Finding the Overlap in Medicine and Space: A Conversation About Today's Scientific Designs and the Promise of Tomorrow

Summary: Following a youthful fascination with outer space and what lies beyond the stars launched Robert (Bob) Benkowski into his first career as a senior engineer working for McDonnell Douglas in the Space Station Project Office at NASA, Johnson Space Center. Serendipity would catapult his career into medicine and inform his curiosity and ability to consider many intriguing questions, such as, how are the fields of aerospace and life sciences medicine related and support each other? What can we learn from NASA’s research on human physiology and what does it mean to our lives today? What critical considerations need to be made in developing implantable blood pumps and artificial hearts? And where does artificial intelligence and robotics meet and for what benefit in future medicine? All these questions and more are the subject of this episode as Bob Benkowski narrates in crisp detail his life-long love and dedication to the fields of science and medicine.