James Bagian
From spaceflight experience to safer healthcare
James Bagian is an Armenian American physician, engineer and former NASA astronaut, born in Philadelphia in 1952. His education in mechanical engineering and medicine brought together knowledge from two professional fields.
Selected as a NASA astronaut in 1980, he flew aboard Discovery on STS-29 in 1989 and Columbia on STS-40 in 1991. The second mission focused on life-science experiments examining how the body responds to microgravity.
After his spaceflight career, Bagian worked on preventing errors and improving patient safety in healthcare systems. His work demonstrates how systems approaches developed in aviation and engineering can help improve the quality and safety of medical care.