Dava Newman

She recalls growing up in Helena, Montana, watching the Apollo Moon landings on television, which sparked her interest in space; in college she was often one of very few women in her science and engineering classes.⁠[1]

She played on the University of Notre Dame women’s basketball team and has also run the Boston Marathon and competed as a national triathlete.⁠[2]

She graduated from the University of Notre Dame in 1986.⁠[3]

In 1989 she earned dual master’s degrees from MIT in aeronautics and astronautics and in technology and policy, followed by a PhD in aerospace biomedical engineering; before joining the MIT faculty she had stints at the Kennedy Space Center and the NASA Ames Research Center.⁠[4]

She received her PhD from MIT in 1992 and, after a year on the faculty of the University of Houston, joined the MIT faculty in 1993, where she has remained since.⁠[5]

She was principal investigator of the Dynamic Load Sensors experiment on Space Shuttle mission STS-62, which measured astronaut-induced disturbances of the microgravity environment; its successor, the Enhanced Dynamic Load Sensors experiment, flew aboard the Russian Mir space station from 1996 to 1998. She was also a co-investigator on the Mental Workload and Performance Experiment flown on STS-42.⁠[6]

On a 2002 sabbatical she and her partner sailed around the world for 18 months, visiting 33 island nations and teaching thousands of students about science, technology and global change.⁠[7]

She recalls that 1,000 nautical miles from land in the Pacific, the hydraulic steering of their 47-foot sailboat failed because of a cracked copper hose; she replaced the fluid with olive oil bought in Panama and sailed for more than a week to reach the Marquesas Islands.⁠[3]

From 2003 to 2015 she directed MIT’s Technology and Policy Program, a multidisciplinary graduate program with more than 1,300 alumni; she was also named a MacVicar Faculty Fellow for contributions to undergraduate education and is a HarvardHarvard UniversityHarvard University is a private research university in Massachusetts, established by the Massachusetts Bay Colony legislature in 1636 and named in 1639 for early benefactor John Harvard. Its principal campuses are in Cambridge and the Allston and Longwood neighborhoods of Boston. It includes Harvard College, graduate and professional schools, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Two governing boards share oversight. Alan M. Garber was president as of October 2026, and the endowment stood at $56.9 billion at the end of fiscal 2025.Open the full entry–MIT Health Sciences and Technology faculty member.⁠[8]

At an MIT Enterprise Forum global broadcast she presented the BioSuit, funded by the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts, with a 30-year goal of a sleek suit that protects astronauts and lets them power-walk on Mars; she said its compression-skin technologies could first be applied in orthotic devices to help stroke patients regain mobility.⁠[9]

In July 2007 MIT issued a news release on the BioSuit, which she had been developing for about seven years with colleague Jeff Hoffman, students and a local design firm; instead of gas pressurization, the suit relies on mechanical counter-pressure from tight layers of material wrapped around the body.⁠[10]

That summer she and the BioSuit were featured by more than 50 media outlets, including the CBSCBSCBS is an American commercial broadcast television network. It was founded in 1927 as United Independent Broadcasters, renamed the Columbia Broadcasting System in 1928, and grew from a radio network into a television network under William S. Paley. With ABC and NBC it is one of the three traditional U.S. broadcast networks; it has been owned in turn by Westinghouse, Viacom, ViacomCBS and Paramount Global, has been owned by Paramount Skydance Corporation since 2025, and is one of the five networks that rotate in the White House television pool.Open the full entry Evening News, NPR’s Science Friday, USA TodayUSA TODAYUSA TODAY is a national general-interest daily newspaper and news brand in the United States. Founded under the leadership of Allen Neuharth and first published on September 15, 1982, it is known for its color pages, short stories, and abundant graphics. It is now published by USA TODAY Co. (formerly Gannett) and is the national flagship brand of the USA TODAY Network, and its brands also include the sports brand USA TODAY Sports.Open the full entry and TIMETIMETIME is an American newsmagazine and media brand founded by Henry Luce and Briton Hadden, which published its first issue on March 3, 1923; it is headquartered in New York and known for its Person of the Year selection and the TIME100 list. Since 2018 it has been personally owned by Marc and Lynne Benioff; its current Chief Executive Officer is Jessica Sibley, and its Editor-in-Chief is Sam Jacobs.Open the full entry.⁠[11]

She served as director of the MIT Portugal Program from 2011 to 2015 and again from 2017 to 2021.⁠[8]

In 2012 she took a five-month sabbatical to sail from Marblehead, Massachusetts, to Guatemala via Mexico, Belize and Honduras; at the time she oversaw about 125 graduate students, and the BioSuit was on exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.⁠[7]

She was nominated by President Barack Obama in January 2015 as NASA Deputy Administrator, confirmed by the U.S. Senate that April, sworn in on May 15 and began her duties on May 18, helping Administrator Charles Bolden lead the agency.⁠[1]

Her term as Deputy Administrator ran from May 2015 through January 2017; she was the first female engineer and scientist in the role and focused on articulating the human Journey to Mars, transformative aeronautics, a strategic innovation framework, and diversity and inclusion in STEM.⁠[12]

She appeared on the Lex FridmanLex FridmanLex Fridman is a Soviet-born, US-raised computer scientist and podcast host who works as an MIT research scientist on human-AI interaction and autonomous driving. His Lex Fridman Podcast is known for hours-long conversations with guests including heads of state and technology leaders.Open the full entry Podcast, discussing her sailing circumnavigation, life on Mars, NASA’s Artemis program, SpaceXSpaceXSpaceX is a company founded by Elon Musk in 2002 whose businesses include space transportation, Starlink satellite communications and artificial intelligence. It went public in 2026 under the ticker SPCX.Open the full entry, science on CubeSats and the spacesuit of the future.⁠[13]

On December 22, 2020, MIT announced her appointment as director of the MIT Media Lab, effective July 1, 2021; a worldwide search had identified 60 candidates, 13 of whom were interviewed.⁠[5]

On April 4, 2025, Hashim Sarkis, dean of MIT’s School of Architecture and Planning, announced that she would step down as Media Lab director at the end of the academic year; his letter credited her four-year tenure with launching initiatives in women’s health, climate sustainability and life with AI.⁠[14]

She was to take a sabbatical in fall 2025 and then return to the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics; she also co-chaired the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on Space Technologies.⁠[14]

On December 9 the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine released A Science Strategy for the Human Exploration of Mars, written by a committee she co-chaired; it set out 11 priority science goals for the first crewed Mars missions, led by the search for evidence of past or present life, and favored an initial 30-sol crewed landing followed by a 300-sol mission.⁠[15]

Massachusetts Institute of Technology: Official website: https://www.mit.edu/ (opens in a new window)⁠[8]

NASA: Official website: https://www.nasa.gov/ (opens in a new window)⁠[12]

MIT Media Lab: Official website: https://www.media.mit.edu/ (opens in a new window)⁠[8]