We are a small team of talented professionals with a wide range of skills and experience. Find our profiles below to see what we do and connect with us!
Danielle Carroll, MD, FAWM
Role: President of the Space Surgery Association
General Surgery Resident, TRISH-funded Space Health researcher, USAF Veteran, and Instructor Pilot
Dani earned her B.A. in Bioethics and Italian at the University of Virginia; after college, she flew high-performance jet aircraft as a Captain on active duty in the U.S. Air Force, later transitioning into the Reserve to attend med school back at UVa. Dani has been involved in extensive Trauma/Burn Response and Disaster Relief work in East Africa and Latin America; after 3 years of residency at UCSD, she paused surgical training to serve as NASA/TRISH Space Health Innovation Fellow. Now Principal Investigator on her own TRISH grant, she is also finishing dual master’s degrees in Bioastronautics and Engineering Management at CU Boulder. Her true love is flying: Dani has logged >1,100 flight hours in everything from T-38s to aerobatic taildraggers to seaplanes to WWII warbirds such as the T-6A and P-51, maintaining currency by teaching. In her free time, she enjoys climbing, sailing, SCUBA diving, cooking, and running with her rescue pup, Rosie.
Email: danielle.carroll@gmail.com
Dr Tovy Haber Kamine
Role: Past President
Trauma, Acute Care, and Critical Care Surgeon
Baystate Medical Center
Tovy Haber Kamine is a Trauma, Acute Care, and Critical Care surgeon at Baystate Health in Springfield, MA. He is board certified in General Surgery and Critical Care. He is a civilian pilot and will fly anything he can get his hands on, from Cessnas to Helicopters to Seaplanes to a P-51. He also volunteers in the Civil Air Patrol where he is a Captain, Transport Mission Pilot, and Squadron Medical Officer. In his limited remaining free time he greatly enjoys spending time with his wife and two sons.
Email: tovy.kamine@gmail.com
More: GoogleScholar
Arthur Formanek, MD
Role: Secretary
Anesthesia and Critical Care
Arthur Formanek, MD is an anesthesiologist and criticare care physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital with the rank of Instructor at Harvard Medical School. He has patented an IV air trap designed to work in microgravity that will allow rapid transfusion in spaceflight and austere environments. Other research areas include correlations between anesthesiology and aerospace medicine, thoracic anesthesia, ventilator management in ARDS, and regional anesthesia techniques for neurosurgery. Outside of the hospital, he enjoys aviation, sailing, the outdoors, and anything space related.
Dana R. Levin, MD, MPH
Role: Treasurer
Emergency Physician
NASA JSC and Columbia University
Dana is the Systems Engineering and Integration Physician for NASA’s Exploration Medical Capabilities Element, co founder of the University of Colorado’s Space and Extreme Environment Medicine Program, and an Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine at Columbia University Medical Center. He is board certified in Aerospace Medicine and Emergency Medicine and his work includes expedition support and research for high altitude, technical SCUBA diving, Nautical Archeology and Crewed Space explorations.
Email: Drl2125@columbia.edu
Prof. Dr. Bergita Ganse, MD, PhD
Role: Webmaster
Full Professor, Orthopaedic Trauma Surgeon, Physiologist
Saarland University, Germany
Bergita Ganse is an orthopaedic trauma surgeon as well as a physiologist and professor for Innovative Implant Development (Fracture Healing) at Saarland University in Germany. Her research focuses on space medicine and the musculoskeletal system in spaceflight, as well as on fracture healing and orthopaedic implant development. She is a co-investigator of the ISS experiment ‘Muscle Stimulation’ and the PI of an ESA research project in Antarctica. Bergita has been involved in large international studies in the field of space medicine since 2008, working with the DLR, ESA and NASA. She has published the Springer book “The Spacefarer’s Handbook – Science and Life Beyond Earth“.
E-mail: bergita.ganse@uks.eu
More: www.bergitaganse.de, Google Scholar, Researchgate, ORCID, Pubmed
Dr Rowena Christiansen
Role: Parliamentarian
Physician, lecturer, and space health topic coordinator
The University of Melbourne Medical School
Rowena is dual-qualified in medicine and law, with post-graduate studies in emergency and critical care, aerospace medicine, disaster management, child health, and space studies. She also holds qualifications in business, humanities, and education. Rowena is a Fellow of the Aerospace Medical Association and of Ormond College at the University of Melbourne. She practises primarily in pre-hospital emergency care and medicine in extreme and austere environments. Rowena teaches human physiology and clinical medical practice in the Melbourne Medical School, and in 2022 developed a new MD1 ‘Discovery Subject’ “Human health in the space environment”. She also lectures on ‘humans in space’ for Swinburne University. Rowena is a member of the Australian Space Agency Space Medicine and Life Sciences Technical Advisory Group, and attended the 2021 ESA Space Physician Training Course. Out of her work as an aerospace medicine advocate and educator, she founded the ad astra vita space health and extreme medicine project, and is a creative founder of the Space Health Symposium and the Australian Space Biology x Health Summit. Rowena is the Research Director, Health Law for the Jus Ad Astra human rights in space project.
More: Researchgate, WADEM, Linkedin
Prof. George Pantalos
Role: Member-at-large
Professor of Cardiovascular & Thoracic Surgery, Professor of Bioengineering
University of Louisville, Kentucky, USA
George has been a Professor at the University of Louisville since July 2000, after holding similar appointments at the University of Utah for 17 years. He focuses on cardiovascular function and heart failure with mechanical devices including artificial hearts, ventricular assist devices, and cardiopulmonary support systems. George has flown 45 research missions on the NASA parabolic flight aircraft and twice had an instrumented artificial heart beating on a circulation simulator on the Space Shuttle Discovery. Other projects included delivery of effective chest compressions for CPR in 0-G and the development of surgical capabilities for exploration space missions.
E-mail: gmpant02@louisville.edu
More: CV, Researchgate, Pubmed, Cardiovascular Innovation Institute
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