Mariona Badenas

With a degree in Astrophysics from Yale University, she also has a master’s degree in Astrophysics, Cosmology, and High Energy Physics from the Autonomous University of Barcelona and the Institute of Space Studies of Catalonia. At present she is a PhD student in Planetary Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) where she is working on the discovery, validation, and characterisation of exoplanets—planets in orbit outside the solar system—and spends much of her free time giving educational lectures on the universe and exploration of the cosmos. Outside academia, she is very interested in the aerospace industry and is a member of the Space Generation Advisory Council and also of Women in Aerospace Europe. In 2018, she was commander of the crew of the international LATAM-III mission at the Mars Analogue Research Station in the Utah Desert (USA), thus becoming the first Catalan to lead such an expedition.