May 22, 2024

Congratulations to the NASA Life Sciences Platform Team who won the 2023 NASA Group Achievement Award for “exceptional group achievement in development and support of the Human Research Program's NASA Life Sciences Portal.” Sandeep Shetye (ARC) accepted the award on behalf of the team at the Ames Research Center's annual Presidential Rank and NASA Honor Awards Ceremony on Wednesday, May 22, 2024.

The NASA Life Sciences Platform Team was also nominated for the Rotary National Award for Space Achievement Foundation’s prestigious Stellar Award. The nomination was “recognition of the respect the team has earned for its hard work and exceptional accomplishments” in developing the NASA Life Sciences Portal (NLSP). The platform’s Chief Architect and Project Manager, John Dunn (USRA), represented the team at the awards ceremony that was held in Houston, Texas, on April 26.

NLSP is the official repository of scientific research and health data generated by the NASA Human Research Program (HRP). The HRP research community has lauded the innovative software platform, which was highlighted by the HRP Director as one of the major successes of the Program.

NLSP is a novel enterprise-wide, cloud-native data platform that subsumes several legacy on-premises systems hosting NASA's Life Sciences Data Archive, Lifetime Surveillance of Astronaut Health data, and other data archives used by HRP. The system was designed specifically for HRP’s objective to effectively collect, access, distribute, and reuse data for new research to perform evidence synthesis.

The system supports efficient collection, archiving, analysis, and dissemination of HRP data. With NLSP, the Program is now able to provide improved and open access to its research data, thereby broadening scientific community participation and increasing the impact to life science missions.

NLSP provides access to astronaut health data with regulatory compliance regarding data privacy, data sharing, and end-user data access so that investigators can more easily determine the impacts of space environments on humans. Other innovations include:

• Role-based access controls for data security
• Integrated analytics workspace to foster collaboration and to enable seamless interactions within the scientific community
• Integration of cutting-edge data analytics tools
• Automation of data request and data submission processing
• Development of an innovative process for transferring and verifying large data sets from external sources
• Improvements to scientific information and communication using ontology-driven metadata
• Standardization of data formats
• Adherence to Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability, and Reusability (FAIR) scientific principles

What sets NLSP apart is its commitment to long-term data preservation and trustworthy governance, establishing it as a cornerstone in the ever-evolving landscape of scientific research and data management.

The design and development of NLSP has taken overwhelming dedication, focus, and professionalism. The results from this team's collaborative work demonstrate not only the technical expertise but also a deep commitment to NASA's diversity, values, and mission.

Despite the challenges of starting the development effort during the pandemic, the team stayed focused while adapting to dynamic schedule pressures and created a culture of high performance to achieve technical excellence. The work was a culmination of outstanding leadership and teamwork throughout the entire development and release process and was recognized by the Human Research Program Control Board (HRPCB).

Through the development of NLSP, the team has facilitated increased and more effective participation of current and future scientific collaborators, contributing substantially to NASA's mission. NAMS team members who develop and support NLSP include:

John Dunn
Sara Glickman
Kim Heintschel
Edrisa Jobe
Patrick Moore
Karl Polintan
Kamyar Rasouli Shahmiri
Stuart Williscroft