2010 Industry Conference Speakers
Dave Williams
Canadian astronaut, physician and aquanaut
Dave Williams is one of the most accomplished astronauts ever to participate in the NASA space program. He has two space shuttle missions under his belt and also holds the Canadian record for spacewalks. He is also one of the very few people who has lived in both space and underwater.
Williams was born on May 16, 1954, in Saskatoon, Sask., and was raised in Montreal, Que. His post-secondary studies at McGill University focused on medicine, leading to a bachelor of science in biology, a master of science in physiology, a doctorate of medicine, and a master of surgery. He did his residency at the University of Ottawa and the University of Toronto before joining the Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in Toronto as an emergency room doctor in 1988. He also lectured in the department of surgery at the University of Toronto.
From 1989 to 1990, Williams was an emergency room doctor with Emergency Associates of Kitchener-Waterloo and was also the medical director of the Westmount Urgent Care Clinic. He later became director of emergency services at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre and an assistant professor of surgery at the University of Toronto.
Williams fulfilled a boyhood dream when he was one of four people selected for the Canadian Astronaut Program in 1992, and a year later was appointed manager of the Missions and Space Medicine Group for the program. In 1995, he started a one-year training and evaluation program at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. After completing his training, he was assigned to the Payloads and Habitability Branch of the NASA Astronaut Office.
In 1998, Williams became the seventh Canadian in space when he flew as a mission specialist aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia. The Neurolab mission performed experiments on the effects of micro-gravity on the brain and the nervous system.
Following the mission, Williams was appointed director of the Space and Life Sciences Directorate at the Johnson Space Center, becoming the first non-American to hold a senior management position at NASA. He remained in that role for four years.
Williams added aquanaut to his resumé in 2001 when he participated in the NEEMO 1 mission, a training exercise held in Aquarius, an underwater research habitat in Key Largo, Fla. The laboratory allows astronauts to train for the International Space Station and also to test technologies before they are used in space. Five years later, he was the crew commander of the NEEMO 9 mission, which assessed methods of delivering medical care to a remote location, much like it would be done during a long space flight.
He returned to space in August 2007 as a mission specialist aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour. Williams set a Canadian record when he performed three spacewalks on the mission, which focused more on construction rather than experiments. The astronauts delivered and installed a truss segment on the International Space Station and also installed a new gyroscope for steering and steadying the station.
Williams retired from active astronaut status in March 2008. He is now Director for the new McMaster Centre for Medical Robotics at St. Joseph's Healthcare Hamilton, where he leads a team dedicated to developing innovative technologies that will change the future of surgery in local and remote patient care.
He is also a professor in the Department of Surgery, Faculty of Health Sciences, McMaster University, and holds a physician executive position at St. Joseph's Healthcare Hamilton. Besides the research focus of his new role, Williams will provide strategic guidance in physician leadership development and clinical resource management at St. Joseph's Healthcare Hamilton with a focus on building innovative strategies for physician recruitment.
Dave Williams is married and has two children. In his spare time, Williams enjoys flying, scuba diving, hiking, sailing, kayaking, canoeing, and downhill and cross-country skiing.
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