Dava Newman, Apollo Program Professor of Astronautics at MIT and a Harvard-MIT Health, Sciences, and Technology faculty member, is one of fifteen eminent scholars participating in the ΦBK Visiting Scholar Program during the 2018-2019 academic year.
As the former Director of MIT’s Technology and Policy Program, Newman led the Institute’s largest multidisciplinary graduate research program. Newman served as NASA Deputy Administrator from May 2015 through January 2017. She was the first female engineer and scientist to serve as NASA Deputy Administrator and focused on articulating the human Journey to Mars, highlighting scientific missions, advocating for transformative aeronautics capabilities, developing and implementing a strategic innovation framework, and advocating for diversity and inclusion for NASA and the nation’s STEM initiatives.
Her research expertise is in aerospace biomedical engineering investigating human performance across the spectrum of gravity, and she is a leader in advanced space suit design, dynamics and control of astronaut motion, leadership development, as well as innovation and space policy.
“To me, the Visiting Scholar Program is invaluable, just like education itself,” Newman said. “I have the opportunity to speak to students, faculty, and the public across the entire United States about my passion for human spaceflight and spaceship Earth. I can’t think of a better way to spend the semester, and I’m looking forward to many profound and detailed discussions on our place in the universe.”
Learn more about this year’s ΦBK Visiting Scholars at www.pbk.org/VisitingScholars.