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ever wonder what happens to all of the

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data that comes back from astronaut

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experiments on the space station iss

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commentator lori meigs at nasa's

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marshall space flight center met a man

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who has the job of keeping the stats on

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all of that for the human research

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program at nasa biostatistician

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we talk a lot about all these

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experiments and all this biological

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research but somebody has to kind of

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keep the stats on all that is that your

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job yeah so so what a biostatistician

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does

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ideally we like to get involved

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in the research

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program as it's just starting to be

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developed as the principal investigator

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team is just starting to pull their

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ideas together about what kind of

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experiments they want to run

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what their hypotheses are how they plan

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to test those hypotheses ideally we

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would be brought into that that team

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early on

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because in addition to the statistics

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and an integral part of of the

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statistics that will be run

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at the study's completion

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is the experimental design itself and

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often that's when we can really provide

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the most help it's it's ironic that this

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sort of the that we think of statistics

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as the last part of a research study

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that leads to the final report

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but we can be most helpful at the very

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beginning planning stages of the study

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where we might be able to sort of help

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influence

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what kinds of data they collect

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what kinds of other data that maybe they

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hadn't thought of could be important in

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the interpreting of their results so we

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try to think about all of that and the

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experimental design as well

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to to plan the very best study that we

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think

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can be done and so we need to make the

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absolute best out of every piece of data

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we can get

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is it surprising to you how

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space station has evolved now and i i

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guess you're probably busier than ever

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yeah um as as we're in full utilization

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yeah it's incredible right because

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you know we're full utilization now

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there's a tremendous amount of research

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that's going on

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i think something

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something that a lot of people don't

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recognize is that you know the the

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astronauts are

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they serve two roles right there are

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research technicians they're an

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extension of the principal investigator

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but they're also for the human side of

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of the research enterprise they're

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they're the experimental subjects too

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and there are so many studies that are

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that are important and they're all uh

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they're all important and they're all

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being flown

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but there's only so much time that an

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astronaut can give

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and they participate in as many

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experiments as they possibly can but but

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their time is really really valuable so

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so sample sizes unfortunately aren't as

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big as we'd like them to be there's only

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a handful of astronauts or cosmonauts

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flying at any given time

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they're up there for a long time most of

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the experiments involve pre-flight and

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in-flight and post-flight dimensions to

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them so it takes years to complete the

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study

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so yeah we have to be really lean and

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mean when it comes to sample size and

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and really crisp clean experimental

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designs

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do you want to talk about some of the

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successes you've seen i mean can you

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talk specifically about something yeah

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um

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you know we've

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we've come a long way in the hrp program

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even just in the in the period of time

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that i've been involved with nasa i

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think we're getting smarter you know we

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we recognize that there are in terms of

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human research there are some things

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that we just can't change we'd love to

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have a dozen space stations flying

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around each with a dozen or more human

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astronauts that can help us with our

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research but the fact is we got one

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space station with a handful of subjects

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so we've gotten really smart about how

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to use their data

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we do a lot more in terms of

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standardized measurements and we try to

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communicate with all of our investigator

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teams that hey these are things that we

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collect on astronauts all the time try

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to work these in if they're relevant and

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we've kind of tried to

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hone in and fine-tune those but i think

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that the the other aspect that i'm proud

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about is that um

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that that the people like me like

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biostatisticians are involved with the

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researchers in lots of different labs to

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try to have a better sort of team

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approach so we can all bring our

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collective expertise in making that

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research possible stuff with with small

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and is is a particular struggle that i

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have and i can bring some expertise to

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that that may be a principal

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investigator in the neuro lab or the

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cardio lab or the muscle exercise lab

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maybe they don't know that expertise in

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particular but when we when we team up

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and we work together i think i think we

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have a much better

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outcome so yeah we are learning a lot

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in all these different disciplines it's

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a slow process but uh but it's very

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deliberate it's very planned and i think

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it's you know we're starting to come up

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with uh some some interesting results

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uh science is science right so this will

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always be pushing the next boundary but

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i do think that the human research

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program is is getting answers

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um so it'll take a while before they

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have all the answers that they need i

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think and we may never actually get all

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the answers we want

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but i think we're chipping away at those

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really critical questions for for