CREWS: Crew Recommender for Effective Work in Space

Collaborators
Dr. Noshir Contractor, SONIC lab, Northwestern University (Principal investigator)
Dr. Leslie DeChurch, ATLAS lab, Northwestern University (co-Principal investigator)
Summary
Future space exploration missions (e.g., mission to Mars) will bring incredible challenges. The crew of 4, diverse in professional background, national background, and gender will have to live and work together for an extended period of time--up tp 2 1/2 years. Communication delays with Earth will be up to 22-minutes one way--isolating crew members from family and friends, and requiring the crew to work more autonomously from mission control than current spaceflight crews on ISS missions.
In our CREWS research, we are creating predictive models of team composition and using these models to not only help understand what makes a good crew, but also testing countermeasures that can be used to help the crew have sustained performance over time on their incredible journey.