Goutam Konapala works for the US space agency NASA. His success story is inspiring because of the efforts and dedication he put into making a career for himself. Hailing from an unknown village in South India, his journey to rise above all the obstacles to become successful and make everyone proud is worth a read. Goutam cracked admission into India’s most prestigious institute, the IIT, considered one of the most difficult examinations in the country.
Goutam comes from a village near Srikakulam city in Andhra Pradesh. He got a BTech degree in civil engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bhubaneswar. He started his career by working as a management consultant at a Big Four firm in Kolkata. He left the job after working for a year and joined IIT Bombay where he pursued his post-graduation. He got his master’s degree in water resources engineering and then, he went on to a Ph.D. in hydrology from Clemson University in South Carolina, US.
As a scientist, his first job was with a postdoc at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, US. He joined the Environmental Sciences Division which eventually brought him closer to NASA and made him join the space agency in 2020. At NASA, he is tasked with computational research on Earth’s water cycle. He carries out the research with NASA Goddard Space Flight Center’s Biospheric Sciences Laboratory and the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.
Goutam Konapala, despite coming from a background where there were no facilities, is working around the clock and achieving success step by step. For his work on machine learning-based modelling of Earth’s water cycle, Goutam is using the Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS) of NASA. His roles and responsibilities include flood water mapping and snow retrieval. In addition to that, he has also been assigned the responsibility of sharing hydrologic knowledge with governments, scientists, and the public. Konapala says that Sujay Kumar of NASA Goddard, another Indian-origin scientist, is his inspiration and he is following in his footsteps to become a successful scientist.