Following my arrival in San Diego I worked as a research assistant and programmer/analyst at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in the Marine Life Research Group. During my time at SIO I had the unique opportunity to live and work aboard SIO's Floating Instrument Platform, also known as R/P FLIP, while supporting professor David Checkley in his search for evidence of an effect of Langmuir circulations on plankton distributions in the upper water column.

In 1994 I moved to the UCSD Division of Physiology NASA Lab where the integration of my education in pulmonary physiology and experience in computer programming is best put to use. My first task with the NASA Lab was to complete the programming of the software for the labs ALFE hardware which was flew on NASA's Columbia Orbiter during the STS-90 Neurolab Spacelab mission in 1998. During that experiment I was fortunate to experience both a Shuttle launch and landing at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. I also supported the experiment team at the Telescience Support Center at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.
 

After the completion of the Neurolab mission we began work with Charles Czeisler's sleep group from Brigham and Women's Hospital on an experiment which flew on NASA's Discovery Orbiter during the STS-95 SpaceHab mission in 1998. Most people know of this mission as the shuttle mission that Senator John Glenn flew on.

This was the last shuttle experiment our lab worked on as we moved to focus our efforts on our experiment scheduled to fly to the International Space Station.

In 1998 we began work on our International Space Station (ISS) experiment entitled The Effect of EVA and Long-term Exposure to Microgravity on Pulmonary Function which we call Pulmonary Function in Flight or PuFF.

The PuFF hardware was delivered to the ISS in March of 2001 aboard NASA's Discovery Orbiter during STS-102 inside the Leonardo Multipurpose Logistics Module (MPLM) as part of the Human Research Facility (HRF) Rack 1. The HRF rack was installed in the Destiny Laboratory Module which hitched a ride to the station in Atlantis' payload bay during STS-98 in February of 2001.
 

The PuFF software arrived with the Expedition 3 crew in August of 2001 aboard NASA's Discovery Orbiter during STS-105. Station crew members from Expedition 3, 4, 5 and 6 participated in the PuFF experiment performing monthly tests of pulmonary function as well tests before and after Extra Vehicular Activities (EVA) which are commonly referred to as "space walks".

Following the STS-107 accident the Expedition 6 crew was forced to return to Earth aboard a Soyuz TMA-1 capsule in Russia. We traveled to Star City to perform post-flight data collection on the crew and were awarded the unique opportunity to tour Star City and many of the surrounding attractions near Moscow.

With the return of the Expedition 6 crew in-flight PuFF operations were finished and only baseline data collection in Houston remained.

With our ISS experiment activities winding down we are shifting focus (for now!) to what we call ground based research. This, strangely enough, has included research aboard the NASA KC-135A Microgravity Research Aircraft. The experiments we're performing required new software and as a result I was on the hook to "fly". Sadly, the "Vomit Comet" has been retired but we are looking forward to more experiments aboard the NASA C-9B Microgravity Research Aircraft in the coming months.

I must say this was one the most memorable experiences of my life and not one I'll soon forget!

Click on the image on the right to see what I mean...