Varsha Jain

Varsha Jain is a British physician known as a "space gynaecologist". She has studied at universities in the UK but with an interest in space medicine. She is a clinical doctor also researching women's health at the University of Edinburgh.

Life Jain says that she was first inspired to become a doctor after seeing the fictional Dr. Beverly Crusher in Star Trek whilst watching it with her brothers in the Birmingham area.

Her interest was inspired whilst attending the UK Space Biomedicine Conference in 2004. In 2006, she graduated from University College London with a BSc focusing on medicine is extreme environments. She graduated from Imperial College London with her medical degree in 2008. During her medical school training, in 2007, whilst she was studying at Imperial College, she got the chance to study for seven weeks at the NASA Johnson Space Center. She knew that she did not want to be a normal physician and this was an opportunity to work at NASA. She worked with the neuroscience research team at NASA Johnson Space Center research the balance recovery after first time astronauts went into space. Four years later, she completed a master's degree at King's College London. In 2019, she awarded a Wellbeing of Women clinical research training fellowship and with this she moved to Scotland to works as a researcher at the University of Edinburgh. Her research concerns endometrial phenotype in women with Abnormal Uterine Bleeding to understand why wiomen suffer from heavy periods.

Jain's interest in the health of women in space is unusual for a doctor working in academia. She has been consulted on her knowledge of how women astronauts deal with toilets, menstruation and the risk to the eggs that they carry. It is noted that the average age for a female astronaut to have her first baby is between 38 - 41. Jain was asked if she would go into space and she welcomed a short trip but feared the damage done to those who were in space for some time.