By Anna Dai-Liu
LOS ANGELES — The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in March launched its newest space medicine fellowship to train flight surgeons for future expeditions into space.
UCLA will run the program alongside SpaceX, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the California Institute of Technology, letting fellows continue practicing emergency medicine at UCLA and gain expertise in space and biomedical engineering. Dr. Haig Aintablian, the program’s inaugural fellow, will begin the two-year program in July, according to a press release from UCLA Health.
Aintablian, who is also an emergency medicine resident at Olive View-UCLA Medical Center, said his previous studies in biology and chemistry led to a passion for medicine and understanding of how the human body functions. He eventually chose to specialize in emergency medicine because of those doctors’ extensive range of knowledge and the fast-paced environment of the emergency room.
“Seeing the strokes, the heart attacks — everything was happening in the ER,” he said.
However, his interest in space since childhood led him to astrophotography — taking photos of the night sky — a passion that continued throughout medical school, he said. As a resident, Aintablian has also been researching the impact of low or zero gravity conditions on the human body, particularly over sustained periods of time, said Dr. Scott Lundberg, medical director of Olive View-UCLA Medical Center Department of Emergency Medicine.
