Dorit Donoviel, Ph.D., serves as executive director for the Translational Research Institute for Space Health (TRISH), a NASA-funded consortium led by Baylor College of Medicine and which includes partnerships with the California Institute of Technology and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dr. Donoviel also is an associate professor in the Center for Space Medicine and the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Pharmacology at Baylor. She is a long-standing faculty senator and serves on the College’s Institutional Policy Committee.
Dr. Donoviel’s training includes a B.A. in biochemistry from the University of California, San Diego, and a Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of Washington. Dr. Donoviel also performed postgraduate training at the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute, formerly the Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute, at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Under Dr. Donoviel’s leadership, the mission of TRISH is to lead a national effort in translating cutting-edge, emerging terrestrial biomedical research and technology development into applied space flight human risk mitigation strategies for human exploration missions. Before her role at TRISH, Dr. Donoviel served as deputy chief scientist and industry forum lead for the National Space Biomedical Research Institute (NSBRI). Before her work with TRISH and NSBRI, Dr. Donoviel worked in the private sector, where she led metabolism drug discovery programs at Lexicon Pharmaceuticals.
Under Dr. Donoviel’s leadership, the NSBRI successfully completed a pathfinding international study collaborating with the German Space Agency to use their brand new spaceflight analog facility,: envihab. This groundbreaking pilot study resulted in more than five scientific publications and paved the way for NASA to use a ground-based model for the highest risk to human health in low Earth orbit – the Spaceflight Associated Neuro-ocular Syndrome.
TRISH, under Dr. Donoviel’s leadership, has matured into a highly successful innovation research program that serves the needs of NASA and the nation. During the 2020 pandemic, when academic laboratories were shuttered, Dr. Donoviel directed funded researchers to fight the pandemic by pivoting their work toward developing novel diagnostics, therapeutics and medical training. This enabled the researchers to get back to work by demonstrating novel approaches that combat the virus response at the same time that they delivered proof of principle for a medical application for spaceflight.
Dr. Donoviel’s vision and ability to bring multiple stakeholders together to work toward a common cause have enabled TRISH to build EXPAND, the first-ever human research database and repository to collect data and biospecimens from private spaceflight participants. Working closely with SpaceX and their first all-commercial crew, Inspiration4, TRISH has successfully implemented a scientifically robust space research program and completed data collection in record time.
Dr. Donoviel is the recipient of awards from the NASA Human Research Program and was awarded the NSBRI Pioneer Award. She continues to author numerous scientific articles and papers in academic journals and is a sought-after expert for interviews by regional, national and international news organizations. She regularly authors opinion pieces on the importance of health research in spaceflight. Dr. Donoviel serves as a keynote speaker about space health concerns, science and biomedical innovations at numerous domestic and international conferences.
