NSBRI: The Higher Education Portfolio of Programs Sonia Rahmati Clayton1, Ph.D., Kathy Major3, Heather Mann3, Marlene Y. MacLeish2, Ed.D., William A. Thomson1, Ph.D. Baylor College of Medicine1/Morehouse School of Medicine2/National Space Biomedical Research Institute3: USA The mission of the National Space Biomedical Research Institute (NSBRI) Education and Outreach Team is to communicate the significance and excitement of space life sciences to local, national and international audiences, while translating and disseminating knowledge gained via the biomedical advances achieved by NSBRI Research Teams. Since its inception, NSBRI educators and scientists have worked to inspire and educate the next generation of explorers, engineers and space life scientists to address the biomedical challenges of long duration human space exploration. The quality and impact of the NSBRI portfolio of educational programs has been nationally recognized. As an example, NSBRI was awarded the prestigious Stellar Award by the Rotary National Award for Space Achievement Foundation in April 2007. The award was given for “Performance as a nationally recognized, top-tier program that is pioneering new models for exemplary teaching and public outreach in support of the vision for space exploration.” At the higher education levels, new graduate programs are being implemented at Texas A&M University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a postdoctoral fellowship program is now producing new scientists for the professional workforce, and longrunning summer internship and research programs at NASA Johnson Space Center (JSC) and Morehouse School of Medicine (MSM) continue to expand and strengthen the pipeline. Summer activities are essential to NSBRI’s higher education initiatives. The summer component of both graduate programs and summer internship programs provide opportunities for undergraduate, graduate and medical students to join ongoing projects at JSC in Houston. These programs, lasting 8-15 weeks, give students exposure to research for space exploration, combined with an awareness of the Earth applications of the work. Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta operates the MSM/NSBRI Summer Research Program to strengthen the pipeline of woman and minority-group students entering medicine and biomedical research careers. In this program, students engage in an intensive 10-week summer research internship in MSM laboratories. Since the inception of all of these programs, 80 students have participated in the Summer Internship Program and 127 in the MSM Summer Research Program, six graduate students have enrolled in graduate education program, and 14 Postdoctoral fellowships have been awarded.