Nivedita Mahesh was born and brought up in Coimbatore, India. She received her first research opportunity at Raman Research Institute while pursuing her Bachelor’s in Instrumentation engineering at PSG Tech. At RRI she learned the possibilities of using her engineering skills to solve unanswered questions in Astrophysics. There was no looking back from there. She landed a control engineer job at ABB right after undergrad but quickly quit it for a research position back at RRI. She built the first-ever space beam splitter to study our early universe.

She then went on to obtain a PhD in Astrophysics working with Prof. Judd Bowman at Arizona State University specializing in early Universe Cosmology and Radio Astronomy Instrumentation. Nivedita won the NASA FINESST fellowship – her proposal was one among the 26 nationally funded projects that add about 188 entries. After successfully completing her PhD, she joined the Radio astronomy group at CalTech with the prestigious David and Ellen Lee Prize fellowship.

She enjoys science communication, often giving science public talks at various locations and schools around both in the USA and India. She has designed numerous hands activities and workshops in astronomy and math for students of various ages.