Shawna Pandya is a physician, aquanaut, scientist-astronaut candidate with the International Institute for Astronautical Sciences (IIAS), skydiver, pilot-in-training, VP Immersive Medicine with Luxsonic Technologies, and Director of IIAS’ Space Medicine Group. She is also a Fellow of the Explorers’ Club and Associate Fellow of the Aerospace Medicine Association. Dr. Pandya was on the first crew to test a commercial spacesuit in zero-gravity in 2015. She earned her aquanaut designation on the 2019 NEPTUNE (Nautical Experiments in Physiology, Technology and Underwater Exploration) mission, 2023 NEP2NE aquanaut mission. She served as Payload Crew and co-PI of the 2023 IIAS-01 suborbital research flight, as well as a PI and/or co-I for Ax-2, Polaris Dawn and Blue Origin payloads. 

Her publications include a paper on medical guidelines for commercial suborbital spaceflight, and book chapters on space technologies that have benefitted terrestrial medicine, psychological resilience in long-duration spaceflight, and reproduction and sexuality in long-duration spaceflight. In June 2022, her extreme medicine work took her to Poland and Ukraine to work with persons affected by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. 

In 2021, she was granted an Honorary Fellowship in Extreme and Wilderness Medicine and named to the Canadian Women’s Executive Network’s Top 100 Most Powerful Women. Her work is permanently exhibited at the Ontario Science Center alongside Dr. Roberta Bondar, the first Canadian woman in space. In 2022, Dr. Pandya was awarded the Explorers’ Club’s “50 Explorers Changing the World,” and in 2023, named to SustainabilityX Magazine’s “Global 50 Women in Sustainability,” for her work in Social Inclusion. In 2024, she was inducted as a full member of the International Astronautical Federation’s Human Spaceflight Committee, became an aeromedical flight physician, and was nominated to the Women’s Space Awards in the Medicine and Health category. Her work has been profiled by Nature Careers and the Royal Canadian Mint.