Shawna Pandya, MD
International and Community Engagement Committee Chair
Dr. Shawna Pandya is the first named female commercial Canadian astronaut, and will be flying to space with the Virgin Galactic Delta class of spacecraft with the International Institute for Astronautical Sciences (IIAS) as early as the end of 2026. She is also an emergency and aeromedical transport physician, aquanaut, Director of IIAS’ Space Medicine Group, Executive Director of the IIAS Flight Opportunities Program, and Chief of Space Medicine at the Advanced Spacelife Research Institute. She is also a Fellow of the Explorers’ Club and Associate Fellow of the Aerospace Medicine Association.
Dr. Pandya was on the first crew to test a commercial spacesuit in zero-gravity in 2015. She earned her aquanaut designation on the 2019 NEPTUNE (Nautical Experiments in Physiology, Technology and Underwater Exploration) mission, and completed a second aquanaut mission, NEP2NE, in May 2023, for a total of 11 days, 10 nights underwater. She served as the medical lead and co-PI of the 2023 IIAS-01 suborbital research flight, as well as a PI and/or co-I for Ax-2, Polaris Dawn and Blue Origin payloads. Her publications include a paper on medical guidelines for commercial suborbital spaceflight, and book chapters on space technologies that have benefitted terrestrial medicine, psychological resilience in long-duration spaceflight, reproduction and sexuality in long-duration spaceflight, the future of space medicine, and emergency procedures in spaceflight. In June 2022, her extreme medicine work took her to Poland and Ukraine to work with persons affected by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Her work is permanently exhibited at the Ontario Science Center alongside Dr. Roberta Bondar, the first Canadian woman in space. In 2021, she was granted an Honorary Fellowship in Extreme and Wilderness Medicine and named to the Canadian Women’s Executive Network’s Top 100 Most Powerful Women. In 2022, Dr. Pandya was named to the Explorers' Club's “50 Explorers Changing the World." In 2024, she was recognized for her contributions by the Women’s Space Awards in the Medicine and Health category, and inducted as a full member of the International Astronautical Federation’s Human Spaceflight Committee. Dr. Pandya also serves as part of the XPRIZE Brain Trust, and as a mentor with the Creative Destruction Lab. Her work has been profiled by Nature Careers and the Royal Canadian Mint.