NASA Astronaut Kjell Lindgren, MD, will connect live from the International Space Station to the Biotechnology Innovation Organization’s BIO International Convention on June 14. While the world’s largest biotechnology meeting will take place in person in San Diego, Dr. Lindgren will explain from space how research and development in microgravity helps companies accelerate product development pipelines back on Earth. Dr. Lindgren will be joined by panelists who have experience connecting science from 250 miles above earth and will discuss practical steps to move the biotechnology industry into the future: Jessica Jensen, Vice President, Customer Operations & Integration, SpaceX; Michael López-Alegría, Axiom Space’s Chief Astronaut; Paul Reichert, Ph.D., Research Fellow, Merck; and Ken Savin, Ph.D., Chief Scientific Officer, Redwire.  The panel will be moderated by Jennifer Strong, Editorial Director, Audio and Live, for MIT Technology Review. The International Space Station has hosted more than 3,000 experiments since crew operations began more than 20 years ago. NASA, international partners, and the ISS National Lab have sponsored in total well over 1,200 biological and biotechnology experiments during that time span.  Crew-4 Mission Commander Lindgren has logged more than 141 days in space, participated in two spacewalks, and performed more than a hundred different scientific experiments. “The first all-private astronaut mission in April sparked a renewed interest in space and helped the world see the commercial potential of research and development in microgravity,” said BIO’s President and CEO Michelle McMurry-Heath. “Public-private partnerships are growing the capacity, complexity, and availability of orbital research and development to make it easier for biotechnology companies to participate. These are practical steps forward that will improve medicines and people’s lives.” The BIO International Convention returns in person for the first…

Dr. Michelle McMurry-Heath, President and CEO of the Biotechnology Innovation Organization (BIO), released the following statement responding to recent incidences of gun violence across the country: "I couldn’t sleep last night. It has been an incredibly difficult week. First my mother called. Locked in the house recovering from COVID, she confessed she had been unable to stop watching the coverage of the shooting in Texas. “Michelle, what got me is that most of them were just 10 years old, the same age as your daughter.” "Then I picked up my daughter and had to help her process her school’s explanation of the shooting to her and her classmates. And she asked one tragic and unanswerable question, “Why have so many of these shootings been in school, Mommy?” With that question, my heart fell right through my feet.  "So I looked to do what I could. I reached out to a friend whose son had been involved (but luckily escaped uninjured, at least physically) in the recent Burke School shooting in Northwest DC. And suddenly I remembered I had another friend and colleague whose two daughters had been involved in the 2018 Valentine’s Day school shooting in Parkland, Florida. It is remarkable to me that I now have two close friends who have experienced this sort of terror firsthand. I remember the friend saying to me, “You know my wife and I immigrated from Lebanon to escape violence, and yet…“ "…And yet. Here we are. We think of these events as rare, exceptional. And yet since Columbine in 1999, more than 311,000 American students have experienced gun violence at school. 311,000!! And yet in 2020, bullets replaced cars as the biggest cause of death for our children.  "And yet what can we say that has not been said a million times already? We are outraged, we are defeated, we have prayed for the families. But what have we done? What can we do? "In my family we always used to spend Memorial Day visiting the graves of our family members, paying tribute to…