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!
Dr Tovy Haber Kamine
Role: President of the Space Surgery Association
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
Danielle Carroll, MD, FAWM
Role: President elect
General Surgery Resident, TRISH-funded Space Health researcher, USAF Veteran, and Instructor Pilot
Dani earned her B.A. degree in Bioethics and Italian at the University of Virginia, after which she was commissioned as an officer in the U.S. Air Force. She flew high-performance jet aircraft as a Captain on active duty, later transitioning into the Reserve to attend medical school back at UVa. Dani has been involved in extensive Global Health work in East Africa and Latin America, making contributions in Trauma/Emergency Response and Disaster Relief in resource-limited settings. After completing 3 years of General Surgery residency at UC San Diego, she paused clinical training to serve as NASA-funded TRISH Space Health Innovation Fellow and is now finishing a master’s degree in Aerospace Engineering/Bioastronautics at CU Boulder. Her true love is flying: Dani has logged over 1,100 flight hours in everything from T-38s to aerobatic aircraft to seaplanes to WWII warbirds such as T-6A and P-51, maintaining currency as CFII/MEII by serving as a flight instructor locally. In her free time, she enjoys climbing, sailing, SCUBA diving, and running with her rescue pup, Rosie.
Email: danielle.carroll@gmail.com
More: LinkedIn
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
Role: Webmaster
Full Professor for Innovative Implant Development
Saarland University, Germany
Bergita is an Orthopaedic Surgeon and a Physiologist. Her research focuses on space medicine and the musculoskeletal system in spaceflight, aging and immobilisation. She develops intelligent implants for the treatment of bone fractures. She is a co-investigator of an ISS experiment and involved in large international studies working with the German Aerospace Center (DLR), the European Space Agency (ESA) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (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
Rowena Christiansen
Role: Parliamentarian
Emergency Physician, lawyer, medical educator
The University of Melbourne Medical School
Research focus: Dr Rowena Christiansen is dual-qualified in medicine and law, with post-graduate studies in emergency health, aerospace medicine, disaster management, anaesthetics, and child health. 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 teaches human physiology and clinical medical practice in the Melbourne Medical School, and primarily practises in pre-hospital emergency care and medicine in extreme and austere environments. Rowena is a member of the Australian Space Agency Space Medicine and Life Sciences Technical Advisory Group and a passionate aerospace medicine advocate, educator, and researcher. During 2020 she founded the “ad astra vita” space medicine and life sciences project, and organised a successful international virtual Space Health Symposium. Rowena is also the Research Director, Health Law for the “Jus Ad Astra” human rights 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
