Julie Payette

Senior Fellow at Massey College, University of Toronto

Born in Montreal, Julie Payette has a degree in electrical engineering from McGill University and a master's degree from the University of Toronto, specializing in speech recognition (a discipline of artificial intelligence). She trained as a pilot with the Royal Canadian Air Force and holds a civilian commercial pilot's license. 
 
Ms. Payette joined NASA as an astronaut in 1996. She flew two missions in space for the construction of the International Space Station: STS96 (in 1999) aboard the shuttle Discovery and STS127 (in 2009) aboard the shuttle Endeavour, where she held the position of flight engineer. She has flown 611 hours in space and over 1500 hours in various types of aircraft. In between flights, Ms. Payette worked as a liaison officer in Russia, Japan and Europe, and held the position of CAPCOM (Capsule Communicator) at NASA's Mission Control Center in Houston, Texas. She was Chief Astronaut of the Canadian Space Agency from 2000 to 2007.
 
After her career in space, Julie Payette joined the Wilson Center as a scholar and became a diplomat in Washington DC. In 2013, she was appointed Director of the Montréal Science Centre. She has served on the boards of several public and not-for-profit companies. Madame Payette was the Governor General of Canada from 2017 to 2021. She is currently a Senior Fellow at Massey College, University of Toronto, a member of the Association of Space Explorers and a fellow of the International Academy of Astronautics.  She often appears at technical forums and in the media to discuss science and environmental issues, including the search for solutions to the proliferation of orbital debris.