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 spacesuit design, leadership development, innovation, and space policy. Newman has been principal investigator (PI) on four spaceflight missions flown aboard the Space Shuttle, Russian Mir Space Station, and the International Space Station, and is best known for her revolutionary BioSuit™ planetary spacesuit. Newman is the author of Interactive Aerospace Engineering and Design, an introductory engineering textbook, and has published more than 300 papers in journals and refereed conferences, and holds numerous compression technology patents. She has supervised 90 graduate student theses and supervised and mentored over 200 undergraduate researchers.