Asha Balakrishnan is the Director of the Science and Technology Policy Institute, an IDA-managed federally funded research and development center. She leads a team of researchers providing analysis on national and international science and technology issues for the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health, among others. Asha’s experience is in space policy, research and development evaluation and STEM education.
Since joining IDA in 2007 as a Research Staff Member, Asha has supported the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy across five presidential administrations. She has held leadership roles in STPI since 2021, most recently serving as STPI’s Deputy Director.
At STPI, Asha has conducted policy research on space policy topics such as orbital debris mitigation, space weather, space situational awareness and global trends in space. She also led numerous evaluations and assessments for federal sponsors across a broad range of topics critical to the science and technology enterprise.
Beyond her work at IDA, Asha has served as an adjunct professor at George Washington University and as an American Society of Mechanical Engineering Congressional Fellow on the House Science Committee’s Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics.
Asha holds a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She also holds both a master’s degree and doctorate in mechanical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Prior to her doctoral studies, Balakrishnan worked in industry as a design engineer.