Cady Coleman ’91PhD with Robonaut 2, a space robot developed with the help of UMass Amherst alumni working for General Electric and NASA.
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Come Learn With Me
Alumna inspires students from space
Catherine “Cady” Coleman ’91PhD says she’s aboard the International Space Station at just the right time for it to feed her lifelong love of science. Coleman flew aboard the Russian Soyuz rocket to the orbiting station in December and returned to earth on May 23.
After years under construction and years when astronauts used the station primarily to learn how to live and work in space, the International Space Station can now function as a full-fledged laboratory where the crew spends most of their day performing experiments. “It’s a place that supports tremendous science,” Coleman says.
This was the third trip to space for the western Massachusetts resident, who earned a doctoral degree in polymer science at UMass Amherst.
She believes it’s important to go to space to perform experiments that are impossible on earth. For example, in zero gravity astronauts can study intricacies of fluid dynamics that have far-reaching implications for manufacturing. Additionally, analyzing the reactions of astronauts’ bodies and minds to extended periods in space will expand knowledge of human life sciences. “I don’t mind being a lab rat,” Coleman says.
She is also a teacher. In March, Coleman answered questions posed by public school students from western Massachusetts about everything from the worms in the space station lab to the working relationships among its multi-national crew. She spoke live with the students via a downlink made possible by NASA and a partnership of UMass Amherst and Springfield Technical Community College.
Connecting with Coleman may motivate some students to become scientists, just as Coleman was inspired by a visit from astronaut Sally Ride when she was in college. Coleman said, “I just looked at her and I thought, ‘I want that job.’ I’d seen a lot of astronauts on TV, in pictures; none of them looked like me. It was a bunch of guys that seemed a lot older to me and they didn’t have much hair… and then I meet somebody like Sally Ride and I think, maybe that could be me.”