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Callie Wynn is studying medical ailments for astronauts that also have implications for millions of people here on Earth.

A second-year aerospace PhD student at the University of Colorado Boulder, Wynn is a recipient of a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship.

The program provides three years of funding toward her PhD as well as professional development opportunities. The honor is a major achievement for any student, but especially so for Wynn, who did not originally see herself pursuing an advanced degree in aerospace.

“This wasn’t the plan,” Wynn said. “My undergrad was in kinesiology and I was going into physical therapy school, but I did some job shadowing and realized it wasn’t for me.”

She started pursuing old interests and joined an aerospace club at her undergraduate alma mater: Texas A&M University. It opened a doorway that changed her future.

“I found out about bioastronautics and in that moment realized, ‘This is it.’ It had the medical background I already had and the spaceflight applications that made me excited to get up and go to work,” she said.

She enrolled at 91��ý for a PhD and quickly became part of a project on Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS), a fainting disorder that affects over one million people in the United States. Astronauts returning to Earth also suffer from similar physiological challenges.

“I’ve been able to do quite a bit of research with human subjects,” Wynn said. “POTS is related to blood flow in the body. The orthostatic intolerance people experience is similar to what astronauts go through when they come back to Earth. They’re having problems with their cardiovascular system.”

Wynn hopes to build on that research through exploration of another ailment called Spaceflight-Associated Neuro-Ocular Syndrome (SANS). It is a condition that causes vision changes in microgravity due to fluid shifts in the body. It affects 70 percent of astronauts.

“While we want to understand what happens with intracranial pressure in space, we just don’t have the ability to do so directly.��I’m looking for countermeasures to mitigate this fluid shift,” Wynn said.

SANS is specific to astronauts, but the research has potential applications for conditions here on Earth that involve fluid buildup in the brain, a situation that impacts Wynn personally.

“Seven years ago, I was diagnosed with Idiopathic Intracranial Hypertension; an excess of spinal fluid build up in my brain. It puts pressure on the eyes and can lead to vision loss. Realizing how similar my condition is to SANS was a motivator for my research. I’m able to sit in research meetings and know what it’s like to have an intracranial monitor or a lumbar puncture,” Wynn said.

Smead Aerospace has been engaged in SANS research previously as part of the 2024 Polaris Dawn mission, where crewmembers wore special contact lenses that monitored intraocular pressure. That flight was just under five days. Wynn hopes to extend the research on future low Earth orbit missions to build a better understanding of SANS for longer duration flights, like to Mars.

“If we are sending people to planetary surfaces, to Mars, that transit time becomes much longer. You’re going to have more deconditioning of the brain, of the eyes. What amount of vision loss is expected and is okay? We need to develop better models and new ways to treat the condition,” Wynn said.

As she conducts research and advances her education as a PhD student, Wynn is excited at the potential for a future career and contributions to human spaceflight.

“These are projects I want to be on because I believe in this research so strongly,” Wynn said. “From the outside, it can look like magic, but as you learn it, it’s not magic. It’s science, technology, and engineering.”