International Society for Gravitational Physiology has new president

Pooneh Bagher, PhD, assistant professor in the Department of Medical Physiology in the Texas A&M College of Medicine has been named president of the International Society for Gravitational Physiology (ISGP). One of the primary responsibilities of the president of ISGP is to plan the society’s annual meeting.

“I look forward to organizing the ISGP 2020 conference here in College Station and bringing together researchers interested in gravitational science from across the globe,” Bagher said.

Bagher’s research focuses on space flight medicine and how the cardiovascular system in particular is affected by microgravity. She is the principal investigator on research that launched last week for the International Space Station (ISS) on SpaceX CRS-18. It will look at the combined effects of space flight and aging on the circulatory system—findings that could shed light on both the experience of former and current astronauts as well as potential future human missions to Mars.

The conference will take place between May 31, 2020 and June 5, 2020 at the Texas A&M Hotel and Conference Center across from Kyle Field. The conference website will be updated as details of the conference become available, as will the conference’s Twitter handle, @isgp2020.

As a space-grant university, Texas A&M’s colleges have a number of NASA-related research projects, making it an ideal spot to host an international conference focused on the physiology of space travel and the physiological changes and adaptations that occur due to microgravity.

Because of NASA’s strong relationship with Texas A&M, last fall NASA hosted a livestream directly from the ISS as well as a faculty panel, including Bagher and others from across the university, to answer questions from students and others. Texas A&M has four former astronauts on the faculty: Greg Chamitoff, a former shuttle and ISS astronaut who served 198 days in space; Nancy Currie-Gregg, who served as a mission specialist on four Space Shuttle missions and accrued 1,000 hours in space; Bonnie Dunbar, who flew on five shuttle missions between 1985 and 1998 and spent more than 50 days in space; and Michael Fossum, chief operating officer and vice president of the Galveston campus of Texas A&M University who spent more than 194 days in space and more than 48 hours in seven spacewalks during his 19 years as an astronaut.

ISGP was established in 1979 and has as its mission the dissemination of knowledge related to gravitational physiology.