Careers

Early Life

Trần Thanh Vân was born in 1936 in Quảng Bình, Vietnam. He went to high school in the royal city of Huế. In 1953, he moved to France to study Mathematics and Physics at the Université de Paris. He completed his PhD there in 1963. His research focused on the neutron. A neutron is a small particle inside atoms.

Early Life

Rose Wanjiku Njogu-Mwangi grew up in Nairobi, Kenya. She liked science at school. She also liked solving problems. She later moved to the United States. She studied at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Florida. She earned a degree in Aerospace Engineering. She then earned a Master’s degree in Aeronautics. 

While at university, Rose joined student groups. She worked with the National Society of Black Engineers. She helped encourage other students. She finished her studies in 2017. 

Early Life

Beza Tesfaye Zewdie grew up in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia. She liked science from a young age. She was curious about space. She often listened to radio shows about space. 

She studied International Relations at university. She later got a Master’s degree. Her studies focused on space policy and space diplomacy. This means learning how countries make rules about space. 

Beza also studied Computer Science. This helped her to understand technology and data. 

Early Life

Edward Makuka Nkoloso was born in 1919 in what was Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia). He was a soldier during World War II and later worked as a teacher and translator for the government. He did not like how the British ruled his country, so he joined a movement that fought for Zambia's freedom. He even got arrested for it!  

After Zambia gained independence, Nkoloso became very active in politics and science. In 1960, he began the Zambia National Academy of Science, Space Research and Philosophy.    

Early Life

Matthew Adepoju was born in Nigeria. He enjoyed learning and solving problems from a young age. He went to Yaba College of Technology. He later continued his studies at Lagos State University. 

Then, he moved to the United Kingdom (UK) to study further. In the UK, he earned a master's degree in Geographical Information Science at the University of Nottingham. 

Early Life

Bea Gallardo-Lacourt was born in Santiago, Chile. She grew up in a busy city and loved science from a young age. She liked to ask questions about how the world worked. 

When she was in secondary school, she spent her free time in a physics lab at the University of Santiago. She also went to a physics summer school at the University of Chile. These experiences helped her learn how real science is done. 

Early Life 

Koppillil was born in 1949 in Kerala, India. He grew up in a small coastal town and liked science and maths from a young age. He also enjoyed music and dance with his family supporting these interests. 

Early Life

Bambang Hidayat was born in 1934 in Kudus, Indonesia. He was the oldest of 8 children. He loved the night sky from a young age. He liked to look at stars. He wondered what "shooting stars" were. A book about solar eclipses made him love space even more. 

Early Life

Padma grew up in India. She loved space and science even as a child. She'd look at the night sky with her parents, and her dad would tell her stories about the stars they could see. Padma wondered what other cultures might say about those same stars. Would their stories be different to the ones she heard? It made her curious about the sky above.

Early Life

Mazlan Othman was born in Malaysia in 1951. She was very good at maths in school. This led her down a science path. She was set on doing physics. Othman earned her PhD at the University of Otago in astrophysics in 1981. She was the first woman to do this since it was founded in 1869.

Career Highlights

Othman joined the Prime Minister's Department in 1990. She set up and was head of the planetarium division. This then became the space science division in 1993. She became a professor of astrophysics at UKM in 1994.