Zara Mirmalek is a Senior Fellow with the Program on Science, Technology and Society at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, and a Research Scientist with the Bay Area Environmental Research Institute at NASA Ames Research Center. MIT Press recently published her book, Making Time on Mars, an examination of how the daily work of NASA’s Mars Exploration Rovers was organized across three sites on two planets using local Mars time. Her research focuses on culture, work, and human-technology relationships. She is interested in knowledge production in and of extreme environments, where not only natural but also societal and institutional features shape human access. Her research includes ethnographic fieldwork among multi-disciplinary workgroups working with remotely-operated robots on Mars (NASA’s Mars Exploration Rovers mission), with tethered robots in the deep ocean, with autonomous robots in an ocean front, and for NASA analog projects (BASALT, SUBSEA).

Zara received a PhD in Communication and Science Studies from the University of California San Diego and an MPA in Public Administration, with a minor in Public Policy, from the California State University East Bay.