Sara R. Zwart, Ph.D.
SeniorScientist
sara.zwart1@nasa.gov

Sara R. Zwart earned her Bachelor of Science degree in Biological Sciences from the University of Notre Dame in 1999, and her doctorate in Nutritional Sciences from the University of Florida in 2003. She joined the Nutritional Biochemistry Laboratory at NASA's Johnson Space Center in 2003 as a National Research Council Post-doctoral Fellow, and then began as a Research Scientist in the laboratory in 2005. She is now a Senior Scientist and Deputy Manager for Nutritional Biochemistry.

As a member of the Nutritional Biochemistry Laboratory, she has been involved with research investigating relationships between nutrition and side effects of spaceflight, including bone loss, changes in iron metabolism, and oxidative damage. She has experience working with ground-based analogs of spaceflight, including cell culture models, NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations (NEEMO) projects, extravehicular activity analogs at the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory at the Johnson Space Center, and bed rest models. She is currently researching the development of various nutritional countermeasures to prevent negative side effects of space flight.