This is your brain on space

In 2016 I started working at ESA as a scientist in ESA’s Human Space Flight programme. I’m part of a group that helps put the ESA science experiments and technology demonstrations into operations aboard the International Space Station (ISS). I help identify what we are able to plan for, and I keep track of what we need to do, and what we’ve done. I conduct regular analysis to give scientific context to ongoing operations and give operational context for upcoming plans. I track and support the execution of on-board ISS operations, and I regularly advocate and defend ESA objectives in a multilateral community of ISS researchers. By focusing on long-term requirements, I help both planners and operators to understand how their actions today will affect operations tomorrow.

Elisabeth Heider

Space Scientist

European Space Agency

How To Study Primate Emotions

Yena Kim is a comparative psychologist working on emotion communication and its underlying psychological mechanisms in human and nonhuman great apes at Leiden University. After receiving the MA degree from Ewha University in South Korea, she moved to Japan to conduct doctoral studies on prosociality and sense of fairness in

great apes at the Primate Research Institute, Kyoto University. Interestingly enough, even after her degrees on those topics she finds herself still incapable of being prosocial, fair, or emotionally sensitive. At least she is capable of talking to people with a pint of beer.

Yena Kim

PostDoc Researcher

Leiden University

Touch in Motion

In my research I explore systems with complex collective behaviour, which utilize their environment to create structures in the sub-milimiter scale. I have an immense fascination with complex and chaotic systems in nature and with emerging patterns in seemingly unrelated phenomena. I love talking about science on every level and truly believe that knowledge should be accessible to all.

Nick Oikonomeas

PhD Candidate

University of Amsterdam