All You Need To Know About Shawna Pandya

Shawna Pandya, 32-year-old, is neither an opera singer, nor a neurosurgeon, and has her medical license in general practice.

After Kalpana Chawla and Sunita Williams, another Indian-origin woman who was in limelight for her space mission denied all the rumours. Shawna Pandya, 32-year-old woman was not shortlisted by NASA for its 2018 space mission under the Citizen Science Astronaut (CSA) programme.

Early life:

Born in Canada but has roots in Mumbai, where her grandmother currently lives in Mahalaxmi area. As a kid she always loved space and stars. She became obsessed with astronomy. All her projects were related to space. She wanted to be astronaut but she loved medicine as well.

Introducing Shawna Pandya:

Shawna is a talented author, a general physician, an international Taekwondo champion and has trained in Muay Thai with a Navy SEAL. She is also fluent in Spanish, Russian and French languages.

Her mission:

Her work is separate from the work of the Canadian Space Agency and that of NASA. She has been previously interned at NASA-Johnson Space Center, and have no current affiliation with either organization. She is currently involved with Project Possum and the PHEnom project.

One adventure after another:

Pandya previously served as co-founder of CiviGuard, Inc., a Silicon Valley start-up based at NASA-Ames and incubated by Singularity University.

Awards and nominations:

Her awards include being named a finalist for the 2009 ASTech "Leader of Tomorrow" award for leadership and innovation in science, technology and entrepreneurship, Rhodes scholarship provincial finalist, two-time Peter Lougheed scholar and Canadian Millennium Scholarship Foundation National Laureate.