Software Engineer
X

Sameera Ponda is an aerospace engineer working on Project Loon at X. She's the task lead for the Planning, Simulation and Control software team, developing algorithms for balloon navigation, estimating balloon health and simulating trajectories. Prior to Google, she received her B.S. in Aerospace Engineering from MIT in 2004. After graduating she worked full-time at Draper Laboratory as a simulation engineer until 2006, and later pursued a Draper Fellowship to receive her M.S. in Aerospace Engineering at MIT in 2008. She then joined the MIT Aerospace Controls Lab where she worked with Prof. Jonathan How on distributed multi-agent planning for teams of unmanned agents, and received her Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering from MIT in 2012. During her graduate time at MIT she also helped co-found the Women's Graduate Association of Aeronautics and Astronautics, a group dedicated to building community between women in aerospace engineering, fostering relationships, mentoring and STEM education.