Lindy Elkins-Tanton is the Mitsui Career Development Assistant Professor of Geology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

At MIT, her group is working to understand the chemistry and physics of planetary accretion and solidification, with projects focusing on planetesimals, the Moon, Mercury, the Earth, “super Earth” exoplanets, and on processes such as degassing the earliest atmospheres on terrestrial planets. The group is also investigating the relationships between large volcanic provinces and global extinction events, focusing on the Siberian flood basalts.

Elkins-Tanton received her SB and SM from MIT in 1987, and then spent eight years working in business, including five years spent writing business plans for young high-tech ventures. She then returned to MIT for a PhD, followed by five years as a researcher at Brown University, and her appointment in 2007 to the MIT faculty.

Elkins-Tanton is a two-time National Academy of Sciences Kavli Frontiers of Science Fellow and has been appointed to the National Academy of Sciences Decadal Survey Mars panel. In 2008, she was awarded a five-year National Science Foundation CAREER award, and in 2009 was named Outstanding MIT Faculty Undergraduate Research Mentor. She is preparing the second edition of her six-book series The Solar System, a reference for libraries. When not in the lab or in Siberia she is home in Southborough, Mass., with her mathematician husband, high-school senior son, and three border collies.

Jeffrey Hoffman is Professor of the Practice of Aerospace Engineering in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and a former NASA astronaut who flew on five space shuttle missions, including the initial rescue and repair of the Hubble Space Telescope.

Dava Newman is a professor in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics and Engineering Systems Division at MIT and affiliate faculty in the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology. She is also a MacVicar Faculty Fellow (a chair for making significant contributions to undergraduate education) and director of the Technology and Policy Program at MIT. She leads the MIT-Portugal Program’s Bioengineering Systems effort.

Newman specializes in investigating human performance across the spectrum of gravity. She was principal investigator for the Space Shuttle Dynamic Load Sensors (DLS) experiment, which measured astronaut-induced disturbances of the microgravity environment on mission STS-62. An advanced system, the Enhanced Dynamic Load Sensors experiment, flew onboard the Russian Mir space station from 1996-1998. Newman was a co-investigator on the Mental Workload and Performance Experiment (MWPE) that flew to space on STS-42 to measure astronaut mental workload and fine motor control in microgravity. She also developed the MICR0-G space flight experiment to provide a novel sensor suite and study human adaptation in extreme environments.

She is an expert in the areas of extravehicular activity (EVA), human movement, physics-based modeling, biomechanics, energetics and human-robotic cooperation. As a co-invetigator for the National Space Biomedical Research Institute, her finite element modeling work provided NASA the first three-dimensional representation of bone loss and loading applicable for long-duration missions. She has an active research program in advanced EVA, including space-suit design, life-support technologies and human-robotic cooperation. Her exoskeleton innovations are now being applied to “soft suits” to study and enhance locomotion on Earth for children with cerebral palsy. She also focuses on engineering education involving active learning, hands-on design and information technology implementation to enhance student learning.

Her curriculum efforts strive to find new ways to stimulate students and actively involve students in their own learning. Newman has published an Engineering and Design text and CDROM (2002). She was named one of the “Best Inventors of 2007” for her BioSuit system by Time magazine. Her BioSuit system has been exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Super Heroes show (May-Sept. 2008), the Boston Museum of Science (fall 2008, summer 2009) and the London Museum of Science and Industry (2009). It is slated to be exhibited at the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry (2011).

Charles M. Oman is a senior research engineer, senior lecturer and director of the Man Vehicle Laboratory in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT.

Oman’s group studies the physiological and cognitive limitations of humans in aircraft and spacecraft, and tries to develop new ways of improving human-vehicle effectiveness and safety. The laboratory takes an interdisciplinary approach, utilizing techniques from manual and supervisory control theory, estimation, signal processing, biomechanics, cognitive, computational and physiological neuroscience, sensory-motor physiology, human factors, and biostatistics.

Oman received his BSE from Princeton University and his PhD from MIT. He conducted experiments visual and vestibular function in spatial orientation on nine shuttle missions, including six Spacelab flights. Since 1997, he has lead the Sensorimotor Adaptation research team of the National Space Biomedical Research Institute. Oman previously served on the NASA Advisory Council’s Biological and Physical Research Advisory Committee and the National Research Council Panel on Robotic Access and Human Planetary Landing Systems. He chaired the NASA Space Station Utilization Advisory Subcommittee from 2004-2005. He is a member of the International Academy of Astronautics.

Simcoe specializes in developing optical/infrared instruments for large telescopes, and using these instruments to study the most distant galaxies and quasars in the early universe.

David Staelin has been a member of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science faculty and Research Laboratory of Electronics since 1965. He also was assistant director, MIT Lincoln Laboratory (1990-2001); co-founder, MIT Venture Mentoring Service (2000); chairman, MIT's EECS Graduate Area in Electronics, Computers and Systems (1976-1990); and a faculty member of MIT's Leaders for Manufacturing Program (1985-1998). He was a director of environmental research and technology (1969-1978), and co-founder and chairman of PictureTel Corp. (1984-87). He is a fellow of the IEEE and AAAS, and received the 1996 Distinguished Achievement Award from the IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society.

Staelin was a member of the President's Information Technology Advisory Committee (2003-05), chairman of the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Radio Frequency Requirements for Research (1983-86), and a member of several NASA committees and working groups, including the Space Applications Advisory Committee; the Advanced Microwave Sounder Working Group; the Geostationary Platform-Earth Science Steering Committee; and the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission Science Steering Group. He was principal investigator for the NASA Nimbus-E Microwave Spectrometer (launched 1972 on Nimbus 5), and the Scanning Microwave Spectrometer (launched 1975 on Nimbus 6). He was co-investigator of the Scanning Multichannel Microwave Spectrometer (1977 launch, Nimbus 7) and the Voyager Planetary Radio Astronomy Experiment (1977 launch, Voyagers 1 and 2). Additionally, he is a member of the NASA Atmospheric Infrared Sounder team (Aqua launch 2002), the NPP Science Team, the NOAA IPO Sounder Operational Algorithm Team, and the NASA Precipitation Mapping Mission Science Team.

Erika Wagner is a professor of aeronautics and astronautics and program director for the Mars Gravity Biosatellite.

The student-initiated satellite development program, led by MIT in collaboration with Georgia Tech, hopes to find out how the mammalian body will adapt to a prolonged stay on the surface of Mars. The team will launch mice into near-Earth orbit inside a rotating, artificial gravity spacecraft to learn how reduced gravity affects mouse physiology, a vital step toward preparing for a human mission to Mars.

Josh Winn graduated from MIT in 1994 with SB and SM degrees in physics. After spending a year as a Fulbright Scholar in the U.K., at Cambridge University, he returned to MIT as a Hertz Fellow.

While in graduate school, he worked in medical physics, condensed-matter physics and astrophysics, and wrote for the science section of the Economist. He earned a PhD in physics in 2001, and subsequently held NSF and NASA postdoctoral fellowships at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. He has been an assistant professor of physics at MIT since 2006.

Laurence Young is the Apollo Program Professor of Astronautics, professor of health sciences and technology, and director of Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology PhD Program in Bioastronautics.

He is also dounding firector, National Space Biomedical Research Institute; Alternate Payload Specialist Astronaut, U.S. Air Force Scientific Advisory Board, Visiting Professor – ETH (Zurich), Stanford, College de France, Mt. Sinai School of Medicine, Baylor College of Medicine.