Gregory T. Kovacs

Who is Gregory T. Kovacs?

Dr. Kovacs is a Professor of Electrical Engineering at Stanford University with a courtesy appointment in the Department of Medicine. He received a BASc degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of British Columbia, an MS degree in Bioengineering from the University of California, Berkeley, and a PhD and an MD degree from Stanford University. Dr. Kovacs is the Director of Medical Device Technologies for the Astrobionics Program at the NASA Ames Research Center, and Principal Investigator for the NASA/Stanford National Center for Space Biological Technologies. This Center is charged with developing advanced medical devices to enable extended human spaceflight and instrumentation/payloads for biological experiments. Currently, he helps direct a variety of projects spanning wearable physiologic monitors, biosensor instruments for detection of chemical and biological warfare agents and space biology applications, and free-flyer experiment payloads. In 2003, the group carried out a series of balloon launches that took biological experiment payloads to altitudes as high as 107,000 ft. The NCSBT is currently working to launch the first autonomous radiation-genomics payload into low-Earth orbit at the end of 2005.