On Tuesday, Feb. 6, NASA astronaut Warren “Woody” Hoburg, a 2013 graduate of the UC Berkeley Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering doctoral program, returned to Sutardja Dai Hall to deliver a CITRIS Distinguished Lecture, co-hosted by the Berkeley Space Center, to a packed Banatao Auditorium.
Watch the talk:
In his hourlong lecture, Hoburg detailed his journey to the stars, from his grad school days on CITRIS PI Pieter Abbeel’s research team, to his years preparing for — and then piloting — the SpaceX Crew-6 mission to the International Space Station. He spent a total 186 days in space.
Hoburg described the mission as “an amazing life experience,” one that gained him a new family. “It’s hard not to be friends when you are stuck together for six months,” he said.
In between lunch with the undergraduate rocketry club and his afternoon lecture, Hoburg took a few moments to catch up with Alexandre Bayen, a member of his dissertation committee and CITRIS’s new director, on recent developments in aerospace engineering at the university.
Watch their discussion: