 I enjoy solving problems, so when I talk to students today, I tell them, if you like to solve a problem, I mean, you get a kick out of getting that answer and drawing a circle around it, engineering might be for you. That was me, so I like to solve problems, so and I was a good student, but enjoyed math and science the most, so engineering seemed like a good fit for that and I also liked chemistry, so I chose chemical engineering. Georgia Tech was in my backyard having completed high school in Atlanta, so it was a natural choice for me to go to Georgia Tech and my path to NASA was not a typical one. I wasn't always dreamed of working for NASA or always dreamed of wanting to be an astronaut. I had met my first husband while I was at Georgia Tech and he had co-opt with NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, so I was headed to Huntsville and there aren't many chemical plants in Huntsville, so I was fortunate enough to also be hired into Marshall Space Flight Center. Had that not happened, I probably would have ended up in the oil and gas industry, which at the time was hiring a lot of chemical engineers, maybe ended up in Houston. So I was really fortunate, I got in at NASA and initially into the propulsion group but only spent about a year there and found my way to a fledgling life support group, which had just been given the responsibility for the space station job way back in the mid-80s. So it was a really good fit for my chemical engineering because life support systems are chemical processes and so I really enjoyed that and enjoyed starting working on the space station way back in the beginning. It sure is an exciting time. I just came from the Flight Readiness Review for our next crew launch to the space station and we'll be launching next week. So it's a really busy time, really exciting time for NASA and our international partners. Not only are more countries interested in space but more private interest is coming from the private sector, commercial space as well. One of the key missions for the International Space Station is to be a test bed where we can learn about the systems and about the effects on the human body that we will need to do these future missions beyond low Earth orbit. So things like the life support systems but also the effects of weightlessness on the human body over long periods of time and we need to develop those technologies and do that human research so that we know how to keep crews healthy as for the missions to the moon and Mars. So the ISS is a really critical test bed platform and how's it changing over time? Gosh, we are entering our third decade on ISS. Our first decade was all about assembly which we completed in 2011 and then the last decade was really learning how to use and expand those capabilities on the space station to do research. And now, especially now that we have our commercial crew vehicles flying, we're really maximizing the full potential of the space station. So we have more crew. That means we can do more research. We have more partners participating, both international and commercial. And so all that adds up to really maximizing its full potential. Our international partnership is the reason the ISS has been so successful. And we are seeing more and more interest in other countries, not just our regular partners but other countries and nations wanting to participate and even fly their own astronauts. So that's a great opportunity. It's also a challenge because we have limited flight opportunities even with more vehicles and limited space on the space station to do things. But I think as we and other countries expand our commercial capabilities, there will be more opportunities. So one of the areas we are seeing promising markets for in tourism are these flying astronauts from countries, from sovereign nations. And we think that's going to be a promising market for these private companies that want to have platforms in low-Earth orbit and do activities. So I think it's a challenge but also an opportunity. Our vision for a low-Earth orbit economy is hopefully multiple human or human-tended commercially-owned and operated platforms. One day we will retire the space station. It won't last forever but we don't want a gap in low-Earth orbit and human space flight. So we are doing all we can to enable a future where we have privately owned and operated platforms where NASA can purchase services and other countries and entities can as well for what we still need to do in low-Earth orbit. And so we call it, we want to be one of many customers. So we, with the growing number of commercial Leo satellites and constellations, it does increase our efforts to ensure there's no interference with the space station. We work that closely with the FAA and those providers when they're going to be doing their launches to ensure that we stay out of each other's way. And we have had to do some avoidance maneuvers occasionally to avoid some objects but that's pretty rare. So yeah, so far so good. Well I would say it's a great time to be starting a career in space and there's lots of paths to take. Not just the traditional STEM, don't have to be an engineer. Don't get me wrong I like being an engineer but there are all kinds of careers in the space business and not just with NASA but exciting opportunities with our commercial space providers as well. So when I started there were very few women in leadership positions. That landscape has definitely changed and when I started working on the space station I never imagined one day I'd become the director. So my journey has had a lot of twists and turns and I said yes to opportunities and jobs when they were offered and those things led to the next thing. I would say don't try to start with the perfect job or map the perfect career just take an opportunity and look for ways to contribute and find your niche and let it lead you to the next thing. So pretty much everyone I've talked to has not climbed the ladder straight up. It's more of a jungle gym and like me I started out in propulsion and that wasn't really for me and found my way to the life support system area which I made a career on. So I would say just being open to that and look for that first opportunity and go from there. It has been a challenge boy. Initially our onsite work was restricted so some projects were especially the non-critical projects were delayed because we couldn't bring people onsite to do the hands-on work. Critical projects have been remarkably successful though. The teams have found a way to safely continue to execute. I know at Mission Control there are multiple Mission Control rooms and they work from one and clean the next one and do shifts that way. So we've made it work and we've kept this had to keep the space station flying and all of those activities. So the team has really risen to the challenge now that the vaccines available and people are really starting to get vaccinated. I think things will get easier. Some of our centers are going opening to the next stage and allowing more people onsite. So we'll start to see things hopefully get back to a little bit more normal. I would love to sure but I'm also happy at this point to enable others to go. I think at this point in my career I probably destined to stay on the ground. We've got a whole cadre of younger astronauts. So developing life support systems in space like I said it's a lot of chemical processes that we use and it's a combination of liquids and gases and solids which as you can imagine a microgravity behave differently together. So phase separation is more difficult. I'll give you one example. We process urine into drinking water and you might imagine if you were to do that on the ground it would be a fairly simple process. You're distilling urine, you're boiling a pot of urine on the stove and the steam rises and you collect the purified water and the solid is left behind. Well in microgravity the way we do it we still boil urine but we have to do it in a rotating centrifugal use centrifugal force to rotate it so it slings the liquid to the outside walls where it's evaporated. And then we suck the condensate, the steam away. So everything is more complicated. But we recycle over 90% of the water. We're getting close to not recycling 98% of the water. And on the carbon dioxide that we remove from the air we are able to recover about half of the oxygen back. So recycle about half of the air and we're working on technologies to go farther than that. You mentioned the effect on the human body. We're doing a lot of research on ways to counter the effects of weightlessness. Exercise is a very important countermeasure we call it. And it has to exercise a couple hours a day just to counter those effects of a long-term weightlessness. But we've gotten pretty good at how to do that. You do notice when they land they need help getting out of the spacecraft. You can imagine a mission to Mars where they're in space for six months or longer and then nobody's there to help them get out of the spacecraft. They're going to have to get themselves out. So we have a ways to go to figure out ways to make that work. But the space station is a wonderful test bed for learning. We know that no one country can do everything by themselves. If we're going to explore space we need to do it together and that's been very important to us. And so our partnerships are very critical. So groups like the ITU not only do you provide collaboration opportunities but develop these important interoperability standards. And we've developed other interoperability standards so that different countries can bring contributions and we know that they'll plug and play together. And I think that's really important to enable everyone to participate and it also drives the global commercial partnerships as well. So I think it's a very important role.