Commencement set for May 10 at NRG Arena
The Graduating Class of 2024 will receive their medical degrees at the McGovern Medical School Commencement Ceremony, beginning at 10 a.m., May 10 at NRG Arena (1 NRG Pkwy, Houston, Texas, 77054).
The event will also be live-streamed for friends and family who cannot be in attendance. Live-stream information will be released at a later date.
The McGovern Medical School ceremony speaker will be Serena Auñón-Chancellor, MD, MPH ’01, associate professor of medicine for the Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center Internal Medicine Residency Program. She also serves as The University of Texas Medical Branch Aerospace Medicine Residency Program Director, training physicians to serve the nation’s space program as well as the burgeoning commercial space industry.
A 2001 graduate of McGovern Medical School, Auñón-Chancellor joined Johnson Space Center in 2006, employed as a flight surgeon under the UTMB/Wyle Bioastronautics contract. She spent more than nine months in Russia supporting medical operations for International Space Station crew members in Star City, served as the deputy crew surgeon for the shuttle mission, STS-127, and held the role of Deputy Lead for Orion – Medical Operations.
In July 2009, she was selected as one of 14 members of the 20th NASA astronaut class. In January 2017, she began an international training regimen for launch on the Soyuz MS-09 spacecraft from Kazakhstan for a 6-month trip to the ISS. Auñón-Chancellor and her crew spent 197 days in orbit and completed over 150 different experiments in multiple fields, including biology & biotechnology, cancer, Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s research, materials science, nuclear physics, physical sciences, and Earth science.