Bioastronautics Symposium: Genomics in Space

Dr. Michael A. Schmidt is among those leading the advancement of precision medicine in human spaceflight.  His clinical and research work is focused on multi-omics analysis, including the NASA Twins Study of One Year in Space, Inspiration4, Polaris Dawn, Axiom-1, Axiom-2, Axiom-3, and other civilian missions.  His work in functional genomics and functionally characterized molecular networks has been central to his team’s development of the Astronaut Digital Twin (ADT) platform for human spaceflight. Dr. Schmidt’s clinical work in genomics stresses the need to understand gene signatures within the broader context of molecular networks, including transcripts, proteins, metabolites, and others. He has also developed a working pharmacogenomics methodology to personalize drug prescribing for astronauts.

Dr. Schmidt is the CEO and Chief Scientific Officer of Sovaris Aerospace.

Dr. Schmidt is the former President of the Life Sciences and Biomedical Engineering Branch of the Aerospace Medical Association (currently on the Board of Governors) and is a founding member of the Precision Medicine & Pharmacometabolomics Task Group of the Metabolomics Society.  Dr. Schmidt did his Ph.D. research in Molecular Medicine & Biochemistry at NASA Ames Research Center and did a second Ph.D. in Neuroscience at Lancaster University (UK), with additional studies in data and models at MIT.

Christopher Mason, PhD is a Professor of Genomics, Physiology, Biophysics, and Neuroscience at Weill Cornell Medicine and Director of the WorldQuant Initiative for Quantitative Prediction. He completed a dual B.S. in Genetics & Biochemistry at University of Wisconsin-Madison (2001), a Ph.D. in Genetics at Yale University (2006), Clinical Genetics Fellowship at Yale Medical School (2009), and was the Visiting Fellow of Genomics, Ethics, and Law at Yale Law School (2006-2009). His laboratory creates and deploys new technologies and algorithms for medicine, integrative omics, and cell/genome engineering, spanning more than 350 peer-reviewed papers, five patents, five diagnostics tests, ten biotechnology companies, and four non-profits. Dr. Mason also holds affiliate faculty appointments at the New York Genome Center, Yale Law School, and the Consortium for Space Genetics at Harvard Medical School. He is the author of The Next 500 Years: Engineering Life to Reach New Worlds and The Age of Prediction.

Chris Bradburne is a biologist who leads the sequencing and computational biology section in the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory’s (APL) Asymmetric Operations Sector. He has led groundbreaking, large-scale Department of Defense precision medicine and environmental health efforts, including projects in viral genome sequencing standards, genomic disease surveillance, microbiome bioinformatics, and sequencing-based hospital infection control. He was the research pillar lead for the U.S. Air Force’s first precision medicine program, and he has also worked to establish wet lab and bioinformatics approaches employing sequencing for diagnostics in far-forward, low-resource areas. Additionally, he is an adjunct Associate Professor of Genetic Medicine in Johns Hopkins University’s Department of Genetic Medicine, and teaches courses in Systems Biology, Bioinformatics and Computational Biology in the Whiting School of Engineering and the Biomedical Engineering Department. He has had a long interest in automated space-based biological detection, including co-leading NASA-funded efforts to engineer life-detection instrument suites for astrobiology-focused missions with APL’s Space Exploration Sector.