Bhavya Lal serves as the Associate Administrator for NASA's Office of Technology, Policy, and Strategy (OTPS). The office was established to provide data- and evidence-driven technology, policy, and strategy advice to NASA leadership. She was previously Senior Advisor for Budget and Finance to the NASA Administrator at NASA. In the first 100 days of the Biden Administration, she was the Acting Chief of Staff at NASA. As part of her assignment as the senior most White House appointee at NASA, she oversaw the agency’s transition under the administration of President Biden. Before that, she had served as a member of the Presidential Transition Agency Review Teams for both NASA and the Department of Defense. Before coming to NASA, Dr. Lal led strategy, technology assessment, and policy studies and analyses at the IDA Science and Technology Policy Institute (STPI) for the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), the National Space Council, and other Federal space-oriented organizations.

Dr. Lal is an active member of the space technology and policy community, having chaired, co-chaired or served on five high-impact National Academy of Science (NAS) committees. She currently serves on the Isotope Science and Engineering Advisory Board of DOE’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory. 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 the NASA Technology, Innovation and Engineering Advisory Committee (NAC)..

Dr. Lal holds B.S. and M.S. degrees in nuclear engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), a second M.S. from MIT’s Technology and Policy Program, and a Ph.D. in Public Policy and Public Administration from George Washington University

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/bhavya-lal-senior-advisor-for-budget-and-finance/