Mission to Explore Space Medicine: COSMOS Rotation Takes Students to New Heights

Graduating UC Irvine medical students Kaveri Curlin and Christopher Yang share their experience with COSMOS 401, a new four-week immersive rotation, “Concepts of Space Medicine and Orbital Systems.”

Clinical rotations, a standard component of medical school, provide hands-on training in a real-world environment for disciplines ranging from surgery to psychiatry. For two graduating students in the UC Irvine School of Medicine, however, part of this experiential learning occurred not in a local clinic or hospital but at government and commercial spaceflight facilities. Kaveri Curlin and Christopher Yang found themselves learning from aerospace medicine physicians and onboard a parabolic flight as part of COSMOS 401, a new four-week immersive rotation, “Concepts of Space Medicine and Orbital Systems.”

“It was amazing to experience the different forces that you feel when traveling up to space,” says Curlin, who will start her residency this year in internal medicine at UCLA.

“Feeling the toll of high G-forces on my body was awesome and gave me new respect for astronauts and fighter pilots,” says Yang, who will perform his residency at UC Irvine, specializing in ophthalmology.

So how did Curlin and Yang end up in a rotation that had them “pulling Gs” and doing rounds not in a hospital but at spaceflight locations across the country?

Launching COSMOS

COSMOS 401, launched in collaboration with UTHealth Houston, is a new experiential elective course where students gain exposure to commercial and government spaceflight opportunities. Led by Ariana Nelson, MD, associate clinical professor in the Department of Anesthesiology & Perioperative Care, and Jonathan Steller, MD, assistant professor in the Department of Obstetrics & Gynecology, COSMOS 401 is one of four rotations included in UC Irvine's emerging Space MED (Medicine, Engineering & Design) mission-based program.

“The goal is to train future physicians to support the diversity and expansion of humans in spaceflight and prepare them for future clinical or research opportunities,” says Nelson, a previous member of the NASA Exploration Medical Capability (ExMC) Clinical & Science team who is now a physician scientist at Vast Space. She is developing the Space MED mission-based program with Steller, a member of NASA’s Human Spaceflight Standards team under the Office of the Chief Health and Medical Officer, whose personal research focuses on reproductive and gynecologic health in space.

The program introduces foundational topics such as spaceflight physiology, human adaptation, systems engineering, design integration and probabilistic risk modeling. Starting with first-year medical students, the program will feature two years of didactic curricula, external clinical rotations like COSMOS 401, and a thesis research project that helps promote human health and performance in space.

“The UC Irvine School of Medicine aims to be one of the first medical schools in the U.S. to offer a foundational space medicine mission-based program that runs parallel to their medical school curriculum,” says Steller. “As commercial spaceflight expands, we need a diversity of innovative and enthusiastic clinicians of all specialties to work with aerospace medicine physicians, researchers, engineers and designers to promote the health and safety of all spaceflight participants — from government-recruited astronauts to private citizens who may have all types of unique risk factors or comorbidities.”

COSMOS 101 and 401 launched this year as the foundation of the Space MED mission-based program, and Curlin and Yang were the inaugural participants. They met with space medicine experts, including government astronauts and commercial flight surgeons, to learn about topics such as physiologic adaptations to microgravity and spaceflight-induced perturbations in physiology and potential pathology.

An Introduction to Space Medicine

“This rotation was my first experience in space medicine,” says Yang, who was excited to network with people who now work in space medicine from a variety of career paths. “It was educational to see how clinicians pivoted their careers to align more closely with space exploration,” he says. “COSMOS provided opportunities to learn about how broad our future practice can be, and it’s great knowing that we’re now a part of the space medicine community because of this rotation.”

The rotation was also eye-opening for Curlin. “As the field develops, there’s going to be a greater need for people with specialties and expertise in different areas,” says Curlin, who always had an interest in space and loved attending air shows as a child. She also had a great uncle who was a Tuskegee Airman. “There’s a history of liking aviation in my family, but no experience with space medicine,” she says. “I learned there’s a lot of opportunity, no matter what you’re interested in. It gave me a new perspective on how we could utilize our training and degrees.”

The experience also enhanced her interest in preventive medicine. “A lot of aerospace medicine is making sure that ‘healthy individuals’ are still able to function in these very abnormal environments,” says Curlin. “That concept can be applied to a lot of different patients, such as people taking high-risk vacations or participating in extreme sports.”

She appreciated connecting with people in the military as well. “We were fortunate enough to rotate with the Army and Navy residents in aerospace medicine, which was really interesting,” she says. “Being able to chat with them about what their medical training looks like, and what their patient population looks like, provided some perspective on the needs of veterans.”

Yang agreed, noting that his brother is an Army doctor. “He pushed me to apply to this rotation,” says Yang, “to learn how medicine functions in operational mission-based contexts that we don’t learn about in conventional medical training.” Yang also enjoyed the uniqueness of the experience, which led to a sense of “bonding” and “camaraderie” with the other students.

“It felt like we were being dispatched on three different missions in three completely different environments,” says Yang. Curlin echoed this sentiment and appreciated the varying cultural experiences.

“We had a lot of time to reflect on our four years of medical school while still learning something new and meeting some really great people,” says Curlin. “I would absolutely recommend this program to others who are open minded and flexible, have a growth mindset, and are ready and willing to learn!”

If you are a student interested in learning more about COSMOS 101, COSMOS 401 and the UC Irvine Space MED program, or if you are interested in making a donation in support of our students, please contact program coordinator Minnie Trinh at minniet@uci.edu.