Aryash Shyam

Explore My Work

Four connected areas define my work: investigating scientific questions, building practical technology, teaching STEM, and communicating discoveries to broad audiences.

UPCOMING EPISODE · November 5, 2026

The Invisible Crew Aboard the Space Station

with Dr. Sarah Wallace · NASA Johnson Space Center

The International Space Station is the cleanest, most carefully engineered spacecraft humans have ever built, yet run a swab across a single handrail, and you are very much not alone. Every crew member, meal, and cargo delivery carries trillions of tiny stowaways: bacteria and fungi that live in the air, water, and on the surfaces of the station. On this episode of Teen Scientist, host Aryash Shyam talks with Dr. Sarah Wallace, a microbiologist at NASA's Johnson Space Center whose team made it possible to sequence DNA in space for the first time, about the invisible ecosystem that travels with astronauts, and why NASA works so hard to keep track of it.



Dr. Wallace explains how NASA moved from 'grow and return' (flying samples all the way back to Earth just to ask what they are) to 'sequence in orbit,' using a candy-bar-sized device called the MinION that reads DNA by threading it through tiny pores. She and Aryash explore why most microbes are not villains, how knowing what is growing on a spacecraft protects both the crew and its water system, and why identifying microbes on board becomes essential on long missions to the Moon and Mars. It gets personal, too: Aryash, a Genes in Space Junior Scientist Award winner, asks what advice she would give students designing biology experiments they hope could one day fly in space.

Space Biology · NASA · DNA Sequencing · ISS · Microbiology · Genes in Space

Latest Episode · OCTOBER 1, 2026

Are You More Than Your Data?

with Dr. Victor Lee · Stanford Graduate School of Education

Your watch says you slept badly. Your phone says your screen time is up. A school app says your grade is slipping, and your feed somehow knows the next thing you'll watch. But how much of 'you' do those numbers really capture? On this episode of Teen Scientist, host Aryash Shyam talks with Dr. Victor Lee, a professor in the Stanford Graduate School of Education, about how data quietly shapes the way we see ourselves, our schools, and the world around us.

Dr. Lee explains why data is never simply 'found' — it is made, through human choices about what to count, what to ignore, and what story a number is supposed to tell. He and Aryash dig into sleep scores, step counts, grades, recommendation feeds, wearable trackers, and the famous 10,000-step goal that began as a marketing slogan, and explain why data literacy — learning to question a number before you trust it — may be one of the most important skills of the AI age.

Data Literacy · AI Literacy · Stanford · Wearables · Algorithms

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