Unless you’ve been living on the moon (idiom intended), you know the current talk of the town is about the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS) and how they are creating a presence right here in San Diego. San Diego Business Journal talked about CONNECT’s involvement with CASIS just a couple months back, and now everyone – and I mean everyone – is talking about the ISS R&D Conference happening this week, right here in San Diego.
Yesterday’s press conference announcing CASIS’s establishment of a permanent presence in San Diego at the ISS R&D Conference had an all-star lineup including Mayor Faulconer, CASIS President and Executive Director (also a former astronaut!) Greg Johnson, Sanjay Gupta, Mark & Scott Kelly and CONNECT’s President & CEO, Greg McKee.
But what is CASIS? And why are they building their first west coast presence here in San Diego?
CASIS is the organization tasked by NASA to manage the U.S. National Laboratory on the International Space Station (ISS). The role of CASIS is to enable access to the ISS National Laboratory for microgravity research that has the capacity to benefit life on Earth.
CASIS has elected to develop a permanent presence in San Diego with the intention of tapping into its rich innovative clusters, hoping to educate and ultimately assist companies, academic institutions and researchers from the local community to access the microgravity environment on station.
Sound familiar? That’s because CASIS’s mission and CONNECT’s are closely aligned. We are thrilled to be partnering with CASIS because we have a shared and singular purpose – to push innovation to new heights in order to create companies and products that improve people’s lives around the world. CASIS executes on this through managing the International Space Station and CONNECT accomplishes it by helping to create and scale great technology and life science companies.
The CONNECT team has worked very closely with the CASIS team over the past year to help them establish a permanent presence here in San Diego. Access to the International Space Station is an incredible opportunity for both researchers and startups to push their companies – from nearly all disciplines of science, from life and physical sciences to technology development – to the next level through access to microgravity research.
CONNECT continues to partner with incredible organizations around the world, like CASIS, to bring San Diego the highest-quality, preeminent resources to continue bolstering our innovation economy.
We look forward to helping CASIS grow in San Diego and assisting entrepreneurs and researchers get access to the International Space Station through CASIS.