Jessica Meir

Jessica Ulrika Meir is a post-doctoral researcher in comparative physiology with the Department of Zoology at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. She has a Ph.D. in marine biology from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. She has studied the diving physiology and behavior of emperor penguins in Antarctica, and the physiology of bar-headed geese, which are able to migrate over the Himalayas. She formerly worked for Lockheed Martin Space Operations as an experiment support scientist for the Human Research Facility at NASA's Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston, Texas. In September 2002, Meir served as an aquanaut on the NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations 4 (NEEMO 4) crew.

Education and career path
Meir grew up in Caribou, a small town in northern Maine (the most northeastern city in the United States). She was active in many activities while growing up. Meir played on basketball, softball, tennis, and soccer teams, but soccer was her favorite sport. She played the flute and piccolo in concert band and the saxophone in jazz band, and participated in a variety of school clubs and organizations. After being interested in space since she was a small child, Meir was thrilled to attend Purdue University's space camp when she was thirteen. She was certain that this would be her first concrete step toward a future career in the space industry.

Although many of her friends remained in Maine to go to college, Meir attended Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. She majored in biology and kept up with her interests in space as well. In the summer before her sophomore year at Brown, Meir had the opportunity to participate in the Space and Life Sciences Training Program (SLSTP) at Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida. This was a six-week-long program, spent attending lectures on various space-related science topics, going on tours of the KSC facilities and conducting her own research project.

Meir also spent one of her semesters as an undergraduate student in a study abroad program in Stockholm, Sweden. With her mother coming from Sweden, and her father from Israel, Meir traveled quite a bit outside the United States while growing up. This semester abroad provided her with an opportunity to live and study in a foreign country, as well as to explore her mother's home country.

During her senior year at Brown, Meir and a few other students decided to submit a proposal for NASA's Reduced Gravity Student Flight Opportunities program. This program gives undergraduates a chance to design an experiment, and if selected, fly their experiment on NASA's KC-135 aircraft. By flying in a parabolic flight pattern, 20-30 second periods of microgravity (weightlessness) are created within the aircraft. This allows researchers to conduct experiments and operations in microgravity without being in space. Astronauts also use this aircraft for training. Meir's Brown team's experiment was selected, and they had the opportunity to experience microgravity for the first time.

After graduating from Brown University, Meir obtained a Master of Space Studies degree from the International Space University in Strasbourg, France in 2000. The year-long program offers a multidisciplinary education, ranging from law to politics, life sciences, and engineering, all from the space perspective. Meir spent the year learning about space with students from over 20 different countries. She also had the opportunity to experience microgravity again that year, this time on CNES's (the French Space Agency) A-300 aircraft as an assistant researcher and subject in a study on echocardiography doppler. Meir's thesis topic for her master's degree was "Autonomous lunar transport vehicle: providing a link for scientific research".

NASA career
Meir worked for three years at NASA's Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston, Texas. She worked for Lockheed Martin Space Operations as an experiment support scientist for the Human Research Facility at the NASA Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston, Texas. Meir coordinated and supported human space life science experiments that were performed by astronauts on space shuttle and International Space Station (ISS) missions. These experiments included physiological studies (bone loss, muscle control/atrophy, lung function, etc.) to determine if any bodily processes were altered in the spaceflight environment. Meir guided these experiments through the necessary review cycles, developed procedures that the astronauts would use on-orbit, trained crew members, and provided ground support in the Mission Control Center while the astronauts were performing the experiments on the shuttle or ISS.

In September 2002, Meir served as an aquanaut on the joint NASA-NOAA NEEMO 4 expedition (NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations), an exploration research mission held in Aquarius, the world's only undersea research laboratory, four miles off shore from Key Largo. Meir and her crewmates spent five days saturation diving from the Aquarius habitat as a space analogue for working and training under extreme environmental conditions. The mission was delayed due to Hurricane Isadore, forcing National Undersea Research Center managers to shorten it to an underwater duration of five days. Then, three days into their underwater mission, the crew members were told that Tropical Storm Lili was headed in their direction and to prepare for an early departure from Aquarius. Fortunately, Lili degenerated to the point where it was no longer a threat, so the crew was able to remain the full five days.

At the time of NEEMO 4, Meir was leaning toward pursuing a PhD in a field related to evolutionary biology and/or life in extreme environments (astrobiology). She was also fascinated by marine biology (which suited the NEEMO mission well), and hoped to coordinate a specific topic of study to combine these main interests.

Meir was a semi-finalist for selection as a member of NASA Astronaut Group 20.

Comparative physiology research
Meir earned a Ph.D. from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Her Ph.D. research involved the diving physiology of emperor penguins and northern elephant seals. Meir spent time in Antarctica at a site called Penguin Ranch furthering her research into the diving abilities of the emperor penguin, scuba diving alongside the penguins under the ice. She also studied elephant seals while they were diving in the Pacific Ocean off Northern California.

Meir's current research involves bar-headed geese, which are able to tolerate extreme altitudes and low oxygen levels while flying over the Himalayas. Meir traveled to the Sylvan Heights Waterfowl Park in Scotland Neck, North Carolina so that the geese who would become her experimental subjects could imprint on her after their hatching. Meir plans to conduct wind-tunnel experiments with the geese to simulate the low-oxygen conditions of their flight paths over the Himalayas and learn more about their adaptation to high altitudes. In 2009, Meir was awarded a National Science Foundation International Research Post-doctoral Fellowship for this work.

Meir is a member of the science advisory board of Adventurers and Scientists for Conservation. Through that organization, she is hoping to establish a survey of bar-headed geese in the Himalayas to be carried out by adventurers and Sherpas.

Personal life
Meir has a private pilot's license, and also skydives. Meir enjoys scuba diving, hiking, skiing, playing soccer, softball and other sports, traveling and studying foreign languages.