Dava Newman, PhD

ADVISORY COUNCIL

Dr. Dava Newman is the Director of the MIT Media Lab. She’s also the Apollo Program Professor of Astronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and a Harvard–MIT Health, Sciences, and Technology faculty member. She served as NASA Deputy Administrator (2015-17), the first female engineer in this role, and was awarded the NASA Distinguished Service Medal.

Her research and teaching expertise include aerospace biomedical engineering, astronaut performance, advanced space suit design, leadership development, innovation, and space policy. Newman was the principal investigator on four spaceflight missions flown aboard the Space Shuttle, Russian Mir Space Station and the International Space Station. Best known for her second skin BioSuit™ planetary EVA system, her advanced spacesuit inventions are now being applied to “soft wearable suits” to study and enhance locomotion on Earth.