Mary Van Baalen has recently joined UTMB as the Director of Research in the Department of Aerospace and Exploration Medicine. She comes to UTMB after many years at NASA where she held a variety of roles. Her most recent role was as the Assistant Director for Human System Risk Management where she chaired the Human System Risk Board (HSRB). The HSRB managed the process by which operational and scientific evidence was utilized to assess the risk postures of the risks to the Human System during all of the various types of existing or anticipated crewed missions. She was also responsible for the process that shepherds newly developed spaceflight countermeasures into operations.
Mary was previously the Lead for the NASA Lifetime Surveillance for Astronaut Health, Life Sciences Data Archive (LSDA), and the Integrated Medical Model (IMM). She received her PhD from the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston (UTMB) in Population Health Sciences with a Space and Life Science focus.