George Thomas Whitesides (born March 3, 1974)[1] is an American politician and businessman currently serving as the U.S. representative from California's 27th congressional district.

[5] He later earned an MPhil in Geographical Information Systems and Remote Sensing from King's College, Cambridge,[4] and was also a Fulbright Scholar in Tunisia.

[1] Whitesides was the Chairman of the Reusable Launch Vehicle Working Group of COMSTAC, the advisory committee for the FAA's Commercial Space Transportation Division.

In July 2021, as co-founder and project lead of the SciAccess Initiative's Mission: AstroAccess, Whitesides opened applications for people with disabilities to partake in a ZERO-G parabolic flight; on December 15, 2022, its first formal research parabolic flight was flown, with 14 disability ambassadors from 5 countries in the mission.

[15] On February 22, 2023, Whitesides announced he was running for California's 27th congressional district in the 2024 election as a Democrat, challenging incumbent Republican congressman Mike Garcia.