Sumant Jha, PhD

Email:  SJha @ usra.edu

Dr. Sumant Jha is a Scientist, Earth Sciences at the Science and Technology Institute (STI), Universities Space Research Association (USRA), NASA Marshall Space Flight Center. He finished his Ph.D. from Colorado State University in 2019. He has over 20 years of national and international experience in geoscientific and geocomputing research which includes understanding the earth’s tectonic activities which led to the formation of rifts, mountains, and basins, and creating toolboxes and codes for analyzing, modeling, and visualizing geophysical data.

At STI, Dr. Jha provides support to IMPACT with NASA/MSFC and works with satellite and airborne data in an exciting interdisciplinary framework to improve the discoverability, accessibility, and usability of NASA’s Earth science data holdings and meet the data needs of the research community. Dr. Jha is involved with two teams within IMPACT – the Harmonized Landsat Sentinel-2 (HLS) and the Multi-Mission Algorithm and Analysis Platform (MAAP) teams.

Dr. Jha has been an active advocate for inclusion over the last several years and most recently volunteered with Mission AstroAccess for promoting disability inclusion in space exploration by paving the way for disabled astronauts in STEM by launching disabled scientists, veterans, students, athletes, and artists on Lunar, Martian and zero-gravity parabolic flights.