The Student Board

Annie Shelton is a Gates Cambridge Scholar and PhD Candidate in Plant Sciences at the University of Cambridge. Her research aims to improve crop productivity in space and on Earth by aligning plant circadian rhythms with controlled lighting to optimize photosynthesis. She holds a Master’s in Integrative Plant Science from Cornell University, where she horticulture advancements of dwarf plums for space applications. She earned her B.S. in Neuroscience with a minor in Plant Biology from UC Riverside, where she worked as an Assistant Project Specialist in Dr. Robert Jinkerson’s Lab and contributed to exoplanet habitability modeling in Dr. Stephen Kane’s Planetary Research Lab. Outside academia, Annie is a Visiting Scholar at the Blue Marble Space Institute of Science and a Researcher with the Space Agriculture Laboratory Analysis Database (SALAD) Project. She serves as Mission Scientist and Payload Director for Mission MushVroom, the first experiment to grow oyster mushrooms in space aboard SpaceX’s Fram2 mission. She is also a Space Crop Specialist with FOODiQ Global, a two-time NASA Space Crop Production Intern, and currently a contracted Microbiology Scientist at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. Her interdisciplinary work spans Space Crop Production, Advanced Mushroom Production, Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA), Hydroponics, Fruit Tree Production, Artificial Photosynthesis, Tissue Culture, Plant Engineering & Breeding, Habitability Metrics, and Software Development.

Anna Wadhwa is an MD-PhD student at Harvard Medical School and MIT AeroAstro with a focus on Humans in Aerospace. She received her BS in Biochemistry from the New Jersey Institute of Technology in 2021, summa cum laude. Her prior experience spans various NASA centers, including: immune health at Johnson Space Center, fatigue countermeasures at Ames Research Center, and satellite algorithm development with Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Since starting at Harvard, she has been studying the use of artificial gravity for bone health with the NASA/JAXA MHU-8 mission. Now at MIT, she is also working to expand diagnostic capabilities in space with the SpaceX FRAM2 SpaceXray mission. She hopes to study physiological risks and develop countermeasures for astronaut health in lunar/Martian environments. Outside the lab, Anna enjoys running, hiking, skiing, and annoying her cat Laika. 

Donald S. Coon is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Agricultural and Biological Engineering with a minor in Horticultural Sciences at the University of Florida. His past degrees includes a Master's of Applied Biological Sciences, and a bachelors of Agricultural Education from the University of Arizona. Throughout his academics controlled environment agriculture (CEA) on the ground and in space have held a particular interest for him. This interest has also taken him to work within greenhouses and indoor farms such as Plenty, Walt Disney World, and Traders Hill Farm. Donald’s comprehensive background in controlled environment agriculture provides a interdisciplinary approach to space research, especially in areas related to sustainable agriculture and bioregenerative life support systems (BLSS) for long-term space missions. Currently he is working on the Energy Cascade family of predictive crop systems models for the management of gas exchanges, water, and biomass for CEA and BLSS applications.

Simone is an Amherst College physics major passionate about understanding the most fundamental laws of nature and how we as humans define the existence of life within the universe. She is currently working under Dr. Bardalez Gagliuffi to combine astrometry and radial velocity data to constrain the orbits and masses of brown dwarfs and exoplanets in the nearest 20 parsecs. In addition, she writes for the Astrobiology Society of America and interns with the Space Agriculture Laboratory Analysis Database (SALAD) where she contributes to the centralization of astrobotany data and educational resources. Simone plans to pursue a Ph.D. in astrophysics and a career in academia.

Mario Molina is a senior at the University of Florida studying Biosystems Engineering with a minor in Electrical Engineering. His early college experience consisted of working in Botany and Environmental Horticultural laboratories developing controlled environments and complex control systems. Leveraging his passion for tinkering and electronics, he joined his department's Space Plant lab under Dr. Correll and developed 3-D imaging robots for high through-put phenotyping. He is currently a 2x NASA Space Crop Production intern at Kennedy Space Center where he works on developing image segmentation software for Adavanced Plant Habitat aboard the ISS and contributes hardware designs for the upcoming Artemis III Mission: LEAF. In addition to this, Mario is a recipient of the national American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers Preprofessional Engineer of the year award (2025) and John B. Boy Sugar Scholarship. Outside of plants and engineering, Mario spends his time fixing broken retro guitar hero controllers and other electric memrobilia.

Madeline Marous is a recent graduate of Penn State University, with a Bachelor of Science in Cybersecurity Analytics and Operations, with a minor in Natural Science and a strong focus in software development. Her work in space research includes an internship at NASA Ames, where she created a graphical user interface for AMMPER, a computational tool studying the effects of radiation on microbes in deep space conditions. She also did an internship at NASA Glenn, working to convert software for a communications suite from MATLAB to C++. Her research also includes projects at Penn State, including implementing of machine learning algorithms for nuclear physics models, and performing quantum mechanical calculations of DNA nucleotides for space conditions. Her work with NASA earned her the Penn State University Libraries Undergraduate Research Award, the Outstanding Internship in Cybersecurity Award, and a spot representing NASA Ames and Glenn as their 2024 Intern Week representative.

Ashini is a junior at Harvard studying Astrophysics and Chemical and Physical Biology with a specific interest in understanding how our genome responds to space radiation. She has conducted research at Massachusetts General Hospital studying the effects of radiation on osteoclasts, at NASA Ames research center understanding how immune cells and various demographics differentially respond to simulated space radiation, and is most recently diving into the biophysical intricacies of the homologous recombination repair pathway. She also serves as outreach coordinator for the Harvard-MIT branch of the Aerospace Medicine Student and Resident organization. Outside of all things space biology related she is passionate about preventative medicine and understanding the environmental determinants of cancer on Earth. In her free time, she enjoys hiking, making vegan cheeses, and Indian classical dancing.

Julianna is an undergraduate at Cornell University studying Plant Science with a focus on controlled environment agriculture and plant adaptations to the space environment. She is passionate about sustainable agriculture, particularly hydroponics, and its applications to long duration space missions and habitation. Julianna is currently engaged in research regarding both microgravity and hypergravity effects on plants, and intends to continue astrobotany research with a Ph.D. program and beyond.

Ruth Singh is a PhD student in the Blaber lab at RPI. She has completed her Bachelor’s in Physics and a Diploma in Astronomy and Astrophysics from University of Mumbai, India. She is also a Board of Trustee at ‘Project Encephalon’ a neuroscience organization in India. She is currently working as a Research Intern at Mason Lab analysing single cell omics datasets from spaceflight missions.