Bio
Ravinder Bhatia of Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) is manager
of diagnostics for US ITER. He also holds the position of manager of major
science and engineering projects at PPPL.
Ravinder has worked on international science and technology
collaborations for over thirty years, in nuclear fusion, astronomy, Earth
observation and oceanography. Previously, he was associate project
manager for the $3 billion Thirty Meter Telescope.
He has also held roles as project systems engineer for the $1.2 billion
Atacama Large Millimeter/subillimeter Array (ALMA) and senior thermal/
cryogenics engineer for the European Space Agency, where he worked
on the Planck Space Telescope. He also supported development of the
MIRI camera for the James Webb Space Telescope, and served as technical
officer for a number of technology research and development contracts
with industry and research laboratories in Europe.
Ravinder served as a panel member for the Decadal Commission in
Astronomy and Astrophysics (2019 – 2021), convened by the National
Academy of Sciences. He was a visiting research fellow at the UK National
Oceanography Centre, supporting instrumentation deployment.
He gained his bachelor’s degree in aeronautics from Imperial College
(1991), his Ph.D. in experimental astrophysics and aerospace engineering
from Queen Mary College (1998), and his master’s degree in international
relations from Cambridge University (2005). He is a senior member of the
American Institute for Aeronautics and Astronautics.