Morris W. Foster, vice president for research at Old Dominion University, was reappointed to the Virginia Commercial Space Flight Authority (VCSFA) by Governor Ralph Northam.
Also known as "Virginia Space," the body promotes "commercial space activity, economic development and aerospace research within the Commonwealth," according to its website.
Foster, a medical anthropologist, came to ODU in 2014 after spending 27 years as a faculty member at the University of Oklahoma. He received a bachelor's degree from the University of Oklahoma in 1981 and went on to complete graduate work in anthropology at Yale University, earning a master's degree in 1984 and a Ph.D. in 1988.
As vice president for research, Foster oversees faculty research across six colleges and numerous research centers at ODU, including the Virginia Institute for Spaceflight and Autonomy (VISA). Located on the Eastern Shore, VISA is a hub to leverage Virginia's world-class assets in space launch, autonomous systems, modeling and simulation and data science to solve real-world problems.
