Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

Dr. Shawna Pandya is a physician, scientist-astronaut candidate, speaker, martial artist and adventurer. As a scientist-astronaut candidate with Project PoSSUM, she has tested commercial spacesuits in micro-gravity and flown over 100 parabolas to date. She has served as Mission Specialist for Project PoSSUM’s high-altitude noctilucent cloud campaign, operating a tomography instrument to gather more date about these clouds, thought to be a marker of climate change. She also serves as lead instructor for PoSSUM’s Operational Space Medicine Course, looking at medical operations and considerations in EVA scenarios. Through Project PoSSUM, she has experienced slow onset hypoxia training in a decompression chamber and aerobatic flight, undergone emergency spacecraft egress and sea survival and helped test spacesuitis in off-nominal spacecraft landing scenarios. 
She has published book chapters on psychosocial resilience in long-duration spaceflight, reproduction in long-duration spaceflight and space medicine spin-offs in long-duration spaceflight.

Dr. Pandya is currently completing her private pilot’s licences and holds her advanced free fall solo sky-diving licence, and numerous SCUBA diving certifications, including open water, advanced, rescue and Nitrox.  She holds a 2nd degree black belt in Taekwondo and dabbles in Muay Thai, having trained in fight camps in Thailand. She is fluent in English, French and Gujurati, and dabbles in Russian, Spanish and Hindi.