Dr. Shawna Pandya is a Canadian physician, scientist-astronaut candidate program graduate with the International Institute for Astronautical Sciences (IIAS) and  Project PoSSUM, aquanaut, speaker, martial artist, advanced diver, skydiver, pilot-in-training, VP Immersive Medicine with Luxsonic Technologies and Fellow of the Explorers’ Club. She is also Director of the IIAS/PoSSUM Space Medicine Group, Chief Instructor of the IIAS/PoSSUM Operational Space Medicine course, Director of Medical Research at Orbital Assembly Corporation. In this episode, Ben chats to Dr Shawna about her journey to get to the stars, the importance of psychological resilience and why she is a fan of doing things “same, same but different”! 00:18 Episode 29: Dr Shawna Pandya - Ben more than impressed with her CV (won’t be the last time he mentions it) 01:43 Ben brings on Dr Shawna 02:00 What is a citizen astronaut candidate? 04:07 Why is Dr Shawna considering the alternative route to space? 06:46 Favourite astronaut training activity? 11:50 What did Dr Shawna learn about herself? 15:27 Rural emergency medicine 16:18 Ben attempts to talk about learnings from Covid in respect to space. Dr Shawna’s thoughts on covid response. 20:12 Does Mars simulation experience help with covid? 22:52 Strategy to become astronaut 22:40 Game-plan to get to space? 26:34 What research would Dr Shawna do in LEO? 28:12 What is Orbital and what is the timeline? https://orbitalassembly.com/ 29:44 What advice for young women entering the STEM world? 30:20 Dr Shawna’s love of Taekwondo 33:04 Outro and wrap up Social Media Twitter/Instagram: https://twitter.com/shawnapandya?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/shawnapandya/?hl=en Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/shawnapandyaofficial/about LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/shawnapandya/?originalSubdomain=ca Stay connected with us! Use #Astroben across various social media platforms to engage with us! Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/astrobenpodcast/ Website (coming soon): www.astroben.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/gambleonit?lang=en Please subscribe and rate - Ad Astra!