The Astrobotany Team

Hawg

Hawg is the current CEO of astrobotany.com. Hawg assumes all traditional CEO duties including: sleeping most of the day, eating most of the day, and generally just lying about most of the day. Occasionally, Hawg will inspect new astrobotany shirts. Hawg is very loved even if he did lose his life savings in a crypto alt coin called "FishCoin".

Binky

Binky is the current CFO of astrobotany.com. Binky is a young business upstart who is gunning for Hawg's position as CEO. Like most MBAs, he provides zero value for the company and is constantly bothering everyone. Binky is a lovable rascal.

Kai Rasmussen

Kai Rasmussen is an alumnus of the NASA funded Gilroy Lab at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he studied genetic expression of plants grown in space. He is passionate about science outreach and education and founded astrobotany.com in 2017 with the goal of providing free resources to spaceflight plant researchers and the public. He is currently a cGMP scientist and the director of astrobotany.com.

Sam Humphrey

Sam Humphrey is a Masters student in the Horticultural Science Department at North Carolina State University. Currently he is working on database and journal projects with Astrobotany.com, he is a Visiting Scholar at the Blue Marble Space Institute of Science, and he recently led a team of engineers to design a space plant growth chamber for the NASA/Fairchild Growing Beyond Earth Maker Contest. Sam loves sharing his passion for astrobotany, controlled environment agriculture, and bioregenerative life support with anyone who will listen, and he writes informative articles for astrobotany.com.

Gil Cauthorn

Gil Cauthorn is an astrobotany research and education program coordinator in Japan. His research has focused on morphological variation of microgreens in space, and has been conducted in support of NASA researchers as well as in collaboration with the Gilroy Lab. He is the development director of AIRI (Astrobotany International Research Initiative) and a primary investigator with Magnitude.io, currently focusing on the application of legume and rhizobia symbiotic interactions in bioregenerative life-support systems in space.

Karissa Red Bear

Karissa Red Bear is the director of astrobotany.com logistics and site support. Karissa handles inventory, shipping, and shop management. She is also an excellent Earth gardener.

Dr. Richard Barker

Dr. Richard Barker is a postdoctoral research associate in the Gilroy Lab at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Dr. Barker helped complete the first full transcriptomic RNAseq analysis of Arabidopsis Thaliana from BRIC19. He creates data visualization tools to make spaceflight data accessible to the public. Dr. Barker is an astrobotany consultant for astrobotany.com

Isaac Evavold

Isaac Evavold is a developer who built some of the earliest versions of the site during his time in the Gilroy Lab at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is currently a tech consultant for astrobotany.com

Dr. Simon Gilroy

Dr. Simon Gilroy is the PI of the Gilroy Lab at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His research focus is spaceflight plant biology and plant cell signaling. He is a life science advisor to Congress and NASA. Dr. Gilroy is an astrobotany consultant for astrobotany.com.

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