For Lujendra Ojha, curiosity has always come first

Dr Lujendra Ojha was 15 when he left Nepal for the United States. He arrived with little idea that the short trip would change the course of his life.

Raised in the narrow lanes of Kathmandu, with family roots in Doti in far-western Nepal, Ojha had grown up interested in music, theatre, mathematics and science. In the years that followed, that curiosity would take him into planetary science and eventually to research on Mars that attracted global attention.