Daniel Thomas Barry (born December 30, 1953) is an American engineer, scientist, television personality, and a retired NASA astronaut. He was a contestant on the CBS reality television program Survivor: Panama, as well as on BattleBots on ABC. He was at Singularity University from 2009 to 2012, where he was co-chair of the Faculty of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics and the chair of the graduate summer program. He is also a co-founder of Fellow AI, a telepresence robotics company, and the founder and president of Denbar Robotics.
Early life and education
Barry is a 1971 graduate of Bolton High School in Alexandria, Louisiana. He is a member of the Theta Chi fraternity.
Barry graduated in 1975 with a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. He graduated in 1980 with a Ph.D. in electrical engineering and computer science from Princeton University after completing a doctoral dissertation titled Correlated X-ray diffraction analysis and electron microscopy of photoreceptor membranes In 1982, he graduated with a Doctor of Medicine degree from Leonard M. Miller School of Medicine at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida.
Personal life
Barry is married to neurobiologist and author Susan R. Barry. They have two children, Jenny and Andy, who both work in robotics.
Academic career
Following graduate school at Princeton University, Barry was a National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellow in physics at Princeton. He then attended the University of Miami Medical School, graduating in 1982. He completed an internship and a Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation residency at the University of Michigan in 1985. He was appointed as an assistant professor in the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation and in the Bioengineering Program at the University of Michigan in 1985, and his tenure was approved by the Regents in 1992. He spent the summers of 1985–87 at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, supported by the Grass Foundation for work in skeletal muscle physiology and as the Associate Director of the Grass Foundation Fellowship Program (1986–87). His research primarily involves biological signal processing, including signal processing theory, algorithms, and applications to specific biological systems. The applications include acoustic signals generated by contracting skeletal muscle, electrical signals from muscle, and heart sounds. He has also worked in prosthetic design. Barry's work has been supported by the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the Grass Foundation, and the American Heart Association of Michigan. He has five patents, over 50 articles in scientific journals, and has served on two scientific journal editorial boards.
NASA career
Selected by NASA in March 1992, Barry reported to the Johnson Space Center in August 1992. He completed one year of training and qualified for assignment as a mission specialist on Space Shuttle flight crews. Dr. Barry has worked on primary payload development, the Shuttle Avionics Integration Laboratory (SAIL), portable computing issues for Space Shuttle, Chief of Astronaut Appearances, flight clinic ombudsman, source board member for the NASA Space Biomedical Research Institute (NSBRI), Astronaut Office representative to NASDA, the Japanese Space Agency, and a tour of duty with the Office of Biological & Physical Research, NASA Headquarters, Washington D.C. A veteran of three space flights, STS-72 (1996), STS-96 (1999), and STS-105 (2001), Barry logged over 734 hours in space, including 4 spacewalks totaling 25 hours and 53 minutes. He retired from NASA in April 2005 whereupon he started Denbar Robotics and continues to serve as president.
Spaceflight experience
STS-72 Endeavour (January 11–20, 1996) was a 9-day flight during which the crew retrieved the Space Flyer Unit (launched from Japan 10-months earlier) and deployed and retrieved the OAST-Flyer. Barry performed a 6-hour, 9 minute spacewalk designed to demonstrate and evaluate techniques to be used in the assembly of the International Space Station. Mission duration was 142 Earth orbits, traveling 3.7 million miles in 214 hours and 41 seconds. On this mission, Barry and Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata were the first people to play Go in space; for this achievement, Barry received the honorary award of Ni Dan rank by the Nihon Kiin making him one of only four Western Go players to receive such an award. Barry and Wakata used a special Go set, which was named Go Space, designed by Wai-Cheung Willson Chow.