NASA flight engineer Kathleen “Kate” Rubins leaves on Friday for the fourth time in her career in an effort to prepare the International Space Station (ISS) for solar power upgrades.
Rubins, 42, was born in Farmington, Connecticut in 1978, but grew up in Napa, the heart of California’s wine country.
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After graduating from Vintage High School in 1996, Rubins earned a degree in molecular biology from the University of California, San Diego, just three years later.
In 2005, Rubins earned a doctorate in cancer biology from Stanford University’s Department of Biochemistry and the Department of Microbiology and Immunology.
There, she and colleagues from the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases and the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention developed the first model of smallpox infection, in addition to a complete map of the transcriptome of the poxvirus.
She also studied virus-host interactions using in vitro and animal model systems.
After her time at Stanford, Rubins began working as a co-principal investigator at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s MIT Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research.
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At MIT, Rubin led a laboratory of 14 researchers studying viral diseases affecting Central and West Africa and traveled to the Democratic Republic of the Congo to conduct further research and conduct study areas.
Her laboratory focused on poxviruses, host-pathogen interaction, and viral mechanisms for regulating transcription, translation, and degradation of host cell mRNA.
Rubin has also worked on collaborative projects with the military to develop therapies for Ebola and Lassa viruses.
In the summer of 2009, she was selected by NASA as one of the nine elected members of the 20th NASA astronaut class.
She has received extensive training and instruction in ISS systems, spacecraft, robotics, physiological training, T 38 flight training, and training in water and desert.
During her first spaceflight on Expedition 48/49 in July 2016, Rubins became the first person to sequence DNA in space, and the crew of the expeditions conducted or participated in more than 275 different experiments.
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Rubins also cultured heart cells, or cardiomyocytes, in cell culture and performed quantitative, real-time PCR and microbiome experiments while in orbit.
The veteran astronaut serves aboard the ISS on a six-month mission as a flight engineer for the crew of Expedition 63/64.