Dr. John Jurist

Dr. Jurist was simultaneously a physicist and a medical researcher before becoming involved in business. He earned degrees in biophysics and nuclear medicine while he was at the UCLA School of Medicine with his dissertation work performed in the Division of Orthopedic Surgery. Dr. Jurist has held faculty positions at the University of Wisconsin (Madison) in the Medical School’s Division of Orthopedic Surgery and in the Space Science and Engineering Center. In the former, he studied human factors in space flight during Apollo and what was then called Apollo Applications and organized a metabolic bone disease laboratory for translational research. In the latter during the early 1970s, he was team leader of the group that transmitted the first medical imaging over communications satellite links in a precursor to telemedicine. In the business arena, he created and ran a biomedical engineering consulting firm, was president of a successful outpatient surgical center, and founded a nonprofit medical research institute and ran it for four years. Dr. Jurist is experienced in evaluating a business plan and in running a business. He has applied his experience to the developing NewSpace industry as an investor in several small NewSpace corporations, supported R&D in others with corporate grants, and has partly funded academic propulsion, robotics, and biodynamics research groups at multiple universities. Among other professional organizations, he is currently a Life Member of the International Association of Military Flight Surgeon Pilots, an Associate Fellow of the Aerospace Medical Association, an Emeritus member of the Orthopaedic Research Society, and a Fellow of the Gerontological Society. His teaching and research activities revolve around his present position as Adjunct Professor of Biophysics and Aviation at Rocky Mountain College and his previous Adjunct Professorship at the Space Studies Department of the University of North Dakota.