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Dr. John Charles – NESC Academy Biography

Dr. John Charles

Dr. John Charles was a child of the early space age, and clearly remembers playing “John Glenn” while lying on his back in the dusty playground of his elementary school, in the launch posture with his legs up and over some handrails. A scientific interest in weightlessness led him to a career in the space life sciences, and a lifelong fascination with spaceflight in general has kept him in the library stacks and on-line archives researching little known aspects of spaceflight history. Charles earned his bachelor of science in biophysics at The Ohio State University and his doctorate in physiology and biophysics at the University of Kentucky. He has been at the Johnson Space Center since 1983, where he investigated the cardiovascular effects of space flight on Space Shuttle astronauts and on crewmembers of the Russian space station Mir. He was mission scientist for the NASA research on American astronauts on Mir, on John Glenn’s Space Shuttle flight, and on STS-107, Columbia’s last mission in January 2003. Charles is now the chief of the International Science Office of NASA’s Human Research Program and leads space life sciences planning for the joint U.S./Russian one-year mission on the ISS. He is a fellow of the Aerospace Medical Association and a full member of the International Academy of Astronautics, has published over 60 scientific articles, and has received several professional awards.