Erika Wagner

Dr. Erika Wagner serves as Senior Director of Emerging Market Development for Blue Origin, a developer of vehicles and technologies to enable human space transportation.

Prior to joining Blue Origin, Dr. Wagner worked with the X PRIZE Foundation as Senior Director of Exploration Prize Development and founding Executive Director of the X PRIZE Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Previously, she served at MIT as Science Director and Executive Director of the Mars Gravity Biosatellite Program, a multi-university spacecraft development initiative to investigate the physiological effects of reduced gravity. She has previously served as a member of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation’s Suborbital Applications Researchers Group, the Board of the American Society for Gravitational and Space Research, and NASA’s Planetary Protection Independent Review Board. Today, she serves as a Trustee of the Museum of Flight, as well as a member of the National Academies’ Space Studies Board.

Dr. Wagner’s interdisciplinary academic background includes a bachelor’s degree in Biomedical Engineering from Vanderbilt University, a master’s in Aeronautics & Astronautics from MIT, and a PhD in Bioastronautics from the Harvard/MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology. Her research spanned both human and mammalian adaptation to microgravity, partial gravity, and centrifugation as well as organizational innovation and prize theory.

She is an alumna of the International Space University, a 2022 Karman Fellow, and an Associate Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.