Dr. Michael Kezirian

Michael Kezirian, Ph.D. is Adjunct Associate Professor of Astronautics at the University of Southern California and was recently Associate Technical Fellow at Boeing.
 
Michael was a safety design engineer for the Boeing Commercial Crew Development Program (CC-Dev) and a design analyst for the Nitrogen Oxygen Recharge System (NORS) for the International Space Station.
 
Previously, in support of the Space Station Program, he was the Boeing Vehicle Safety Lead for the Endeavour Vehicle, responsible for data products that were part of the Certification of Flight Readiness (COFR).
 
For the Shuttle Program, he was the lead analyst for the Composite Overwrapped Pressure Vessel (COPV) risk assessment team. The statistical reliability model for the stochastic process of composite stress rupture was the cornerstone of the flight rationale for this newly-identified failure mode. At one point, the COPVs were carried as a “Top 10” program risk.
 
Michael is an Associate Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA). He chairs the AIAA Aerospace Pressure Vessel Committee on Standards, and is responsible for the AIAA S-080, S-081, and S-089 documents. He is a member of the AIAA’s Space Operations Support Technical and Public Policy Committees at the national level. He is also an elected Councilor of the AIAA Houston Section. He is a Fellow of the International Association for the Advancement of Space Safety. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the International Space Safety Foundation.
 
Michael earned his BSc in Chemical Engineering at Brown University (with his junior year at University of Cambridge) in 1989. He earned his MSc in Chemical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1992 and his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1996. He received the NASA Astronaut Achievement (Silver Snoopy) Award in 1996.
 
Read his LinkedIn profile.