GUIDANCE
With funding from the UF President’s Strategic Funding Initiative and UF Research, the institute is supporting interdisciplinary seed projects, recruiting world-class leaders in space science and technology, and promoting its capabilities in space mission innovation.
Led by Director Rob Ferl and Deputy Director Rachael Seidler, Astraeus’s administrative council is comprised of a diverse collection of innovative specialists.
ASTRAEUS LEADERSHIP
Rob Ferl
Director
Rob Ferl is a distinguished professor of horticultural sciences and inaugural director of the Space Institute at the University of Florida. He is an internationally recognized expert in the field of space biology, specializing in studying how plants respond at the molecular and genetic level to extreme conditions found on Earth and in outer space.
As director of the new UF Astraeus Space Institute, Ferl is helping to develop a hub for scientists and scholars from across UF to collaborate, conduct research and innovate in space-related research. Through the institute, Ferl hopes to position UF to play a more prominent role in space exploration research in the state and beyond.
Rachael Seidler
Deputy Director
Dr. Seidler’s role in the Astraeus Space Institute is to facilitate UF faculty space research success. She plans events to help faculty identify how their research fits into funding opportunities within NASA, the Translational Research Institute for Space Health (TRISH), and other national and international agencies. She also helps faculty to identify potential collaborators to move their space research forward and creates networking events to enable more cross talk and cross disciplinary collaboration. One of her major goals for the Astraeus Space Institute is to foster more synergy between aerospace engineering research at UF and biological / physiological sciences.
ASTRAEUS STAFF
