The University of Central Florida has hired a leader to build an aerospace medicine program.
Dr. Emmanuel Urquieta said in a LinkedIn post that he accepted a tenure-track associate professor role where he will serve as vice president of aerospace for the medical school at the Orlando-based university. Urquieta is currently chief medical officer at NASA's Translational Research Institute for Space Health in Houston, where he has worked with UCF on similar research. He will transition from his role in the next 90 days.
Urquieta also has served as an assistant professor of emergency and space medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. He earned his medical degree and completed an emergency medical residency at the Universidad Anahuac in Mexico, and earned a master's in aerospace medicine from Wright State University in Fairborn, Ohio.
Space medicine is an area UCF has worked on before and has dedicated research to, including collecting specimens and data from commercial space flight participants to see how that travel affects a person's health, which NASA's Translational Research Institute for Space Health partnered on.
UCF representatives were not immediately available for comment on what the new aerospace medicine program may look like.
UCF — which was established to provide trained workforce for aerospace activity on the Space Coast — has several research efforts tied to space. During fiscal 2023, NASA provided the third-most sponsored research at UCF, with more than $22 million in funding.
For more stories like this one, sign up here for Orlando Inno newsletters from the Orlando Business Journal and the American Inno network. Follow us on LinkedIn, Facebook and X (formerly known as Twitter).
