Loretta Hidalgo is a co-founder of Yuri’s Night, a global event celebrating human space exploration. She is currently Loretta Hidalgo has a Masters degree in Biology from Caltech and a Bachelors degree in Biology from Stanford. Between degrees she interned at NASA in the Astronaut office, worked on the International Space Station, and investigated plant growth on Mars in the Canadian Arctic. She is the co-creator of Yuri's Night, the World Party for Space and is the North American Representative to the Space Generation Advisory Council. Her travels have taken her around the world; in Africa she spoke to children about science; in the Arctic she worked with NASA to look at life in extreme environments; in Chile she studied Space Tourism with the International Space University and last summer she dove to the bottom of the ocean 5 times with a team of scientists and IMAX film makers to talk about the search for life in the universe for James Cameron's latest deep sea project "Extreme Life", due out Jan 2005. She is passionate about bringing together people who want to use space to make a difference for the planet.