Bioscience: Dr. Cassandra Juran's Journey from USRA's NASA Postdoctoral Program (NPP) to becoming a Principle Investigator (NAMS)
August 2020
Dr. Cassandra Juran, Ph.D. (Associate Scientist, USRA NAMS) is working in the Bone and Cell Signaling Lab, part of the NASA Bioscience Collaborative at NASA’s Ames Research Center. Her principle area of research has been to investigate cell cycle regulator gene Cdkn1a/p21 and its role as a lynchpin in bone stem cell regenerative health working with a gene knockout mouse that has the amazing ability to regenerate ear punch holes and severed digits in a manner similar to a garden-variety salamander.
Dr. Juran began her career at NASA Ames Research Center in 2016 as a NASA Postdoctoral Program (NPP) fellow administered by USRA and transitioned to being a USRA Scientist in 2019. During her tenure with USRA, Dr. Juran’s research spanned technical areas such as bioscience, astrobiology and several engineering projects. Dr. Juran collaborated with UCSF College of Medicine and the Translational Research Institute for Space Health (TRISH), part of the Human Research Program (HRP), to create a sequencing-based astronaut health monitoring and diagnosis pipeline for long duration space travel to Moon and Mars. Her engineering background lead to her work on development and implementation of flight hardware alternatives for projects like CellScience, WetLab-2 and Rodent Research. Dr. Juran is also leading the initiative to bring single cell and regional omics tools into spaceflight research, which has culminated in her role as a Co-Investigator on a single cell study of Bion M2 mouse samples in collaboration with the Russian Space Program. These technologies can provide unprecedented resolution of genetic regulation in every individual cell of a tissue, tumor or stem cell niche and define how cells change with time in space.
Dr. Juran was awarded USRA Internal Research and Development (IRAD) proposal (2019) to design an automated microfluidics life detection pipeline utilizing Nanopore sequencing capabilities to identify biosignature in a hypothetical Enceladus plume sample collection fly-by mission. This project was well received by NASA Bioscience Collaborative and is now in planning to become a larger part of a life detection CubeSat toolkit. This experience has contributed to Dr. Juran’s out-of-the-box collaborative research ideas which includes proposal development with the California Academy of Science to study how coral reefs (major contributor to the life cycle in our ocean world) are changing in response to increases in global temperature and greenhouse gases. This study ties into NASA’s interest in exploring evolution of life on ocean moons and effects of environmental change as observed on our own ocean ecosystem which is disappearing.
Dr. Juran proactively contributes to outreach events organized by Space Biology and NASA. She co-organized events at the California Academy of Sciences NightLife, participated in Silicon Valley ComicCon panel on “Life in Space”, and was Special Guest for the NASA Silicon Valley Web Series episode “Space Hacks”. In addition, Dr. Juran enjoys talking to engineering students and shares her experience with crosscutting disciplines such as Biomedical engineering, Aerospace Medicine, and Space Biosciences. She is also a contributor to NASA’s GeneLab for High School program, which provides foundational education to high school juniors and seniors on omics citizen science and real spaceflight science data.
With continuous support from USRA, Dr. Juran gained the courage to expand her research interests into unexpected and sometimes seemingly unrelated subject areas. Now as a PI scientist, she often encourages others to explore as well. USRA has facilitated Dr. Juran's funding applications to non-NASA sources like the New York Stem Cell Foundation, National Institute of Health, and even National Geographic.
Dr. Juran's journey from NPP to USRA PI has successfully led her to work on the Rodent Research 10 mission, launching in November. Through programs like NPP and NAMS, USRA enables a pathway for early career researchers to contribute to NASA's missions.
