The First Professor of Chemical Engineering in Space

Albert Sacco, Jr. (born May 3, 1949) is an American chemical engineer who flew as a Payload Specialist on the Space Shuttle Columbia on shuttle mission STS-73 in 1995.

Born in Boston, Massachusetts, Sacco completed a bachelor's degree in chemical engineering from Northeastern University in Boston in 1973, and then a Ph.D. in chemical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1977. He then joined the faculty of the Worcester Polytechnic Institute, becoming a full professor and rising to department head in 1989.

Sacco accepted the position of Dean of the Edward E. Whitacre Jr. College of Engineering at Texas Tech University, effective January 1, 2011.[1] He currently serves in this role.

He formerly was the George A. Snell Distinguished Professor of Engineering at Northeastern University. He is was Director of the Center for Advanced Microgravity Materials Processing.

Sacco flew as a payload specialist on STS-73, which launched on October 20, 1995, and landed at the Kennedy Space Center on November 5, 1995. The 16-day mission aboard Columbia focused on materials science, biotechnology, combustion science, and fluid mechanics contained within the pressurized Spacelab module. He has over 70 publications (including book chapters) in the areas of carbon filament initiation and growth, catalyst deactivation, and zeolite synthesis.

He married the former Teran Lee Gardner, of Massachusetts, in November 1971. They have four children. His hobbies include scuba diving; he is a certified scuba diving instructor.