Dr. Ved Chirayath is the Vetlesen Endowed Chair of Earth Sciences and director of the Aircraft Center for Earth Studies at the University of Miami. He is also a National Geographic Explorer, a 2024 Moore Inventor Fellow, and the founder and former director of the Laboratory for Advanced Sensing at NASA's Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley. Chirayath’s research focuses on inventing, developing and testing next-generation sensing technologies for observing the natural world. Chirayath invented NASA MiDAR, Fluid Lensing and NeMO-Net, among other technologies. After five years studying theoretical physics at Moscow State University in Russia, Chirayath received his BSc, MSc, and Ph.D. in Physics, Astrophysics, and Aeronautics and Astronautics from Stanford University. He was one of 30 finalists for the NASA Astronaut Program.

Photo by Rebecca Hale