Daytona Beach, FL — Pediatric patients at Florida Hospital Memorial Medical Center in Daytona Beach were recently visited by a retired astronaut.
On March 5, artist and former astronaut Nicole Stott visited the children at the pediatric ward at FHMMC to extract postcards that the children might decorate to send to astronauts working at the International Space Station (ISS). Stott, an Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University (ERAU) alumna, retired from a 27-year career with NASA at 2015 which comprised 104 times in space aboard the ISS. She now spends her time marketing science, engineering, engineering, and mathematics (STEM).
ERAU’s Department of Human Factors and Behavioral Neurobiology organized Stott’s hospital trip. The dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the Daytona Beach campus, Dr. Karen Gaines, states the Objective of working together with Florida Hospital is to progress research-based health care.
This past year, Florida Hospital and also ERAU partnered to create an undergraduate program in aerospace structure, that’s the first of its kind on earth. Students in the program learn how the human body responds to distance and flight also utilizes those findings to explore medicine for “life on earth.” They learn to identify, prevent, and manage how human health is affected by intense surroundings.
Pictured above is Stott visiting 3-year-old Duane Jones, of Orlando.
(Stott visits 9-year-old Peyton Combs, of Umatilla.)
(Stott visits 6-year-old Summer McKinney, of Edgewater, along with her mother.)
(From left to right: Michele Goeb-Burkett, FHMMC chief nursing officer; Becky Vernon, FHMMC manager of all women and children’s services; Stott; Tracey Yoder, FHMMC pediatric unit manager; Gaines; along with Dr. Kris Gray, FHMMC primary medical officer.)
(From left to right: Yoder; Beverly Chulak, FHMMC pediatric unit nurse; Stott; Heather Campochiaro, FHMMC pediatric unit nurse; along with Vernon.)
Photos courtesy of Florida Hospital Medical Memorial Center.
Copyright Southern Stone Communications 2018.
