Mahmooda Sultana


Mahmooda Sultana is a Bangladeshi American scientist working for NASA at Goddard Space Flight Center leading a team which won a $2 million technology development award for a nanomaterial-based detector platform in 2019, Sultana became a NASA research engineer in 2010. She received her PhD in chemical engineering in 2010 from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and BSc in chemical engineering and mathematics from University of Southern California with Summa Cum Laude. She joined NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in 2010. She has led the development of graphene-based detectors at NASA Goddard. Her research interests include graphene, nanomaterials, micro-electro-mechanical systems devices, and sensors.

Early life and education

Mahmooda Sultana was born to Golam Zakaria and Meherun Nesa in Rajshahi, Bangladesh. She went to elementary school in Rajshahi and middle school in Rangpur. She migrated to California with her family as a teen at the end of middle school. She went to La Mirada High School in California. Sultana's groundbreaking work on nano-materials and processes
to make detectors and device that could have revolutionary uses in space. She has expanded her research interests into quantum dots and 3D printing.

Awards

She has received numerous awards for her work, including NASA GSFC Innovator of the Year Award, Robert H Goddard Award for technology development work, Group Achievement Award for James Webb Telescope, NASA Early Career Achievement Medal, Internal Research and Development New Achiever Medal, Bell Laboratories Graduate Research Fellowship, NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, and WmC and Margaret H. Rousseau Fellowship at MIT.