Kristen Magas, Anderson Wilder, Obaid Alsuwaidi, and Tiffany Snyder (from left to right) will live in a Mars simulation for 45 days. Photos courtesy of NASA

Four individuals have been selected to go to Mars. Well, sort of.

Obaid Alsuwaidi, Kristen Magas, Tiffany Snyder, and Anderson Wilder were picked by NASA to live for 45 days in a 650-square-foot Mars simulation located at Johnson Space Center in Houston. The participants will enter the Human Exploration Research Analog, or HERA, on Friday, November 1, and will live and work like astronauts until Monday, December 16.

Jordan Hundley and Robert Wilson also were named as alternate crew members.

"Scientists use HERA studies to examine how crew members adapt to isolation, confinement, and remote conditions before NASA sends astronauts on deep space missions to the Moon, Mars, and beyond," reads NASA's announcement. "The studies provide data about human health and performance in an enclosed environment over time with crews facing different challenges and tasks."

In the experiment, the participants will complete research and operational duties, including raising shrimp, farming, and completing virtual reality-simulated walks on Mars. In addition to these tasks, the crew will experience communication delays similar to ones astronauts will face on future missions to Mars and beyond, which could be as long as 20 minutes each way.

Through NASA’s Human Research Program, the crew members will participate in 18 human health studies focused on physiological, behavioral, and psychological health during the mission.

Here's a little more about each of the crew members:

  • As captain engineer for the United Arab Emirates’ Ministry of Defense, Obaid Alsuwaidi, provides guidance in civil and marine engineering and addresses challenges facing the organization.
  • Kristen Magas, an educator and engineer currently teaching at Tri-County Regional Vocational Technical High School in Franklin, Massachusetts, mentors students involved in a NASA design and prototyping program.
  • With more than 20 years of information technology and cybersecurity experience, Tiffany Snyder is a supervisor for the Cybersecurity Mission Integration Office at NASA, helping to ensure agency missions are shielded against cybersecurity threats.
  • Currently researching team resiliency and human-machine interactions, Anderson Wilder is a Florida Institute of Technology graduate student working on his doctorate in Psychology and previously served as an executive officer and engineer for an analog mission at the Mars Desert Research Station in Utah.
  • Jordan Hundley (alternate) is a senior consultant at a professional services firm, offering federal agencies technical and programmatic support.
  • Robert Wilson (alternate) is a senior researcher and project manager at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland.
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3 Houston innovators who made headlines in May 2025

Innovators to Know

Editor's note: Houston innovators are making waves this month with revolutionary VC funding, big steps towards humanoid robotics, and software that is impacting the agriculture sector. Here are three Houston innovators to know right now.

Zach Ellis, founder and partner of South Loop Ventures

Zach Ellis. Photo via LinkedIn

Zach Ellis Jr., founder and general partner of South Loop Ventures, says the firm wants to address the "billion-dollar blind spot" of inequitable distribution of venture capital to underrepresented founders of color. The Houston-based firm recently closed its debut fund for more than $21 million. Learn more.

Ty Audronis, CEO and founder of Tempest Droneworx

Ty Audronis, CEO and founder of Tempest Droneworx

Ty Audronis, center. Photo via LinkedIn.

Ty Audronis and his company, Tempest Droneworx, made a splash at SXSW Interactive 2025, winning the Best Speed Pitch award at the annual festival. The company is known for it flagship product, Harbinger, a software solution that agnostically gathers data at virtually any scale and presents that data in easy-to-understand visualizations using a video game engine. Audronis says his company won based on its merits and the impact it’s making and will make on the world, beginning with agriculture. Learn more.

Nicolaus Radford, CEO of Persona AI

Nicolaus Radford, founder and CEO of Nauticus RoboticsNicolaus Radford. Image via LinkedIn

Houston-based Persona AI and CEO Nicolaus Radford continue to make steps toward deploying a rugged humanoid robot, and with that comes the expansion of its operations at Houston's Ion. Radford and company will establish a state-of-the-art development center in the prominent corner suite on the first floor of the building, with the expansion slated to begin in June. “We chose the Ion because it’s more than just a building — it’s a thriving innovation ecosystem,” Radford says. Learn more.

Houston university to launch artificial intelligence major, one of first in nation

BS in AI

Rice University announced this month that it plans to introduce a Bachelor of Science in AI in the fall 2025 semester.

The new degree program will be part of the university's department of computer science in the George R. Brown School of Engineering and Computing and is one of only a few like it in the country. It aims to focus on "responsible and interdisciplinary approaches to AI," according to a news release from the university.

“We are in a moment of rapid transformation driven by AI, and Rice is committed to preparing students not just to participate in that future but to shape it responsibly,” Amy Dittmar, the Howard R. Hughes Provost and executive vice president for academic affairs, said in the release. “This new major builds on our strengths in computing and education and is a vital part of our broader vision to lead in ethical AI and deliver real-world solutions across health, sustainability and resilient communities.”

John Greiner, an assistant teaching professor of computer science in Rice's online Master of Computer Science program, will serve as the new program's director. Vicente Ordóñez-Román, an associate professor of computer science, was also instrumental in developing and approving the new major.

Until now, Rice students could study AI through elective courses and an advanced degree. The new bachelor's degree program opens up deeper learning opportunities to undergrads by blending traditional engineering and math requirements with other courses on ethics and philosophy as they relate to AI.

“With the major, we’re really setting out a curriculum that makes sense as a whole,” Greiner said in the release. “We are not simply taking a collection of courses that have been created already and putting a new wrapper around them. We’re actually creating a brand new curriculum. Most of the required courses are brand new courses designed for this major.”

Students in the program will also benefit from resources through Rice’s growing AI ecosystem, like the Ken Kennedy Institute, which focuses on AI solutions and ethical AI. The university also opened its new AI-focused "innovation factory," Rice Nexus, earlier this year.

“We have been building expertise in artificial intelligence,” Ordóñez-Román added in the release. “There are people working here on natural language processing, information retrieval systems for machine learning, more theoretical machine learning, quantum machine learning. We have a lot of expertise in these areas, and I think we’re trying to leverage that strength we’re building.”