Mumbai boy, who grew up in 8×10 ft room in slum, survived on bread and chai, now works at NASA

Today, Jaykumar Vaidya is an electrical engineer at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. However, unlike most of his peers, his journey towards NASA was not a sweet dream. It did not begin at a fancy classroom but in the slums of Mumbai. According to a Better India report, Vaidya was raised in an 8x10 ft room in Mumbai’s Kurla slum. A Moneycontrol report cited that he faced economic struggles. His mother became the family's only provider after his father abandoned her while she was pregnant. Some even proposed that Jaykumar become a driver because the family was having financial difficulties. To support them, his mother took on odd jobs. For Rs 4,000 a month, he fixed televisions. In order to pay for his education, he taught students. Things took a turn for the worse when his mother, Nalini’s own mother, fell ill, causing her to retire from her clerical job in 2023 as per Better India. He often had to survive on vada pavs, samosas, bread and chai for many days.

However, he was never persuaded to think modestly by poverty.

SciAstra claims that his early interest in science was sparked by television space shows. He later pursued a degree in electrical and computer engineering at the University of Virginia after moving from Mumbai's KJ Somaiya College of Engineering to the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Mumbai to study nanotechnology.


As per Better India, not only did he rise from the ashes, but he also trained his international students to score high in their tests as well. Jaykumar ensured his overseas students received a CGPA of at least 8.5 out of 10, thanks to the prompt assistance from TIFR and Professor Mandar M Deshmukh, a mentor and his "support system". One of his students even achieved a 9.7. The parents of these youngsters complimented him for his mentoring, and in them, Jaykumar found people who he can trust in the US.

In his NASA profile, Vaidya recalls being interested by space travel as a child, notably the Voyager missions and the early Mars rovers.

He claimed that the voyages demonstrated to him how engineering may aid in human exploration and analysis of other worlds. He also described research as being like solving a puzzle – a notion that has continued to drive his approach to science.

His initial job at NASA Goddard involves designing a bespoke atomic layer deposition method for X-ray reflectors. He eventually switched to work involving mass spectrometers and planetary atmospheres.

What Does He Do At NASA Now?

As per his profile, Vaidya serves as a Ground Support Equipment Engineering Lead and Ground Systems Operations Lead in the Planetary Environments Laboratory of the Solar System Exploration Division (SSED) at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC).

His expertise lies in optimising the dynamic sensitivity range of quadrupole mass spectrometers (QMS), enhancing their capability to precisely characterise low-density ion species with high sensitivity while retaining the flexibility to measure mid- and high-density species at optimal sensitivity, ensuring accurate detection of ions of interest across diverse planetary atmospheric regions during flight.

He is now closer to Mars as a result of his labour. According to NASA, Vaidya analyses the detector and filament performance of the Neutral Gas and Ion Mass Spectrometer, or NGIMS, on board MAVEN, NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution project.

Vaidya is far from the only Mumbaikar raised in slums who rose to heights in science. As per a Mid-Day report, in 2017, Pratamesh Hirve, a youth who grew up in the shanties of Powai’s slum and spent innumerable nights burning the midnight oil at his 10x10 ft home, he became the city’s first ever youth to qualify for ISRO.

Their meteoric rise from the slums of Mumbai to securing jobs at apex scientific organisations emphasises the truth of Dr A.P.J. Abdul Kalam’s words: “You have to dream before your dreams can come true."