▲ 584 r/IndianAcademia
Jaykumar Vaidya grew up in an 8×10-ft room in Mumbai’s Kurla slum, where even a simple meal could be a struggle.
His school once held back his results because his mother couldn’t pay the fees. Today, he works at NASA.
His mother did odd jobs to keep them going.
He repaired TVs for ₹4,000 a month.
He taught students to fund his education.
But poverty never convinced him to think small.
Jaykumar went on to study electrical engineering, win 3 national and 4 state-level robotics awards, and work as a researcher at TIFR.
His research eventually took him to the University of Virginia and then to NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.
Today, he works on scientific instruments that help researchers study Mars, the Moon and Earth’s upper atmosphere.
u/BackwaterNomad — 10 days ago