Dr Niamh Shaw is an Irish engineer, scientist, performer and explorer of all things Space. She talks about science & space on Irish radio & TV, and makes public events and theatre shows to ignite peoples curiosity- especially those people who think that science isn’t for them.  She is actively pursuing her dream to get to space as artist and performer and has been sharing her global space adventures and expeditions since 2014. In this regard, she participated in a zero gravity flight at Star City in Moscow, has visited Baikonur Cosmodrome (most recently for the launch of European Space Agency Astronaut, Alexander Gerst) and is an experienced analogue astronaut with over 20 EVA hrs from her simulated Mars mission at the Mars Society’s Mars Desert Research Station in the high Utah desert.

A still image from a video piece created at Erasmus Centre at ESA ESTEC, 2014

Voted one of Ireland’s leading science communicators and STEAM specialists (merging science, technology, engineering, arts and maths), she champions Women in STEM in all her projects and works with the Lottie Doll Company to promote young girls and boys in STEM, bringing ‘Stargazer Lottie’ on all her space adventures.

She is artist in residence at CIT Blackrock Castle Observatory Cork, was the Humanities co-chair at this summer’s 2018 International Space Studies Programme & the Dublin point of contact for Ireland’s national Space week. She writes for BBC’s monthly Sky at Night astronomy magazine, and has spoken recently at Inspirefest and New Scientist Live . In November, she speaks at Wired Live , and NASA Johnson Space Centre about the cross-disciplinary nature of her work exploring space.

Niamh participated in a Zero Gravity flight in 2017 at Moscow, as part of her quest.

For Science week 2018, she is grateful to obtain funding from SFI to bring Baking in Space , The Irish Astronauts of 1991 and Art in Mind to the programme of events. Her newest theatre piece ‘Diary of a Martian Beekeeper‘ funded under SFI’s 2017 Discover programme (working closely with ESA’s Astronaut Centre in Cologne), will tour internationally in 2019/2020. Her new radio show ‘Curious Humans’ funded by the Broadcasting Association of Ireland will be aired on RTE Radio 1 extra later this year. She continues to seek out further extreme environments and opportunities in human space exploration and spends Fridays with her parents, keeping bees.