Dr. Norah Patten

Norah is an award winning STEM (Science, technology, engineering and maths) advocate and author and is a popular space and science communicator with radio, television and public speaking experience. Norah is a faculty member at the International Space University and is a citizen scientist-astronaut candidate with Project PoSSUM (Polar Suborbital Science in the Upper Mesosphere). Norah has participated in several citizen science campaigns including microgravity research flights, spacesuit testing and evaluation, high-g flights and spacecraft egress.

In September 2019, Norah released her children's book called ‘Shooting for the Stars', published by The O’Brien Press and illustrated by Jennifer Farley, and it won the An Post Children's Book of the Year, senior, 2019.

In 2018, Norah was awarded the PoSSUM Science Educator Award for her contributions to the campaigns and her role in citizen science. Norah was a recipient of the Emerging Space Leaders Grant and a Next Generation Plenary panelist at the International Astronautical Congress in 2015. Through a partnership with NanoRacks and the Irish Composites Centre, Norah initiated and managed ‘The Only Way is Up’ project which launched Ireland’s first student experiment to the International Space Station in 2014.

Norah participated in the International Space University Space Studies Program in 2010, holds a PhD in engineering from the University of Limerick and has industrial experience from The Boeing Company and Bell Labs Alcatel Lucent.