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Noted NASA scientist Dr Hashima Hasan, who is the Program Scientist for NuSTAR, has thanked the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) helping her materialise her dream. According to an official AMU press statement, she thanked the university during the interview to NASA STEM Stars. 

 “The student life at AMU from 1968 to 1973 and the academic credentials gained there helped me attain a prestigious scholarship to further pursue higher studies in Nuclear Science at the University of Oxford,” Hashima said. 

“I worked hard and gave this land all I had, and this great nation paid me back in spades, but it all started at AMU,” she added.

"I was a little girl back then, but the spectacular satellite launch made me eager to follow every success and failure in the newspaper. I clearly remember the day man landed on the moon," she said. The work at NASA is dynamic, challenging and energizing and my journey to become a space scientist began after a post-graduate degree in Nuclear Physics at the Aligarh Muslim University, reminisced Dr Hashima.

She attended Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai for a postdoc and worked at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre in Mumbai before reaching the United States on a US Council Fellowship.

"Later in life, I worked at the Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, writing the simulation software for the optics of the Hubble Space Telescope and its science instruments, using it to analyse the optical error of Hubble after launch," she shared in the interview.

Dr Hashima recalled that as the Optical Telescope Assembly Scientist, it was her job to keep the telescope in the best focus until a fix could be installed.

"Then I was ready to achieve my dream of working directly for NASA. An opportunity arose in 1994 when a job for a Visiting Senior Scientist was advertised. Although it was a two-year job, I found working at NASA Headquarters so exhilarating and rewarding that I stayed on," she said adding that NASA's space science program gives her the opportunity to lead cutting edge science, work with world-class scientists and write research papers on astronomy.