The NASA Space Radiation Summer School (“NSRSS”) at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory was designed to provide a “pipeline” of researchers to tackle the challenges of harmful radiation exposure to humans who will travel on space exploration missions. Co-sponsored by NASA’s Space Radiation Research Program, Brookhaven National Laboratory, U.S. Department of Energy, Loma Linda University Medical Center, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the Universities Space Research Association; the three-week course was piloted in 2004 as an invitational program.  Following the success of the first summer school, the course has been offered the past three summers through an open and increasingly competitive application process with applicant eligibility opened to both U.S. Citizens and foreign nationals.  Interest in the NSRSS is truly global with applications received from more than 20 countries over the last three years.

The course is taught by leading university and national laboratory biologists and physicists actively engaged in NASA space radiation research and BNL experts in heavy ion experimentation and methods. Each “professor” lectures on his/her research specialty: DNA damage and repair, genotoxicity measurements, cell cycle checkpoints and apoptosis, the bystander effect, genomic instability, neurodegeneration, tissue remodeling, and the relationships of these processes to carcinogenesis and late degenerative effects following exposure to space radiation, as well as the space radiation environment, physics and biochemistry of charged particle interaction with condensed matter, ionizing radiation dosimetry, and accelerator operations.

The 2008 course Scientific Director is Eleanor Blakely, Ph.D., Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the faculty is chaired by Cary Zeitlin, Ph.D., Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; Greg Nelson, Ph.D., Loma Linda University and Betsy Sutherland, Ph.D., Brookhaven National Laboratory.

For additional information on the NASA Space Radiation Summer School and the sponsoring organizations, please visit the following sites:

2008 NASA Space Radiation Summer School

2007 NASA Space Radiation Summer School

2006 NASA Space Radiation Summer School

2005 NASA Space Radiation Summer School

Course Sponsors

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Loma Linda University & Medical Center

NASA Space Radiation Research Program

NASA/BNL Space Radiation Biology Program

NASA Space Radiation Summer School (NSRSS) - BNL   

U.S. Department of Energy – Office of Science

 

Last updated
January 10, 2007