2023 ANS WINTER CONFERENCE AND EXPO

Bhavya Lal, Ph.D.

Former NASA Associate Administrator for Technology, Policy, and Strategy

Bhavya Lal is the former Associate Administrator for technology, policy, and strategy within the office of the NASA Administrator, and responsible for providing evidence-driven advice to NASA leadership on internal and external policy issues, strategic planning, and technology investments. She created and provided executive leadership and direction to the Office of Technology, Policy, and Strategy (OTPS) within the Office of The NASA Administrator. Lal also simultaneously served as the acting Chief Technologist of NASA, and was the first woman to hold the position in NASA’s history.

Prior to her Associate Administrator role and in the first 100 days of the Biden Administration, Lal was the acting Chief of Staff at NASA and directed the agency’s transition under the administration of President Biden. Before arriving at NASA, she was a member of the Presidential Transition Agency Review Teams for both NASA and the Department of Defense. For 15 years prior to that, Dr. Lal led strategy, technology assessment, and policy studies and analyses at the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA) Science and Technology Policy Institute (STPI) for the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), the National Space Council, NASA, Department of Defense, and other federal departments and agencies. Before coming to IDA, Lal was Director of the Center for Science and Technology Policy Studies at Abt Associates, a global policy research and consulting firm based in Cambridge, MA.

Dr. Lal is an active member of the space technology and policy community, having chaired, co-chaired, or served on six high-impact National Academy of Sciences (NAS) ad hoc committees. She served two consecutive terms on the NOAA Federal Advisory Committee on Commercial Remote Sensing (ACCRES), was an External Council Member of the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Program, and was selected to join the NASA Technology, Innovation and Engineering Advisory Committee (NAC/TIE). She co-founded and co-chaired the policy track of the American Nuclear Society’s annual conference on Nuclear and Emerging Technologies in Space (NETS), and co-organized a seminar series on space history and policy with the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. She guest lectures at universities across the country including MIT, Georgetown University, Arizona State and others, and has testified multiple times to Congress and the National Space Council. Dr. Lal’s analyses have been at the center of almost all space-relevant policies for the last decade. For her outstanding contributions to the development of astronautics, she was nominated and selected to be a Member “Academician” of the International Academy of Astronautics, as well as inducted into the YWCA’s Academy of Women Achievers.

Dr. Lal holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in nuclear engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), a second master’s from MIT’s Technology and Policy Program, and a Ph.D. in Public Policy and Public Administration from George Washington University. She is a member of both the nuclear engineering and public policy and public administration honor societies, and has published more than 50 papers in peer-reviewed journals and conference proceedings.