Out of This World Human Performance: Bringing physiological preparation for space travel back to Earth

Friday 4^th December 9 – 10am AEDT

Dr Meg Downs has worked at NASA Johnson Space Center for over 13 years, leading research projects with multiple NASA, academia, and industry collaborators. Meg was awarded her doctorate in exercise physiology from the University of Houston, with her thesis research focusing on evaluation of a blood flow restricted exercise training study that evaluated muscle strength and local vascular and metabolic outcomes.

Meg has since conducted studies on long duration bed rest and International Space Station studies that involved developing and testing several novel protocols to test aerobic fitness and muscle strength and size. These research efforts will lead to identifying fitness requirements for mission relevant operational tasks and developing methods to assess fitness for duty for exploration missions and extravehicular activities.