Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Tufts University

Douglas Matson is the chair of the ISS National Laboratory User Advisory Committee and leads the Science Subcommittee. He is an associate professor in the mechanical engineering department at Tufts University and an adjunct associate professor at the Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service. Previously, he worked for 10 years as a lead test engineer. In this role he was responsible for designing, building, and conducting vacuum thruster firing tests on satellite propulsion systems for the Aerojet Liquid Rocket Company in Sacramento, California. He also served as the lead materials engineer on the SSME Technology Test Bed Engine at the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center for Aerojet Propulsion Division in Huntsville, Alabama for three years. He received a Bachelor of Science degree in chemical engineering from Cornell University, and mechanical engineering from California State University – Sacramento. He also earned a Master of Science degree in materials science from the University of California, Davis, and he holds a doctorate in materials engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is a registered professional chemical engineer in California. He is the editor of a book on rapid solidification and is the author or co-author of more than 100 scientific papers. He has co-organized 20 symposiums relating to space-physical science, thermophysical property measurement, and solidification phenomena. He has numerous reduced-gravity physical science opportunities, including parabolic aircraft missions on the KC-135 Vomit Comet at Johnson Space Center in Houston and the Novespace A300 Zero-G in Bordeaux-Mérignac France, drop-tube experiments at NASA/MSFC, the TEXUS-49 DLR sounding rocket experiment from ESRANGE Space Center outside Kiruna Sweden, and three space experiments (STS-65, 83, and 94) as TEMPUS lead scientist during collaborations on the NASA Space Shuttle Columbia with the German Space Agency DLR. He is the principal investigator on two ongoing NASA-sponsored space experiments on the ISS; a thermophysical property measurement program using the JAXA Electrostatic Levitation Furnace and a solidification phase selection program using the ESA Electromagnetic Levitator in a collaboration where he serves as NASA facility scientist and speaker/chairman of the ESA investigator working group.He currently serves as an associate editor for the Nature Portfolio Journal Microgravity, and in the past served as the 2020 national president of the American Society for Gravitational and Space Research.