Steven Moore

Biography

In 1988 my work in the nascent field of machine vision in automotive production monitoring led me to undertake a PhD on image processing techniques for accurate assessment of 3D eye movements whilst working as a biomedical engineer at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in Sydney. The eye tracking algorithms were used clinically at RPAH and were also of interest to NASA, as small rotational movements of the eye during head tilt reflected output from the otoliths, the gravity-sensing 'accelerometers' of the inner ear. At the completion of my PhD in 1996 I was offered a position as a post-doctoral research associate at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City under Professor Bernard Cohen. Dr Cohen had received a grant from NASA to fly a human centrifuge, capable of generating 1-g of centripetal acceleration, aboard the shuttle Columbia during the 1998 Neurolab mission (STS-90). This was the first (and so far only) application of 'artificial gravity' in human spaceflight. I had the unique opportunity of managing this large international project as a co-investigator. I was also hired as a consultant by the European Space Agency (ESA) Directorate of Manned Spaceflight to oversee the development of the Neurolab video-oculography software, a critical experimental component used to assess otolith function during centrifugation in space and on the ground.

Research Interest

Engineering