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Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland 20771

ENGINEERING COLLOQUIUM

Monday, December 12, 2016 / 2:30 PM, Building 3 Auditorium

Mike Massimino

"Spaceman: An Astronaut's Unlikely Journey to Unlock the Secrets of the Universe"

Program -- Mike will discuss his new book about his experiences in the space program.

SPEAKER -- Michael Massimino, a former NASA astronaut and the first person to tweet from space, is a Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Columbia University and the Senior Advisor for Space Programs at the Intrepid Sea, Air, and Space Museum. He received his Bachelor of Science from Columbia and Masters of Science in both Mechanical Engineering and Technology and Policy, as well as the Degree of Mechanical Engineer and his PhD in Mechanical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

After working as an engineer at IBM, NASA Headquarters and McDonnell Douglas Aerospace, along with academic appointments at both Rice University and the Georgia Institute of Technology, Mike was selected as an astronaut candidate by NASA in 1996. A veteran of two space flights, the fourth and fifth Hubble Space Telescope servicing missions in 2002 and 2009, Mike has many accomplishments including a team record for the number of hours spacewalking in a single space shuttle mission. He has also received a number of awards including two NASA Space Flight Medals, the NASA Distinguished Service Medal, and the American Astronautical Society's 2009 Flight Achievement Award. He is also the holder of two patents and author of several engineering research papers.

Back at his alma mater, Columbia, Mike is teaching an undergraduate course, Introduction to Human Space Flight, which harnesses his years of academic and professional experience. He is also working with The Art of Engineering, a course in which all first-year engineers attend design lectures and work on engineering projects with socially responsible themes.

Mike has made numerous television appearances including a six-time recurring role as himself on the CBS hit comedy, "The Big Bang Theory." In addition, he frequently appears in national and local television news shows, morning shows and late night talk shows, as well as a wide variety of podcasts. Mike's new book, Spaceman: An Astronaut's Unlikely Journey to Unlock the Secrets of the Universe, was selected by Amazon as an Editor's Pick in the category of Big Fall Books: Nonfiction and by iBooks as a Most Anticipated Book of the Fall.



This is the last Engineering Colloquium of 2016. See you next year!
Engineering Colloquium home page: https://ecolloq.gsfc.nasa.gov