Janet E. Baulch

I am Janet Baulch, Ph.D. and under the auspices of agencies such as the DOE, NASA and DOD I have spent more than 20 years looking at the ways that radiation exposures might affect us and just how harmful it might really be. I am not an astrophysicist, nor am I a rocket scientist or a neurosurgeon, yet somehow I now find myself among a small community of researchers studying what space radiation might do to the brains of astronauts during a mission to Mars. My expertise in radiation biology led to my inclusion as Faculty Chair for Experimental Methods and lecturer for the NASA Space Radiation Summer School from 2009-2012. Among my radiation research interests are epigenetics (otherwise known as mechanisms that cells use to turn genes on and off) and the development of treatments that can protect against the adverse effects of radiation exposure, with an overarching goal to understand how brain functions are altered by irradiation.