Dr. Kjell Lindgren

Past Nominations and Wins

Dr. Kjell Lindgren

Dr. Kjell Norwood Lindgren is a current NASA astronaut. Lindgren was selected in June 2009 as a member of the NASA Astronaut Group 20. He launched to the International Space Station (ISS) as part of Expedition 44/45 on July 22, 2015. Lindgren is also a science fiction fan, and in 2015 was a Special Guest at the 73rd World Science Fiction Convention while aboard the ISS. He participated in the Hugo Award ceremony as a guest presenter via videoconferencing, announcing Cixin Liu’s win of the 2015 Hugo Award for Best Novel.

Lindgren was born in Taipei, Taiwan in 1973 before moving to the Midwestern United States, but he spent most of his childhood in England. In 1995, he received a bachelor’s degree in biology with a minor in Mandarin Chinese from the United States Air Force Academy. In 1996, he received a masters of science in cardiovascular physiology from Colorado State University (CSU), in part for his work completing cardiovascular countermeasure research at NASA’s Space Physiology Lab. He also received a doctorate of medicine from the University of Colorado in 2002, and went on to complete a three-year residency in emergency medicine at Hennepin County Medical Center in Minneapolis, MN. In 2006, he completed a post-doctoral fellowship and master of health informatics (MHI) at the University of Minnesota. He also completed a master of public health at the University of Texas Medical Branch in 2007 and a residency in aerospace medicine in 2008.

He began working for NASA at the Johnson Space Center in 2007. He went on to support ISS training operation at Star City, Russia and became the deputy crew surgeon for STS-130 and Expedition 24. In June 2009, he became a member of NASA Astronaut Group 20 and completed his two years of training in 2011. Following training, he worked in the Spacecraft Communicator and Extravehicular Activity branches of NASA, and he was the Spacecraft Communicator lead for Expedition 30.

In 2013, he received training at the Gagarin Space Center which allowed him to serve as part of the backup crew for Expedition 42/Expedition 43 which launched on Soyuz TMA-15M.[5] He was later assigned to Expedition 44/Expedition 45 as a flight engineer and mission specialist which was launched to the ISS aboard Soyuz TMA-17M on July 22, 2015. This was his first visit to the ISS. He returned to Earth on December 11, 2015.