Mark Shelhamer

Mark J. Shelhamer is an American human spaceflight researcher specializing in neurovestibular adaptation to space flight., and former chief scientist of NASA's Human Research Program. He has published over 70 scientific papers

Shelhamer is best known for his pioneering work on a multidisciplinary approach to human spaceflight research. He is also an informal expert on the history of NASA's early human spaceflight, including the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo Programs.

Life, education and research Shelhamer and Dr. Michael Schubert in parabolic flight testing neurovestibular adaptation in weightlessness. Dr. Jennifer Wiseman participating as a test subject in Shelhamer's parabolic flight experiment. Shelhamer earned his Bachelor of Science and his Masters in electrical engineering in 1982 from Drexel University. Intrigued by his father's pacemaker and how it applied electrical engineering principles to a biological system, He applied nonlinear dynamical analysis to the control of eye movements, including investigations on the functional implications of fractal activity in physiological behavior. In parallel with this research, he studied astronaut adaptation to space flight and participated in two sets of Spacelab experiments (SL-1 and D-1).

After MIT, Shelhamer went on to do his post-doctoral work at Johns Hopkins and continued as an associate professor until 2013, working on various vestibular and sensorimotor specific projects. Shelhamer currently directs the Human Spaceflight Lab, where students have the opportunity to participate in human spaceflight research under his guidance.

Outside of his research, Shelhamer is a ham radio hobbyist and an avid drummer.

Awards

NASA Group Achievement Award, for Life Sciences Experiments on Spacelab-1 - 1984 Whitaker Health Sciences Fund Fellowship - 1986-1988 Award for outstanding contributions to the MIT Man-Vehicle Laboratory 1989 Senior Member, IEEE - 2007 Best paper award, Eye Tracking Research and Applications meeting - 2008 NASA JSC “On the Spot” Award, for reducing ISS crew time requirements - 2015