Kalpana Chawla was born in Karnal, India, and moved to the US for graduate school, earning a PhD in aerospace engineering before joining NASA in 1994. In 1997, she became the first woman of Indian origin to reach orbit. She tragically died at age forty when the Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated during reentry over Texas on February 1, 2003. Following her death, India named a satellite in her honor.

Sunita Williams was born in Ohio to a Gujarati immigrant father and a Slovenian mother. She graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy and worked as a test pilot before NASA selected her in 1998. During her 2006 International Space Station mission, she set a record for the most spacewalk time by a woman. In 2024, she returned to the ISS aboard Boeing's Starliner for an extended nine-month mission, and returned in 2025.

Sirisha Bandla was born in Andhra Pradesh, India, and raised partly in Houston, Texas. She studied aeronautical engineering at Purdue University and built a career in commercial spaceflight, eventually serving as Vice President of Government Affairs at Virgin Galactic. On July 11, 2021, she flew on Richard Branson's inaugural crewed spaceflight aboard VSS Unity. This flight made her the third woman of Indian origin to reach space.

Raja Chari grew up in Iowa, the son of an Indian immigrant father. He graduated from the U.S. Air Force Academy, earned a master's degree from MIT, and flew sixty combat missions before NASA selected him as an astronaut in 2017. In November 2021, he commanded the multinational SpaceX Crew-3 mission to the International Space Station. He became the first Indian American to command an ISS mission, spending 176 days in orbit before returning in May 2022.

Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, a pioneering astrophysicist at University of Chicago, transformed modern theoretical astronomy through groundbreaking work on stellar structure, stellar evolution, and radiative transfer. His calculation of the Chandrasekhar Limit, the maximum mass of a stable white dwarf star, became a cornerstone of astrophysics. Over a career spanning decades in the United States, he helped shape the field through both research and mentorship, while also serving as editor of the Astrophysical Journal for nearly twenty years. His contributions established him as one of the most influential scientists of the twentieth century.

C. Kumar Patel is a physicist and engineer best known for inventing the carbon dioxide (CO₂) laser, one of the most important laser technologies ever developed. While at Bell Labs, he created a high-power laser that transformed industrial manufacturing, materials processing, and medical procedures. The technology became widely adopted around the world for cutting, welding, and precision applications. Patel later served as Vice Chancellor for Research at University of California, Los Angeles and held dozens of patents, leaving a lasting impact on both scientific research and technological innovation.

Narinder Singh Kapany was a physicist, entrepreneur, and pioneer of fiber optics whose research helped create the foundations of modern telecommunications. After demonstrating the transmission of light through glass fibers, he brought the technology from the laboratory to the marketplace, founding companies in Silicon Valley and helping establish fiber optics as a commercial industry. He authored the first book on the subject and held more than 100 patents. Often called the “Father of Fiber Optics,” Kapany’s work laid the groundwork for the high-speed communications networks that power the modern internet age.

Har Gobind Khorana was a biochemist whose research helped establish the foundations of modern molecular biology and biotechnology. Working at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and later at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he helped decipher how genetic information encoded in nucleic acids directs the production of proteins. He pioneered techniques for the chemical synthesis of oligonucleotides and artificial genes, methods that became essential tools in genetics and biotechnology. Awarded the Nobel Prize in 1968, Khorana's work continues to underpin genetic research, sequencing, diagnostics, and therapeutic development.

B. Jayant Baliga is an electrical engineer best known for inventing the Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistor (IGBT), one of the most widely used power semiconductor devices in the world. While working at General Electric and later at North Carolina State University, he developed and helped commercialize technologies that revolutionized power electronics. The IGBT enabled more efficient control of electrical power in applications ranging from industrial equipment to transportation and renewable energy systems. Baliga holds more than 100 patents and is widely regarded as a pioneer in modern power semiconductor technology.