Roberta Bondar is Canada's first female astronaut and the first neurologist in space. Bondar's love of the sciences began as a child, her father built a lab in the basement where she frequently conducted experiments. She even dreamed of becoming an astronaut, saying in an interview: “When I was eight years old to be a spaceman was the most exciting thing I could imagine.” Bondar earned a B.Sc. in zoology and agriculture from the University of Guelph in 1968, and a M.Sc. in experimental pathology from the University of Western Ontario in 1971. She received her Ph.D. in neurobiology from the University of Toronto in 1974 and an M.D. from McMaster University in Ontario in 1977. Bondar received further postgraduate medical training in neurology and neuro-ophthalmology before she was admitted as a fellow in neurology to the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada in 1981. In 1983 she was chosen as one of the six original Canadian astronauts, and she began her astronaut training as a member of the Canadian Space Agency in 1984. In early 1990 Bondar was selected to be a payload specialist for the first International Microgravity Laboratory Mission, a manned module aimed at investigating the effects of weightlessness on living organisms and materials processing. She flew into space as a payload specialist on the Discovery space shuttle during the STS-42 mission launching into space on January 22, 1992 and returning to Earth on January 30. During the eight-day mission, she and her six fellow astronauts conducted several life science and materials science experiments on Spacelab, a reusable laboratory developed by the European Space Agency used on the Space Shuttle. They focused on the adaptability of the human nervous system in low gravity, which later allowed NASA to prepare astronauts for long stays in the space station. Bondar and her fellow astronauts also analyzed the effects of microgravity, a measure of the degree to which an object in space is subjected to acceleration, on other living organisms such as shrimp eggs, fruit fly eggs, and bacteria. After her astronaut career, Bondar led an international team of researchers at NASA for more than a decade, examining data obtained from astronauts on space missions to better understand the mechanisms underlying the body's ability to recover from exposure to space. For more than a decade, collaborating with NASA, Dr. Bondar headed an international space medicine research team, to find new connections between astronauts recovering from the microgravity of space and neurological illnesses here on Earth such as strokes and Parkinson's disease. This work led to her being awarded the Order of Canada which recognizes outstanding achievement, dedication to the community, and service to the nation. Bondar was the first astronaut to receive a star on Canada's Walk of Fame in 2011. In 2009, Dr. Bondar co-founded The Roberta Bondar Foundation, a not-for-profit that charity centers on environmental awareness. Bondar pursued her interests in photography with an emphasis on natural environments; she was an Honors student in Professional Nature Photography at the Brooks Institute of Photography in Santa Barbara, California. She is the author of four photo essay books that feature her photography of the Earth.