2025 Annual Conference: VPR Research Workshop Featured Speakers
Learn more about our speakers for the TAMEST VPR Research Workshop: ARPA-H, GURI and Texas Space Commission.

Colin Boone
Finance Specialist
Office of the Governor
Governor’s University Research Initiative (GURI)

Nancy Currie-Gregg, Ph.D.
Member, Texas Space Commission Board of Directors
Director, Texas A&M Space Institute
Departments of Industrial & Systems Engineering and Aerospace Engineering
Texas A&M University
Before joining Texas A&M University, Dr. Currie-Gregg dedicated the majority of her career to supporting NASA’s human spaceflight programs and projects. Selected as an astronaut in 1990, she logged 1,000 hours in space as a mission specialist on four space shuttle missions. Following the Space Shuttle Columbia tragedy in 2002, she led the Space Shuttle Program Safety and Mission Assurance Office, directing safety, reliability, and quality assurance efforts to enable the safe return to flight of the Space Shuttle. She also served as a senior executive member of the NASA Engineering and Safety Center, where she spent more than a decade as a Principal Engineer and Chief Engineer at the Johnson Space Center.
Dr. Currie-Gregg earned her bachelor’s degree in Biological Sciences from The Ohio State University, a Master of Science degree in Safety Engineering from the University of Southern California, and a doctorate in Industrial Engineering from the University of Houston. A retired U.S. Army Colonel and Master Army Aviator, she has accumulated over 4,000 flight hours in rotary and fixed-wing aircraft.

Eva Garland, Ph.D.
Founder
Eva Garland Consulting
Dr. Garland actively participates on Federal and State grant review panels and has served as a reviewer for the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s report on the DOE SBIR/STTR program. She is the lead author for EGC’s three best-selling books on the SBIR/STTR program.
Prior to EGC, Dr. Garland held positions on the Chemistry Faculty at NC State University and as Vice President of Research & Development at Agile Sciences. At Agile, she oversaw a grant program that generated over $15M in non-dilutive funding to support the company’s pre-clinical development of a new class of compounds for addressing drug-resistant bacterial infections. Dr. Garland holds a B.A. in Chemistry from Columbia University and a Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from Caltech.
