Overview
Rajiv Thummala graduated summa cum laude and Phi Kappa Phi from the Schreyer Honors College at Pennsylvania State University, earning both his Master of Science and Bachelor of Science degrees in cybersecurity within 8 semesters. At Penn State, Rajiv was named a distinguished student and awarded the NASA Space Grant Consortium Scholarship for the state of Pennsylvania for his research on quantum key distribution for space systems. He was also selected for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) HS-POWER Program, where he conducted aerospace security research under the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education to advance the mission objectives of the DHS.
After graduating, Rajiv worked for the government before joining the Aerospace Adversary Laboratory under advisory of professor Dr. Gregory Falco as a Ph.D. student in Aerospace Engineering to conduct research in space security and space domain awareness. His research focuses on exploitable vulnerabilities in space vehicles, anti-satellite systems, and next-gen space-based surveillance capabilities. Rajiv’s graduate work is funded by Sandia National Laboratories, and he is a member of the Space ISAC, AIAA, and IEEE Standards. In the Spring of 2024, he was presented with a certificate of excellence from the Space Generation Advisory Council in support of the United Nations Program on Space Applications.