Topic 4
Astronauts 2.0: 21st century Explorers to Mars
October 19th, 2022 at 14:30 – 16:30
Egmont Palace, Brussels
Astronauts 2.0: 21st century Explorers to Mars
For more than 60 years, space agencies have studied what happens to the human body in space.
As astronauts missions are being prepared for deep space destinations on and around the Moon, to Mars and beyond, understanding the effects of long spaceflight missions on humans is essential.
Researchers are using what they learn to design procedures, devices, and strategies to keep astronauts safe and healthy throughout their missions.
From fundamental research to medical applications on Earth, come to topic 4 to learn how to get the next generation of astronauts (astronauts 2.0) ready for future deep space missions.
Highlights presented at this session: Tissue engineering as fast-developing field reaching new heights thanks to space research, Cardiac and brain physiological monitoring in space, Physical strength and dexterous manipulation in space & Life support technology.
Speakers & Presentations
Kevin Tabury
Dr Eng in space radiobiology at SCK.CEN
Pierre-François Migeotte
Chief Executive Officer at HeartKinetics / ULB
Prof Dr Floris L Wuyts
Head of Lab for Equilibrium Investigations and Aerospace (LEIA)
Vertigo expert – European Institute for Otolaryngology HNS
St Augustinus Hospital – Wilrijk - Belgium
Philippe Lefèvre
Full Professor of Biomedical Engineering at UCL
Dries Demey
Senior Systems Engineer at QinetiQ
Astronaut cardiac function monitoring, an investigator's journey; from fundamental research to medical applications on earth, and the launch of a startup!
Space rewires the brains of astronauts
Grip: dexterous manipulation in microgravity
Life Support Technology for long term human space missions
Speakers
Space: the next frontier in tissue engineering
Kevin Tabury
Dr Eng in space radiobiology at SCK.CEN
Kevin Tabury is a junior scientist at the Radiobiology Unit of SCK CEN where he is leading Hadron radiation related projects in the context of Space and Radiotherapy research. Prior his function as junior scientist, he acquired almost 10 years of technical expertise as lab technician. He is also currently combining his position as junior scientist with a PhD at the University of South Carolina, USA.
Astronaut cardiac function monitoring, an investigator's journey; from fundamental research to medical applications on earth, and the launch of a startup!
Pierre-François Migeotte
Co-founder and CEO of HeartKinetics
Pierre-François Migeotte is a Physicist, (M.Sc. Ph.D., & M.Mngt.); specialist in cardiac monitoring and space physiology; Passionate for space exploration and entrepreneurship, he combines these passions into the first solution developped by HeartKinetics: KINO which is a cardiac remote monitoring solution based on his research funded by space gagencies (for over 20 years) and discoveries he made while developing a solution suitable for astronauts. KINO is using smartphone motion sensors assisted with ai to remotely predict the health status of a patient or of an astronaut in space. In 2017, he received the first price of innovation from the European Society of Cardiology (ESC-EHRA) for making this technology available to the largest number of patients. His vision is that patients have an unconditional right to access their data. This should be faster and much easier than it is today. This will help all healthcare stakeholders provide faster access to diagnosis, improve the outcome of the patients, and eventually help our societies face the huge and growing burden of cardiovascular diseases.
"Doing research with astronauts and with the support of space agencies was a unique and challenging journey. This raised my exigencies for quality and professionalism to a higher level. The unique environment of microgravity led to an invention that was essential to the foundations of HeartKinetics which aims at a better outcome for every patient on earth."
Space rewires the brains of astronauts
Prof Dr Floris L Wuyts
Head of Lab for Equilibrium Investigations and Aerospace (LEIA)
Vertigo expert – European Institute for Otolaryngology HNS
St Augustinus Hospital – Wilrijk - Belgium
Floris Wuyts and his team tested all astronauts of the current ESA astronaut corps as well as more than 70% of all Russian cosmonauts who resided 6 months in the ISS. His team is the first to publish on the effect of spaceflight on the human brain studied with MRI, and they are a leading group worldwide on this domain. He is professor in physics and head of the lab for Equilibrium Investigations and Aerospace at the university of Antwerp. He just obtained recently the 2022 European Low Gravity Research Association Medal for his outstanding contribution to life sciences research.
Grip: dexterous manipulation in microgravity
Philippe Lefèvre
Full Professor of Biomedical Engineering at UCL
Philippe Lefèvre (PL) graduated as an Electrical Engineer from UCLouvain in 1988 and obtained his PhD in Applied Sciences in 1992 from UCLouvain: "Experimental study and modelling of eyehead orientation". During his PhD, he spent one year at McGill University in the department of biomedical engineering. He then spent two years (postdoc) as a Visiting Fellow at the Laboratory of Sensorimotor Research, NEI, National Institutes of Health, MD Bethesda. In 1997 he obtained a permanent position as a Research Associate from FNRS at UCLouvain. From 2003 to 2004 he spent a sabbatical and was appointed as a Visiting Scientist at the National Eye Institute, NIH, Bethesda. In 2006 he became Professor at UCLouvain and from 2007 to 2012 he was the chair of the program committee in Biomedical Engineering. From 2010 to 2015 he was appointed as the head of the Department of Applied Mathematics from UCLouvain. In 2011 he became Full Professor of Biomedical Engineering. In 2018 he spent a sabbatical (6 months) at Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario in the Center for Neuroscience Studies. PL supervises research projects on the interaction between vision and the neural control of movement, modeling of the oculomotor and motor systems, experimental and clinical study of eye, head and limb movements, eye-hand coordination, biomechanics of finger object interaction and dexterous manipulation in micro-gravity. PL already supervised more than 25 PhD students and postdocs since 1999 and he is currently supervising a group of 6 PhD students and postdocs. Among the alumni from his group, 6 are University professors and independent Principal Investigators.
Life Support Technology for long term human space missions
Dries Demey
Senior Systems Engineer at QinetiQ
Dries Demey is an experienced Senior System Engineer skilled in Research and Development. His areas of expertise include Process Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Sustainability, and Chemical Engineering. He has been developing life support technologies at QinetiQ since 2014.
“It’s exciting to be working in projects to help humanity set foot on Mars!”
Chairs & Co-chairs
Prof. Dr. Sarah Baatout
Prof. Sarah Baatout is director of the radiobiology unit at SCK CEN (Belgian Nuclear Research Centre) in Mol, Belgium. She also teaches as guest professor at UGent and KULeuven. For more than 20 years, her lab has been investigating the impact of ionizing radiation on health through the development of better radiotherapy treatments for cancer patients, the discovery of innovative biomarkers for personalized medicine of astronauts and patients. Sarah Baatout is the head of the Belgian delegation at UNSCEAR (United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation), secretary treasurer of the European Radiation Research Society and chair of the Belgian Hadrontherapy Center. She is/has been the (co-)-promoters of 5 Postdocs and of 15 PhD students and is the (co-) author of some 150 international papers.
Anna Fogtman
Crew Exploration Scientist at the European Astronaut Centre (EAC). Her work is focused on health risk assessment of astronauts during exploration-class missions beyond Low Earth Orbit and coordination of ESA funded science experiments with the focus on radiation research and radiation protection. Studies the biological effects of space radiation environment on the human body, especially in the context of individual sensitivity to ionising radiation.
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