Minduli’s star is shining bright
View(s):Just 26, and working on clearing space debris, Minduli Wijayatunga is on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list
By Yomal Senerath-Yapa
Minduli Wijayatunga wanted to be a space scientist since she was four. With her first telescope which she was gifted at ten, she would spy on the skies from the balcony and today, the 26-year-old is on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list, in the demanding ‘science’ category no less…
Every year the American business magazine Forbes comes out with a list of 30 influential people under age 30 under six categories, and Minduli made the mark with flying colours being today an Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, working on clearing space debris and building algorithms for next generation spacecraft…
How did this girl from Battaramulla attain such dizzy heights all on top of working at NASA – her dream job – before turning 25?
It was all in the stars. Minduli was propelled by a loving father who, though a busy eye surgeon in Colombo, always tucked his youngest to bed by reading to her a passage from a children’s encyclopaedia or a similar read – something that would fill little Minduli’s mind with wonder. It was a tome on the ‘universe’ that she often wanted repeated and even translated into Sinhala.
An old girl of Musaeus, Devi Balika and Stafford International, after ‘A’ levels at 16 Minduli entered university at Sydney and completed her Bachelor’s in Aerospace Engineering. While stepping out from a cosseted home as a 16-year-old girl to Australia was a big move, it was something Minduli managed with characteristic cool.
On her first day interning at the JPL, NASA: Minduli with the replica of the Perseverance rover
From then on, the anticipated move was to the USA. Minduli managed to get to NASA soon after graduating, with a 10,000 US Dollar Amelia Earhart Fellowship, NASA being where she “always wanted to be”. There she spent four months she hugely enjoyed.
One of Minduli’s core concerns today is clearing space debris (human-made objects in the orbit like satellites, no longer serving a purpose) which she says is a major problem with some 800 metric tonnes being out there in space.
Being the child of two doctors (her brother is a software engineer and her sister, a psychologist), Minduli always wanted to do a job with a service aspect and benefit society, so debris-clearance seemed a worthy problem to solve with her skill-set.
Space debris, Minduli says, is a costly problem especially given the amount of money and work humans have to spend on collision-avoidance of spacecraft.
Most of her work is in aerodynamics and trajectory generation and guidance, which means designing spacecraft that can move on their own without human intervention, making autonomous decisions. This, says Minduli, is very important given that there are so many spacecraft out there and humans cannot, 24/7, intervene for all their movements.
While making it to the vertiginous 30 Under 30 list is a feat indeed, it is not what Minduli considers her main achievement. To her it is the chance to be a teacher in such an environment that is truly exhilarating.
Currently Minduli is building her research group and she wants to build a lab that would “significantly contribute” to debris removal work and space missions. She says she has grown to love teaching, which she sees as a huge responsibility but also exciting as she gets to design the structure of the course and assignments. “The ability to determine what I teach and how I teach is exciting.”
As for the future, Minduli envisages a better-managed and regulated space environment.
In terms of personal ambitions, she hopes to go on being an academic as long as possible, “a good mentor” and “have collaborations with Sri Lanka – Sri Lankan students and universities”- something she missed having left the island at a tender age.
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