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Irish scientist-astronaut candidate Dr Norah Patten to be special guest at Dublin 2019: Irish Worldcon.

Born in Co. Mayo, and now based in Dublin, Dr Patten became fascinated by space and space travel after a visit to a NASA facility at age 11. She earned a PhD in aeronautical engineering at the University of Limerick in 2011 following internships at Boeing and Bell Labs. She has participated in several citizen science campaigns with Project PoSSUM including microgravity research flights, spacesuit testing and evaluation, hypoxia training and spacecraft egress. Project PoSSUM prepares their candidates to perform research on commercial space missions.

Irish scientist-astronaut candidate Dr Norah Patten to be special guest at Dublin 2019: Irish Worldcon
Irish scientist-astronaut candidate Dr Norah Patten to be special guest at Dublin 2019: Irish Worldcon

Dr Patten’s interest in space and education led her to organise the first Irish student experiment sent to the International Space Station in 2014. The experiment was designed by four teenagers from St Nessan’s Community College in Limerick, investigating the effects of microgravity on reinforced concrete. She currently works as a programme manager at the Irish Composites Centre.

Dr Patten will be Dublin 2019’s first Special Guest and will attend the convention on Saturday and Monday.

“Worldcon is about keeping in touch with the factual as well as the fictional aspects of science,” Dublin 2019 chair James Bacon said. “It’s wonderful that we are going to hear about cutting-edge developments in space research from a scientist of Norah’s calibre.”

Dr Patten can be found at SpaceNorah on Facebook and Twitter.

Dublin 2019 will be the 77th annual World Science Fiction Convention, the first to be held in Ireland and the eleventh in Europe, and will take place in the Convention Centre Dublin from August 15th to August 19th 2019.

Guests of Honour for Dublin 2019 include YA author Diane Duane, and screenwriter and Hugo winner Ian McDonald, as well as game designer Steve Jackson (Melee, Chaos Machine, Munchkin) and editor Ginjer Buchanan. Science Guest of Honour will be Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell, who discovered radio pulsars in 1967 as a postgraduate student and in 2018 was awarded the Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics. Bill and Mary Burns will be fan Guests of Honour.

More at https://dublin2019.com

ColonelFrog

Colonel Frog is a long time science fiction and fantasy fan. He loves reading novels in the field, and he also enjoys watching movies (as well as reading lots of other genre books).

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