An Indian-origin Physician Dr. Shawna Pandya, currently a resident of Canada has been shortlisted by Nasa for its 2018 space mission under the Citizen Science Astronaut (CSA) program. It is reported that, if everything goes as per plan Dr. Shawna may join the league of Kalpana Chawla and Sunita Williams.
Dr. Shawna,a general physician with Alberta University Hospital was born in Canada. She has her roots in Mumbai, where her grandmother currently lives. Dr. Shawna got selected after securing top score in the CSA programme.
“I’m being trained as a citizen scientist and there are some 120 who would be part of the space mission. The experiments in bio-medicine and medical science along with physiological, health, and environmental observations in Microgravity (PHEnOM) are also part of it. The work is distributed among the participants. I am also in the team working for a project called Polar Suborbital Science in the Upper Mesosphere (PoSSUM), which will study the effects for climate change,” she said.
Dr.Shawna completed her B.Sc. in neuroscience at University of Alberta , followed by MSc in space sciences at International Space University, thereafter, she did her MD in Medicine from University of Alberta, she then later applied for medical school as well as for the space programme at the same time. Dr. Shawna is also an opera singer, an international champion in taekwondo and has also done her training in Muay Thai with a Navy SEAL, according to Bio-data.