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iversity in STE A M www.diversityinsteam.com

WHAT'S TRENDING

Dana Bolles: A science com- munications expert and previ- ous payload safety engineer at NASA. Through her current role, she is both providing access and resources for science educa- ion as well as continuing to advocate for the importance of inclusion, diversity, equity and accessibility. Mary Cooper: An academic, champion athlete and below- the-knee amputee. She is currently a senior at Stanford University pursuing a degree in Aerospace Engineering & Com- puter Science, a 2020 Brooke Owens Fellow, 2020 Lime Con- nect Fellow and 2021 Matthew Isakowitz Fellow. Eric Ingram: The founder and CEO of SCOUT Inc., a company de-risking space operations with sensor suites that enable spacecraftto see and under- stand the area around them. Eric previously served as the president of the United States Wheelchair Rugby Association and has competed in the sport for over 15 years. Centra (Ce-Ce) Mazyck: An Army Veteran Jumpmaster. After a spinal cord injury during a routine jump, Ce-Ce became a public speaker for Disabled American Veterans (DAV) and a Paralympic athlete competing for the US Track & Field Team in Javelin during the London 2012 games. Mona Minkara : An assistant professor of bioengineering at Northeastern University who leads the Minkara COMBINE (Computational Modeling for BioINterface Engineering) Lab researching pulmonary sur- factant. Mona also documents her travels around the world through her YouTube channel Planes, Trains and Canes. Viktoria Modesta: A bionic pop artist and creative direc- tor. She has established herself as a leader and connector in the post-disability community bridging art, culture, academia and medicine in hyper collabo- rative multimedia productions, including her performance at the closing ceremony of the 2012 Paralympics. Zuby Onwuta : A Harvard-MIT trained innovator, U.S. Presi- dential Service Award recipient, U.S. Army Veteran and founder of both Think and Zoom and Future of Disability. He is the patented inventor of Brain control for Blind Assistive Tech, a solution that reads and responds to human brain waves and provides hands-free vision augmentation and reading assistance. Sawyer Rosenstein : A news producer at WPBF 25 in West Palm Beach and host of the Talking Space podcast. He was the youngest ever member of the NASA press corps, and covered the final space shuttle launch in 2011. He continues to cover Commercial Crew Program launches including the most recent Inspiration 4 launch. Eric Shear : A current graduate student in chemical engineering at the University of Florida. In 2011, following in the footsteps of the Gallaudet Eleven, he was one of the first modern day Deaf NASA researchers to participate in a Zero-G research light as part of the Reduced Gravity Education Flight Pro- gram. Apurva Varia : A Mission Operation Director for three spacecrafts - Parker Solar Probe, Interstellar Boundary Ex- plorer, and the Lunar Reconnais- sance Orbiter - and was the irst Deaf mission director for an uncrewed mission at NASA. Sheri Wells-Jensen : An asso- ciate professor of linguistics at Bowling Green State University where her research focuses on social aspects of human coloni- zation, astrobiology, disability and the relationship between language and thought. She stud- ies the ways in which alternative sensory inputs influence the evolution of scientific thought and is currently writing a book about disability and space. The success of this mission and the data collected are hope- ful to lead to more improved missions of the same type and eventually, to actual space trav- el by individuals with visible and invisible disabilities.

Source: AstroAccess, SPACEREF

AL POWERS FOR ZERO GRAVITY CORPORATION

The 12 Ambassadors of AstroAccess' Flight 1 in front of Zero G Corporation's G-Force One aircraft on the tarmac of Long Beach Airport. AstroAccess Flight 1 Ambassador, Centra Mazyck, floating during a weightless parabola onboard Sunday's flight.

AL POWERS FOR ZERO GRAVITY CORPORATION