Dr. Mae Jemison

Dr. Mae C. Jemison, the first woman of color in the world to go into space, served six years as a NASA astronaut. Aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour, STS-47 Spacelab J mission in September 1992, she performed experiments in material science, life sciences and human adaptation to weightlessness.

Jemison started The Jemison Group, Inc. a technology consulting firm integrating critical socio-cultural issues into the design of engineering and and science projects.

She is leading 100 Year Starship (100YSS), a bold, far reaching new initiative to assure the capabilities exist for human travel beyond our solar system to another star within the next 100 years. Her team won the competitive, single awardee grant in February 2012 from DARPA, the U.S. Defense Department's premiere research group responsible for the development of the Internet and GPS.