I am a space biologist. I work with fungi investigating how they adapt to space environment, including microgravity and enhanced irradiation. During my PhD I have sent couple experiments to the International Space Station studying exactly that. There are a few reason why we are excited about studying fungi (i) they can easily adapt to and thrive in extreme habitats, like hot and cold deserts or highly irradiated niches, including Chernobyl nuclear accident site; (ii) in response to these extreme environments fungi can produce versatile bioactive molecules, so called secondary metabolites, which are broadly used in pharmaceutical or food industries. Some examples include: an antibiotic penicillin, a cholesterol-lowering drug lovastatin or citric acid used as food additive and preservative; (iii) lastly, fungi can be genetically modified / engineered to produce bioactive compounds of interest, which opens a lot of new avenues for their potential application, including during interplanetary explorations as "pharmacist on demand".
More recently, I have participated in the simulation study in the Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and Simulation (HI–SEAS) mimicking future Mars and outer space explorations. During this mission I served as Science Officer and conducted microbiome analysis of the habitat and participated in testing the performance and flight readiness of µTitan, an automated platform optimized for the in situ DNA extraction designed for the use onboard the ISS.