FAMU will host its annual Honors Convocation Thursday, March 31, at 10:10 a.m. in Lee Hall Auditorium. NASA astronaut Robert L. Satcher Jr. will serve as the keynote speaker.Satcher was selected by NASA in May 2004. In February 2006, he completed Astronaut Candidate Training that included scientific and technical briefings, intensive instruction in shuttle and international space station systems, physiological training, T-38 flight training and water and wilderness survival training. Satcher completed his first flight on STS-129 in November 2009. During the mission, Satcher performed two spacewalks. The STS-129 mission was completed in 10 days, 19 hours, 16 minutes and 13 seconds, traveling 4.5 million miles in 171 orbits.
Satcher received a bachelor of science degree in chemical engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1986, earned a doctor of philosophy in chemical engineering from MIT in 1993, earned a doctorate of medicine degree from Harvard Medical School in 1994; completed internship and residency in orthopedic surgery at the University of California, San Francisco in 2000, completed postdoctoral research fellowships at MIT in 1994 and University of California, Berkeley in 1998, and completed a fellowship in musculoskeletal oncology at the University of Florida in 2001.
Satcher has received special honors from Leadership Fellow of American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons, ABC Fellow of American Orthopedic Association, UNCF/Merck Research Fellow, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Fellow, Bloomberg Leadership Fellow, Johns Hopkins University and Tau Beta Pi Engineering Honor Society.