i40550

Dr. Nick Kanas is an Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). He trained at Stanford University (B.A. Psychology); UCLA Medical School (M.D. 1971); University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston (Internship); and UCSF (Psychiatry Residency 1975). After training and serving in the United States Air Force as a psychiatrist, he joined the faculty at UCSF and the affiliated San Francisco Veterans Affairs Medical Center, where he conducted clinical and research work on people suffering from stressful conditions. He has over 230 professional publications and is the recipient of the Dr. J. Elliott Royer Award for academic psychiatry. 

He directed the Group Therapy Training Program for the UCSF Department of Psychiatry; supervised and led patient therapy groups; conducted training workshops; wrote a book entitled Group Therapy for Schizophrenic Patients, and for over 20 years edited the Research Reviews section of the International Journal of Group Psychotherapy. In 2021, he published a book entitled: Integrative Group Therapy for Psychosis: An Evidence-based Approach. 

Since 1969, Prof. Kanas has studied and written about psychological and interpersonal issues affecting people living and working in space. He has done space-related research since the late 1980s, and for over 15 years he was a NASA-funded principal investigator, doing psychological research with astronauts and cosmonauts. He is a member and former trustee of the International Academy of Astronautics, and he has been a consultant to SpaceX. In 2017, he gave the Psi Chi Keynote Speech on space psychology at the Eastern Psychological Association Convention in Boston; he was invited by the Buzz Aldrin Space Institute to participate in a Mars mission workshop at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida; and he was invited to give a series of lectures on space psychology to students at Beihang University, Beijing, China. For over 20 years, he has chaired the paper session on Behavior, Performance and Psychosocial Issues in Space for the yearly International Astronautical Congress, and he has presented papers and plenaries at Humans in Space Symposia (most recently in 2017 and 2021), and at NASA Human Research Program Investigators’ Workshops (most recently in 2021, 2022, and 2023). 

In 1999, Prof. Kanas received the Aerospace Medical Association Raymond F. Longacre Award for Outstanding Accomplishment in the Psychological and Psychiatric Aspects of Aerospace Medicine. In 2008, he received the International Academy of Astronautics Life Science Award. 

He has written three book on space psychology. Together with Dietrich Manzey, he is the senior author of the book Space Psychology and Psychiatry (now in its 2nd edition), which was given the 2004 International Academy of Astronautics (IAA) Life Science Book Award. His book Humans in Space: The Psychological Hurdles was given the 2016 IAA Life Science Book Award. In 2023, he published a textbook entitled Behavioral Health and Human Interactions in Space, which won the IAA Life Sciences Book Award for that year. He continues to write and consult on the psychosocial aspects of human space travel. 

Prof. Kanas has collected antiquarian celestial maps for over 40 years and has given a number of talks on celestial cartography at public venues, such as the Adler Planetarium, the Lick Observatory, and the California Academy of Sciences (as a Benjamin Dean lecturer). He also has presented at the International Conference on the History of Cartography at Harvard; International Map Collectors Society Conferences in Wellington (New Zealand) and Vienna; the Society for the History of Astronomy Conference in Birmingham (England); and the Flamsteed Astronomical Society meeting in Greenwich (England). He has published articles on celestial cartography in magazines and journals, such as Sky and Telescope, Imago Mundi, and the Journal of the International Map Collectors Society.  He is a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society (London). He has written two celestial map books: Star Maps: History, Artistry, and Cartography (now in its 3rd edition), and Solar System Maps: From Antiquity to the Space Age. 

He has been an amateur astronomer for over 60 years and is an avid reader of science fiction. He has presented talks on space psychology and on celestial mapping at several regional and World Con science fiction conventions; published three factual articles on space psychology in Analog Science Fiction and Fact magazine (one of which won the annual readers’ poll award for 2015 Best Fact Article); and has published three science fiction novels: The New Martians, The Protos Mandate, and The Caloris Network. He has written a screenplay for The New Martians, which currently is being reviewed by various producers. 

Prof. Kanas is a docent (human evolution track) at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco. He enjoys interacting with the public (both adults and children) and helping them learn about the marvels of science. 

Website: nickkanas.com. E-mail: nick.kanas@ucsf.edu.