Dr. Shyam Bhaskaran has been with the Navigation and Mission Design Section at JPL for 11 years. He started his career as an orbit determination specialist on the Galileo mission. Since then, he has served as a member of the navigation team for several missions, including Deep Space 1, and Mars Odyssey, and as the navigation lead for the European Mars Express and JPL's MRO missions. He is the one of the principal architects of the autonomous navigation system used on Deep Space 1, and is currently a navigator and member of the imaging science team for the STARDUST mission. He is presently also the Mission Management Office Team Chief for Guidance, Navigation and Control.

Dr. Bhaskaran received a B.S. and M.S. from the University of Texas at Austin, and a Ph.D from the University of Colorado in 1991.