Serena Auñón-Chancellor

Education

Auñón-Chancellor finished high school at Poudre in Fort Collins, Colorado, in 1993. She earned a bachelor’s in electrical engineering from George Washington University, then a medical degree from UTHealth in Houston in 2001, and later a master’s in public health from UTMB in 2006. After a three-year internal medicine residency at UTMB ending in 2004, she served an extra year as chief resident and also completed an aerospace medicine residency there. She holds board certifications in both internal medicine and aerospace medicine.

Medical career

Hired by NASA as a flight surgeon in 2006, she spent over nine months in Russia supporting medical operations for ISS astronauts. She also practiced medicine near the South Pole and underwater at Aquarius Reef Base. She received the 2009 Julian E. Ward Memorial Award from the Aerospace Medical Association for developing medical kits for launch and landing in Kazakhstan. She serves as a Professor of Clinical Medicine for the Texas A&M Family Medicine Residency Program and was Director of the UTMB Aerospace Medicine Residency Program.

NASA career

Selected as an astronaut candidate in June 2009, she completed training in 2011. From 2010 to 2011 she spent two months in Antarctica with the ANSMET expedition, which returned over 1200 meteorites. In June 2012 she piloted a DeepWorker 2000 submersible during NEEMO 16, and in July 2015 she participated as an aquanaut in NEEMO 20. In 2018 she spent 196 days, 17 hours, and 49 minutes on the ISS as a flight engineer for Expeditions 56 and 57, arriving on Soyuz MS-09.

She published research on space radiation with her husband in 2018. In 2021 she served as Deputy Chief of the Space and Life Sciences Directorate at Johnson Space Center. She later became a Clinical Associate Professor of Medicine at LSU Health New Orleans School of Medicine in Baton Rouge and continues to provide medical advice for NASA.

Personal life

Her father, Jorge Auñón, is a Cuban exile who arrived in the United States in 1960; her mother is Margaret Auñón. She is married to physicist Jeff Chancellor and has a step-daughter. She is a licensed amateur radio operator (call sign KG5TMT), earning her Technician Class license in June 2017.

During her ISS mission she made random ham radio contacts over the US. She teaches at Texas A&M University and previously directed the Texas Medical Branch Aerospace Medicine Residency Program. Her research includes thrombosis in microgravity and space radiation effects.

Did You Know?

• In June 2012, she piloted a DeepWorker 2000 submersible during the NEEMO 16 mission off Key Largo, Florida.