Leroy Chiao has extensive experience as a NASA Astronaut and prior to that, as a Research Engineer.
Dr. Chiao studied Chemical Engineering, earning a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of California at Berkeley in 1983. He continued his studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara, earning his Master of Science and Doctor of Philosophy degrees in 1985 and 1987. He is involved in entrepreneurial business ventures in both the US and China and is the Executive Vice President of Space Operations and a Director of Excalibur Almaz Limited, a private manned spaceflight company. Dr. Chiao is also the first Raborn Distinguished Chair Max Faget Mechanical Engineering Professor at Louisiana State University. Active as a consultant and public speaker, he also serves as the Chairman of the National Space Biomedical Research Institute User Panel, which is attached to the Baylor College of Medicine.
Dr. Chiao left NASA in December, 2005 following a fifteen-year career with the agency. A veteran of four space missions, Dr. Chiao most recently served as Commander and NASA Science Officer of Expedition 10 aboard the International Space Station. He has logged over 229 days in space - over 36 hours of which were spent in Extra-Vehicular Activity (EVA, or spacewalks).
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Keith Cowing is trained as a biologist (M.A. and B.A. degrees) and has a multidisciplinary background with experience and expertise that ranges from spacecraft payload integration and biomedical peer review to freelance writing and website authoring. Keith is editor and webmaster of the somewhat notorious NASA Watch, an online publication devoted to the free and uncensored exchange of information on space policy and NASA operations. This website is read regularly within NASA, Congress, and the global space community. Keith is also editor of SpaceRef.com an online space news and reference resource.
Keith donated his time to serve as an organizer and later, as the proceedings co-editor, for the NASA Administrator's Symposium "Risk and Exploration: Earth, Sea, and the Stars" which was held at the Naval Postgraduate School in September 2004. Keith has been involved with the NASA Haughton Mars Project (HMP), an ongoing research activity conducted on Devon Island in the Canadian high arctic less than 1,000 miles from the North Pole. Keith and his SpaceRef business partner Marc Boucher donated an experimental greenhouse which they constructed on Devon Island in the Summer of 2002.
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