Dr. Nitza Margarita Cintron (born 1950 in San Juan, Puerto Rico) is a scientist who is currently the Chief of Space Medicine and Health Care Systems Office at NASA's Johnson Space Center.
Contents |
Early years
As a child, Cintron traveled throughout Europe because her father was a member of the U.S. Army. When her father retired from the armed forces, they returned to Puerto Rico and settled down in Santurce, a section of San Juan. There she attended elementary and high school, where she excelled in science and mathematics. She dedicated many hours to reading and studying about biology, chemistry, astronomy and space.[1] Cintron enrolled in the University of Puerto Rico where she earned a Bachelors Degree in Biology. In 1972 she was accepted into the Biochemistry and Molecular Biology training program offered by The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, where in 1978 she earned a Ph.D. degree. In 1978, Cintron read a recruitment announcement for the first Mission Specialist positions in the Astronaut Corps while at Johns Hopkins still completing her PhD research work. She answered the advertisement and passed to the finals. However, she was not selected because of her poor eyesight. Her academic qualifications impressed the people at NASA to the extent that she was offered the position of NASA Scientist.
Career in NASA
In 1979, Cintron was the originator of the Biochemistry Laboratory at the Johnson Space Center. Cintron also served from (1979-85) as the project scientist for the Space Lab 2 mission which was launched aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger in 1985. After many years of service at NASA, she was sponsored by NASA after she was accepted as a student by the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston. She graduated in 1995 with a M.D. degree, and is currently a board-certified specialist in internal medicine. Among the positions held by Cintron in NASA are "Chief of the Biomedical Operations and Research Branch in the Medical Science Division" and "Director for managing the Life Sciences Research Laboratories" in support of medical operations. In 2004 she was named "Chief of NASA's (JSC) Space Medicine and Health Care Systems Office", position which she currently holds.[1]
Awards and recognitions
Cintron has received many awards and honors. Among them the "JSC Director's Commendation and Innovation Award", the centers highest award for a civil servant, the "NASA Medal for Exceptional Scientific Achievement", the highest science honor given by the agency. On October 7, 2004, she was inducted into the Hispanic Engineer's National Achievement Awards Conference (HENAAC) Hall of Fame. The Hall of Fame, located in Los Angeles, California, was established in 1998 and recognizes the contributions of Hispanics in the fields of science, engineering and technology. In 2006, she was recognized as one of the 100 most influential Hispanics in the United States by Hispanic magazine. [2][3]
