McGovern welcomes Dervay as commencement speaker
The Graduating Class of 2025 will receive their medical degrees at the McGovern Medical School Commencement Ceremony, beginning at 9 a.m., May 13 at NRG Arena (1 NRG Pkwy.).
The event also will 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 commencement ceremony speaker will be NASA flight surgeon Joseph P. Dervay, MD, MPH, MMS. Dervay has served as Crew Surgeon for many missions in nearly three decades at NASA, including Space Shuttle and long-duration International Space Station missions like the 2020 NASA/SpaceX Demo-2 test flight as the first Commercial Crew Mission. His roles have included work in Russia at the Star City – Cosmonaut training center and support of US Astronauts during Soyuz launch and landing activities in Kazakhstan.
Dervay completed his undergraduate studies at Cornell University and earned his medical degree at Syracuse – Upstate Medical Center, before subsequently training to become a Navy flight surgeon, while serving aboard the aircraft carrier USS John F. Kennedy. He completed his emergency medicine residency at The George Washington University and a space medicine fellowship and aerospace medicine residency at UTMB in Galveston. Additionally, he completed hyperbaric medicine training at UTHealth Houston and is board certified in aerospace, emergency, and undersea & hyperbaric medicine.
Dervay retired from the Navy with the rank of Captain after completing a combined 35-years of active and reserve service with numerous Navy and Marine Corps units worldwide.