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About

Zara Mirmalek is a sociologist and ethnographer whose work sits at the intersection of human-computer interaction, organizational studies, and extreme environments. Her primary research areas include the social organization of work in remote and distributed teams, human-robot collaboration, and the coordination of scientific work across planetary distances. Mirmalek is best known for her groundbreaking study of NASA's Mars Exploration Rovers mission, detailed in her book *Making Time on Mars* (2020, 28 citations), where she examined how scientists and engineers coordinated work across two planets using "Mars time." This work revealed the profound social and temporal challenges of interplanetary collaboration. She has also made significant contributions to ocean science, leading field experiments in coordinated multi-robot ocean exploration (2018, 12 citations; 2021, 9 citations) and advancing remote science operations with remotely operated vehicles (2024, 4 citations). Her research has been supported by the Schmidt Ocean Institute and NASA, and she is recognized for pioneering ethnographic methods in space and deep-sea environments. With over 60 citations across her most-cited works, Mirmalek's scholarship offers vital insights into how humans and robots can work together in the most remote and challenging settings on Earth and beyond.