, as the only engineer on her team, her expertise in that area is invaluable to her fellow researchers.
“I'm that bridge that understands both those languages,” she said. “I'm that bridge that is making sure that everybody is on the same page. That branching out that I took every now and then with every institution I went into helped me. It did not hinder me or my progress in any way.”
The steppingstones that led Govinda Raj to the NPP stretch back to the days when she was eight years old, tinkering with projects in the garage. Her footing may not have always been sure, but her dreams have taken her from that garage to the moon.