Meet Columbia

Dr. Columbia Mishra is a Senior Staff Systems Architecture Engineer of Maxar Technologies, Inc. She holds a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from The University of Texas at Austin, and Columbia received her M.S. and Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from Texas Tech and Jadavpur University. During 15 years of industry and research experience, Dr. Mishra has developed a deep knowledge of thermal fluids systems, consumer electronics and spacecraft engineering. Columbia presently works in space and thermal environments designing spacecrafts, specifically NASA’s Artemis Mission to the Moon, which will land the first woman and next man on the Moon and establish a permanent human presence in Lunar orbit. Prior to the space industry, Dr. Mishra worked as a Senior Thermal Engineer and in computational photolithography at Intel Corporation. Throughout her career she has worked in varied capacities in diverse technology sectors, including for Apple Inc. in California, Stress Engineering Services in Texas, Makino Asia in Singapore, and Tata Motors in India.

Dr. Mishra currently serves on the CTO Technology Advisory Council of the Society for the Advancement of Material and Process Engineering (SAMPE). She has served in multiple leadership roles within the heat transfer community including the Technical Program Chair for the American Society of Mechanical Engineer’s 2020 Summer Heat Transfer Conference (SHTC) and topic chairs for the International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition (IMECE). Dr. Mishra’s research has been published in journals such as Nature Materials, Journal of Fluid Mechanics and has been cited over a thousand times. She is a recipient of numerous awards including the 2020 Lakshmi Singh Early Career Leadership Award from the American Society for Mechanical Engineers (ASME) and the Qualcomm Innovation Fellowship. She holds 5 patents pending, 1 granted for her work in thermal architecture and innovation in electronic systems.

Columbia recently became one of ten engineers from across the globe to be selected for ASME’s prestigious Early Career Leadership Program to Serve Engineering (ECLIPSE). She works with members of the U.S. Congress to advocate for technology policies, a continuation of her work as the first international graduate student body President of UT Austin. Columbia received the Cockrell School of Engineering Student Leadership Award for her contributions as the graduate student body president representing 13,000 students to the university administration, UT System Board of Regents, City of Austin, and Texas Legislature. She advocated for graduate student policies at the Texas and United States Legislature. As part of Engineers Without Borders at Texas Tech University, she applied her engineering skills to improve the quality of life for elderly residents of Juarez, Mexico.

A passionate space enthusiast, Columbia is en-route to becoming a trained pilot. Columbia mentors first generation high school students and engages with K-12 community across the country. Dr. Mishra uses her title of Miss Asia California 2021, and Miss India Oregon 2020 to raise awareness about social issues. Full of zest for life, Columbia performs live music online. She lives in Silicon Valley in California, USA and enjoys traveling around the globe.