Fourty six-year-old Thomas, a missile scientist with the DRDO and associated with the Agni project for the past two decades, will work under overall Agni programme director Avinash Chander, sources said.
She had played a crucial role in the successful firing of the 3,500-km range Agni III as an associate project director.
Agni V is slated for tests sometime next year. The tests will propel India into an elite club of five nations with Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) capability. Thomas, also the project director of the new, advanced version of the 2,500-km Agni II missile since last year, joined the DRDO in 1988 and was assigned to the Agni project by former president A P J Abdul Kalam.
The B Tech graduate from Thrissur Engineering College did her Master’s from the Defence Institute of Advanced Technologies, Pune.
An expert in ‘solid propellants’, which fuels Agni missiles, she is based at the Advanced Systems Laboratory in Hyderabad.