Dr. Amitabha Ghosh is a Space Scientist working on NASA Mars Missions since 1997. He served as a Chair of the Science Operation Group for the Mars Exploration Rover Mission since 2009. The Operation team is in charge of the health and all activities of the two rovers on Mars. The rovers represent ~$1 billion of strategic engineering assets on the Red Planet. Dr. Ghosh has also served as the Chief Systems Architect in a private effort to design a spacecraft that will lower the cost of surface exploration of other planets and the Moon by a factor of ten. In 1997, as a member of the Mars Pathfinder Mission, Dr. Ghosh conducted chemical analysis of rocks and soil at the landing site. He analyzed the first-ever Martian rock which was incidentally the first rock analyzed from another planet.

Dr. Ghosh is the recipient of several NASA awards, including a five-time recipient of the NASA Group Achievement Award and a NASA award for ten years of successful rover operations on Mars. Dr. Ghosh’s work has been widely featured in the media worldwide, with >1000 appearances. He has served as a Commentator on the BBC, CGTN China, and TRT World Turkey. He has written a Science Column in the Deccan Herald from 2004 until 2009. Dr. Ghosh was one of the three Indians featured in a documentary titled “India: Brainpower of the World” produced by NHK, the largest TV channel in Japan. He writes and speaks on Technology, Space, Education, and US-India relations on a variety of platforms.

Dr. Ghosh serves on multiple NASA Panels, Committees and Working Groups: tasked with evaluating Spacecraft Missions, Science Research Projects, and Novel Technologies. He was a judge for the induction of novel technologies to the Space Technology Hall of Fame in 2012 and remains actively engaged in the Space Foundation, the largest nonprofit organization in the US Aerospace Sector. Dr. Ghosh is interested in the commercial applications of new technologies. Examples of this include Technology offshoots from NASA missions, Digital Medicine and Digital Education.

Dr. Ghosh completed a BS/MS in Applied Geology in 1993 from IIT Kharagpur, India, and a Ph.D. in Planetary Science in 1997, and an MS in Computer Science in 2003 from the University of Tennessee, USA.