Brian Shiro
Brian Shiro is an earth and planetary scientist who blogs about trying to become an astronaut at http://astronautforhire.com. In July 2009, he was a crewmember on a 30-day simulated Mars mission to the Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station on Devon Island in the Canadian Arctic. During that time, he logged nearly 29 hours doing field science wearing a spacesuit on 9 EVAs that covered over 80 km. A seismologist by training, he is a veteran of numerous geophysical field expeditions to remote locations including Antarctica, Alaska, Canada, and various tropical Pacific islands. His diverse background includes summer jobs working in upper atmosphere physics, carbon nanotubes, satellite radar mapping, geochemistry, glaciology, and high performance computing. Brian also has experience working at three NASA centers (JSC, GSFC, and JPL) and served as the principal investigator for a Mars Geophysical Lander mission proposal to NASA in 2003. A common theme in his interests is a belief that science should improve society, and he is particularly passionate about natural disaster mitigation using space technologies. He is a father, marathon runner, SCUBA diver, aviation enthusiast, environmentalist, and jack-of-all-trades. Brian works for NOAA and lives in Hawaii with his wife and young son. Brian earned a B.A. with triple majors in Integrated Science, Geology, and Physics from Northwestern University in 2000 and a M.A. in Earth and Planetary Sciences from Washington University in St. Louis in 2002. He completed all requirements except the dissertation for a Ph.D. in planetary science from Washington University, but he left academia to accept a position as Geophysicist with NOAA at the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in the wake of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. In summer 2005, Brian attended the International Space University (ISU) Summer Session Program in Vancouver, Canada, where his concentration was space policy and law. The following year he gave an invited presentation on his ISU team's work involving global wildfire forecasting to the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space in Vienna, Austria. In 2007, he became a distance M.S. student in the University of North Dakota's Department of Space Studies and expects to complete the degree in 2010. Brian is a member of several space advocacy groups and is active in the online space community, where he was recently listed in “Top 50 Twitterati for all of Space.”