WIA Honors Carolyn Huntoon, Five Other "Exceptional Women"
Women in Aerospace (WIA) announced the winners of its six annual awards that honor achievements by women in the aerospace field today (September 4). Among the winners is Carolyn Huntoon, a trailblazer for women at NASA and the first woman to serve as Director of the Johnson Space Center (1994-1996).
Huntoon is being awarded WIA’s Lifetime Achievement Award for her “sustained and exemplary leadership at NASA, the Office of Science and Technology Policy and the Department of Energy, her exceptional scientific contributions towards understanding the effects of spaceflight on the human body, and her dedication and mentorship of astronauts and aerospace professionals.” Huntoon has a Ph.D. in physiology from Baylor College of Medicine and was deeply involved in studying how humans react to weightlessness from the earliest days of human spaceflight, including cooperation with her Soviet space medicine counterparts beginning in the early 1970s. She is quoted frequently in Lynn Sherr’s biography of Sally Ride as an influential voice in the selection of the first group of astronauts that included women (Ride and five others) and mentor to them afterwards.
The other five WIA award winners are:
- Lynn Cominsky, Sonoma St. University, Rohnert Park, CA: Aerospace Awareness Award
- Allison Barto, Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp,. Boulder, CO: Outstanding Achievement Award
- Alexandra Kindrat, Lester B. Pearson School Board, St. Thomas High School, Montreal, Canada: Aerospace Educator Award
- Samantha Pappas, Naval Air Systems Command 5.1, Patuxent River, MD: Initiative, Inspiration, Impact Award
- Leanne Caret, Boeing Defense, Space and Security, St. Louis, MO: Leadership Award
Also, the WIA Foundation awarded three scholarships to —
- Emily Zimovan, a junior in aeronautical and astronautical engineering at Purdue University
- Jessica Felde, a junior in aerospace and mechanical engineering at West Virginia University, and
- Lauren Trollinger, a junior in aerospace engineering at the University of Maryland
WIA’s annual awards dinner is on October 29, 2014 at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Arlington, VA. Contact WIA for more information.
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