NASA astronaut Tracy Caldwell will talk about her adventure aboard the space shuttle Endeavour in this public lecture sponsored by AirUCI and the School of Physical Sciences at UC Irvine. Caldwell also will return to UCI a stuffed Peter the Anteater mascot that traveled with her to space during the August mission. AirUCI is a research institute dedicated to understanding how air and water interact in the atmosphere and how those processes affect air quality and global climate change.

Born in Arcadia, Calif., Caldwell received her bachelor’s degree in chemistry from California State University, Fullerton and her doctorate in physical chemistry from the University of California, Davis. In 1997, she came to UCI as a Dreyfus Environmental Postdoctoral Fellow to research atmospheric chemistry with professors Barbara Finlayson-Pitts, now director of AirUCI, and John Hemminger, now dean of the School of Physical Sciences.

Caldwell became an astronaut in 1998. Since then, she has logged more than 305 hours in space. On her first flight, aboard Endeavour, Caldwell took with her a 3-inch stuffed anteater that has an AirUCI patch on his belly and a flag in his paw that says, “First EMSI in Space.” EMSI stands for Environmental Molecular Sciences Institute, the National Science Foundation-funded program that supports AirUCI. AirUCI’s principal scientists are Finlayson-Pitts, Hemminger, Doug Tobias, Sergey Nizkorodov, Benny Gerber and Donald Dabdub.