If you haven’t heard about Shawna Pandya yet, you should! She is a remarkable person for a number of reasons. She wears several hats and she has an Indian connection as well. Here is all that you wanted to know about Shawna Pandya and all the reasons that make her story quite remarkable:
Shawna Pandya is 32 and she is going into space. She was obsessed with astronomy since childhood and always wanted to do something really adventurous; and she is going in to space as it turned out!
She is one of two people who made it out of 3200 aspirants for the Citizen Science Astronaut Programme. She will be going into space with 8 other people next year. She was trained at Project PoSSUM's (Polar Suborbital Science in the Upper Mesosphere) far-out Scientist-Astronaut Course at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in US.
Shawna was born in Canada but is of Indian origin. She has her roots in Mumbai. Her achievement makes her the third woman with an Indian background to make it into space. Kalpana Chawla and Sunita Williams are the other women who have achieved this before.
She loves space travel but loves medicine too. She is a neurosurgeon and is also a guest lecturer, who teaches a course for technology and the future of medicine in the University of Alberta. She works as a general physician at the Alberta University Hospital.
She has caught the attention of Indian media as well as attention of netizens on social media because she is currently visiting family in Mahalaxmi in Mumbai. She is also engaged in giving motivational talks to students and resident doctors while she is in the country.
"If you prioritise your passions and commitments, it’s wonderful how much you can achieve," said the young achiever.
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