Raymond Wheeler

Throughout nearly 30 years of scientific research and space flight missions, Raymond Wheeler has made significant contributions to a field that is just beginning to take off – astrobotany. Dr. Wheeler has been working for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration as a plant physiologist at Kennedy Space Center since 1988, where he has worked to make space farming a reality. He’s also an alumni of UW-Madison, where he was a postdoctoral researcher studying bioregenerative life support systems at the Biotron Laboratory. Space plant research wasn’t always a lifelong passion for Wheeler, however. Through the course of his research, he began to form a deeper understanding of the roles plants contribute toward human life, beyond just the obvious oxygen production and feedstock supply.