Francine Garrett-Bakelman, MD, PhD, is a cancer doctor and researcher at UVA. She worked with NASA on a twins study.
On March 3, 2016, NASA astronaut Scott Kelly came home from a yearlong stay on the International Space Station, and a young physician-scientist, Francine Garrett-Bakelman, was waiting anxiously to receive samples of Scott Kelly’s blood that had been collected on the space station. Those samples, along with many others collected since 2014, would allow her and a massive team of colleagues to conduct far-reaching tests to determine how Kelly’s extended time in space had affected him. The researchers could then compare his results with those from his identical twin brother, who had remained on Earth. [Read more]