Chaitanya Giri is Associate Professor – Environmental Sciences at FLAME University. Chaitanya’s research interests traverse between analytical astrochemistry and planetary science, exploration technologies for applications in the global commons, technostrategy and ethics, space economy, and science diplomacy.
Chaitanya’s Ph.D. thesis, “The Organic Composition of Cometary Nucleus, the COSAC Experiment on Philae,” was one of the crucial scientific investigations of the European Space Agency’s Rosetta mission to comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. As a co-investigator of the Cometary Sampling and Composition Experiment (COSAC) gas chromatography-mass spectrometry payload on Rosetta’s Philae Lander, he was involved in the first ever in situ scientific exploration of any comet. COSAC, on landing identified sixteen molecules native to comet 67P, of which four were never detected before astronomically. For his Ph.D., advised by Prof. Uwe Meierhenrich (University of Nice Sophia Antipolis) and Dr. Fred Goesmann (Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research), he received the prestigious 2014 Dieter Rampacher Prize from the Max Planck Society Germany.
He later moved to the Earth-Life Science Institute at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan, as an ELSI Origins Network (EON) Early-Career Fellow studying astromaterials. During this fellowship, funded by the John Templeton Foundation of the US, Chaitanya traveled as a visiting scientist to the Geophysical Laboratory (now Earth & Planets Laboratory) of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, DC, the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. His work during the fellowship led to the first confirmed detection of naturally-synthesized nanoscale graphene in ~4.5 billion years old meteorites.
Chaitanya transitioned from a laboratory scientist to a strategy analyst when he joined as a Fellow for Space and Ocean Studies at Gateway House, Mumbai. Since 2021, he has been a Space Diplomacy Consultant at the Research and Information System for Developing Countries, an autonomous body of the Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India. He has also consulted the National Security Council Secretariat at the Prime Minister’s Office. He was a committee member of the International Cooperation Review of the Ministry of Science and Technology and the Ministry of Earth Sciences.
He sits on the Advisory Board of the Satcom Industry Association-India; is a Member of the NITI Aayog Committee on Space Economy; a Contributor to the Center for International Governance Innovation, Canada; and is a Nominated Senate Member of the University of Mumbai. He regularly speaks at public fora and teaches at various domestic and international institutions. He takes a keen interest in music, automobiles, and spirituality.
Book
Peer-Reviewed Scientific Publications
Peer-Reviewed Think Tank Publications