Dr. Jan Stepanek, M.D., hails from Switzerland, where he earned his medical degree at the University of Basel. Dr. Stepanek trained in Internal Medicine at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN. He joined the staff as a Mayo Foundation Scholar in Aerospace Medicine in 1998. He completed his training in Aerospace Medicine at NASA and the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston and Houston in 2002. Later the same year, he joined the staff of the Mayo Clinic Executive Health Program, practicing first in Rochester, and then, after 2005, in Arizona. Dr. Stepanek holds the academic rank of associate professor of medicine and is board-certified in Internal Medicine and Preventive Medicine/Aerospace Medicine. Dr. Stepanek is the medical director for the Aerospace Medicine Program at Mayo Clinic in Arizona and the co-director of the Mayo Clinic Aerospace Medicine and Vestibular Research Laboratory (AMVRL). He has authored numerous peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, and abstracts and serves as co-editor for the journal Aerospace Medicine and Human Performance and Nature Microgravity. Dr. Stepanek is the principal investigator in research programs funded by the U.S. government and Mayo Clinic. His research interests include high-altitude protection, acceleration and spatial disorientation protection, and identifying unexplained causes of hypoxia with specific expertise in right-to-left shunting assessed with novel diagnostic methods.