UCF’s leading space medicine experts, valued strategic partners and an astronaut who holds NASA’s record for spacewalks will gather April 10 in Lake Nona’s Medical City to discuss how they can work together to keep space travelers healthy and use that research to create groundbreaking clinical innovations on Earth.
The “Star Nona 2026” event is led by the Lake Nona Research Council, which is focused on encouraging interdisciplinary scientific partnerships between industry, academia and healthcare.
The council includes physicians and researchers from UCF, Orlando Health, AdventHealth, the Florida Space Institute, the Orlando VA Medical Center, Nemours Children’s Health, business and industry.
Star Nona 2026 Event Details
“Our goal is to bring together space medicine leaders and experts from academia, medicine and the space industry to find more ways we can work together to research the health impacts of space flight and how our discoveries can also improve healthcare on Earth,” says Dr. Michal Masternak, UCF professor of medicine.
An anti-aging and cancer researcher, Masternak leads the Lake Nona Research Council’s space medicine research group. He also leads the College of Medicine’s program that processes astronaut samples so physicians and scientists can analyze the immediate impact of space travel on astronauts’ bodies.
Sessions will include presentations on:
- Microgravity and radiation exposure and their impact on human physical and mental health
- How space travel affects muscles, bones, cells, vision and the brain
- Protecting muscles in space (led by AdventHealth researchers)
- Next generation of the space station
- New technologies for diagnosing how space travel impacts human cells.
These presentations will feature UCF researchers from medicine, mechanical and aerospace engineering, and kinesiology and rehabilitation sciences. UCF graduate students and post-doctoral scientists will also present research posters on space medicine.
The plenary speaker is NASA astronaut Robert Curbeam, a U.S. Navy captain who completed four spacewalks during space shuttle Discovery’s 2006 mission to the International Space Station.
The Space Coast’s College of Medicine
Located 45 miles west of the Space Coast and Kennedy Space Center, UCF’s College of Medicine is the perfect partner to chart a new frontier in healthcare as humans prepare for longer missions to the moon and Mars, and commercial space flights take more civilians into space.
The goal: explore how factors such as microgravity, radiation and isolation impact the human body in space and how that knowledge can drive innovation into diagnostics, treatment and disease prevention on Earth.
To further those efforts, UCF has created a new Center for Aerospace and Extreme Environments Medicine (CASEEM), which includes UCF faculty experts in medicine, engineering, computer science, psychology, arts and educational leadership. This interdisciplinary group will work together to research and develop new technologies for keeping space travelers healthy, as well as soldiers on military missions, deep sea explorers and mountain climbers.
About the Lake Nona Research Council
Dr. Edward Ross, the College of Medicine’s chair of medicine and assistant dean for research, leads the Lake Nona Research Council.
Dr. Ross says Star Nona and the partnerships it creates will help solidify UCF and Medical City’s reputation as a premier center for space medicine.
“When people think of keeping space visitors healthy, we want them to immediately think UCF.” — Edward Ross, College of Medicine’s chair of medicine
“As a university, UCF was born to create the workforce to send humans to the moon,” he says. “We’re continuing that legacy with space medicine. When people think of keeping space visitors healthy, we want them to immediately think UCF.”
Event Registration
Star Nona 2026 will be held at the UCF Lake Nona Cancer Center, with registration beginning at 8:15 a.m. Star Nona is made possible by support and sponsorships from Dr. Jogi Pattisapu and the Hydrocephalus and Neuroscience Institute, Tavistock Development Company and the Florida Space Institute. To sign up to attend the event, please visit med.ucf.edu/biomed/starnona.