KATHLEEN RUBINS

I decided to do graduate studies in virology at Stanford University in California because it had a hospital, which made working on clinical applications easier.

I kind of watch anything on the Syfy channel.

We're pretty interested in microbial communities on-board space stations. It's a closed-loop system. Our water is recycled; our air is recycled.

I don't think you ever really decide that you want to be an astronaut. I put in an application and hoped for the best.

For long-duration exploration missions, NASA is looking for folks with a lot of operational, hands-on experience, people who have been in field-type situations such as military deployments. In my case, I worked in the Congo and in Biosafety Level 4 labs on smallpox.

The planet is beautiful.

There's a world of insights to be gained into human health and disease by understanding how gravity and space radiation influence biology.

As an undergraduate majoring in biology at the University of California, San Diego, I worked on infectious diseases at the nearby Salk Institute for Biological Studies.

We have to engineer devices that are going to work in space stations. Those same things are going to work in the most remote regions on Earth.

Spaceflight is a tricky business. It is definitely difficult, and I think we forget that sometime.

I thought that NASA didn't take biologists and so nothing would come of it. But I knew I would regret it if I did not apply.

Folks should find what really inspires them; they should always pursue what they want to do.

When I was 16, my dad took me to a DNA conference at the Exploratorium science museum in San Francisco, California, and I was captivated by this way of looking at biology and by the discussions of bits of nucleic acid that could make us sick.

I was the one with a subscription to 'Sky and Telescope' magazine as a kid while my friends were reading 'Tiger Beat.'

They say that in space, nobody can hear you scream. The first time I stepped out of the airlock, I was ready to scream - not because I was scared but because I was so excited to see the Earth below me.

Young people can accomplish a lot.

If you find something that you're excited about and you're interested in, my advice to young women and young men would be do what you're really interested in and what drives and motivates you.

I'm involved with health care/medical supply delivery to Africa and started a non-profit organization to bring supplies to Congo.

Joining NASA was very exciting, but it was the hardest decision I have had to make in my life.

There's actually an incredible amount of parallels between working in central Congo in a remote, isolated village and doing research aboard the space station.

You need nerves of steel if climbing aboard a rocket is your career path.

I think it's going to be amazing to see how the world of microbiology, molecular and cellular biology, and human physiology is massively changed by microgravity.

Most germs aren't bad. You're in a microbial environment all the time.

When you go to vacuum in the airlock and you take the hose off the front of your space suit, there's a little bit of water in there, and you can see that sublimate and ice crystals form and fly away. My thought at that moment was, 'Oh, we are not kidding at vacuum here; we are really in space.'

I've always been fascinated with science and exploring our world, from microbes to the solar system.