BJ Navarro

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 BJ Navarro joined NASA Ames Research Center in October 1989. She is a recipient of the prestigious NASA Silver Snoopy, which is awarded by the U. S. Astronauts for outstanding contributions towards space flight safety and mission success. In her career, Ms. Navarro has lead life science space flight projects, provided stowage management on major Spacelab missions, coordinated science logistic support for payloads involving U. S. and international scientists and is now facilitating the management of biosciences flight projects as the Assistant Branch Chief of the Flight System Implementation Branch in the Space Biosciences Division at Ames Research Center (ARC). In this role, Ms. Navarro oversees space flight hardware design certification/integration and operations and works with NASA’s International Partners involved in the Human Research Program.

Ms. Navarro’s past successes include Project Manager for the US Holter Monitor 2, which is presently in use on the International Space Station and the management of 16 successful space flight projects. She was the Stowage Manager for the successful flights of STS-90, Neurolab (April 98), STS-47, Spacelab-J (September 1992) and STS-58 Space Life Science II (October 1993). She also has been involved in the Russian Cosmos Biosatellite Program where ARC has partnered with Russian in the bioscience arena.

Throughout Ms. Navarro’s career at ARC, she has also led numerous educational outreach projects. On behalf of the Space Biosciences Division she has:
• Developed Space Faring: The Radiation Challenge Educator Guide for Middle and High School.
• Conducted the Hyper-G National High School Competition held June 2005 for a team of school students to conduct original scientific research at ARC
• Managed “Flies in Space” outreach project from proposal through implementation
• Lead the 2004 Space Settlement Design Contest with 122 submissions which included 444 students and 29 teachers
• Managed the highly successful “SLS-2 Takes Science to the Schools” middle school educational outreach project
• Promoted outreach activities such as “NeurOn: Neurolab Online” and the “Ask a C. elegans Expert” website
• Served as technical advisor for Computer Visualizations, Inc. “Frogs In Space” educational CD