Biography

William (Ed) Powers, MD is the Chief Medical Officer of the Center for Aerospace and Extreme Environments Medicine (CASEEM). He joined UCF in October 2025 after serving as a supervisory medical officer at the Federal Aviation Administration. His previous employment includes director of flight medicine for Axiom Space, director of the aerospace medicine residency program at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, director of the university flight medicine clinic, and chief of NASA’s Medical Operations Branch.  He has extensive experience with the medical management of human spaceflight including six missions of the Space Shuttle program, four missions of the Russian Soyuz program, and three commercial space missions with Axiom Space.

Dr. Powers holds master’s and bachelor’s degrees in biomedical engineering and a master’s degree in aerospace medicine. He is residency trained, and board certified in the specialties of Aerospace Medicine and Emergency Medicine, and he has served as the medical director of several emergency departments. He was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to lecture on the topics of Aerospace Medicine and Emergency Medicine for six months at the University of Vienna, Austria and he was principal investigator for several FAA research projects concerning commercial human spaceflight.