STEM Pioneer to Discuss Challenges and Opportunities Facing Tomorrow’s World

TexMed, the Texas Medical Association’s (TMA) annual conference, has invited Bernard Harris Jr., M.D., to keynote their annual event convening April 16-18, 2026, with a presentation titled “An Astronaut’s Perspective: The Future of Medicine and Beyond.”

Bernard has lived an incredible life, becoming a physician, former NASA astronaut, venture capitalist, and philanthropist. He is best known as the first African American to perform a spacewalk  on February 9, 1995, during the STS-63 mission aboard Space Shuttle Discovery. Harris earned a BS in biology from the University of Houston, an MD from Texas Tech University, and later advanced degrees in biomedical science and business. After a residency at the Mayo Clinic, he joined NASA in 1990 and flew two missions: STS-55 (1993) and STS-63 (1995), logging over 438 hours in space.

“Going around the Earth, surrounded by the Milky Way, knowing that there are over 300 billion galaxies in the known universe, and all of this operates within these laws which human beings only describe,” he told Texas Medicine. “We haven’t invented anything. We didn’t invent gravity. We didn’t invent all of the thermodynamics or electromagnetism or anything that you could think about in the history books – we’re describing what’s already there.”  

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Dr. Harris was inducted into the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame this past summer alongside Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Sally Ride, joining a fraternity of 111 members.

Post-NASA, he founded the Harris Institute/Foundation to promote STEM education for underserved youth, served as CEO of the National Math and Science Initiative, and became managing partner of Vesalius Ventures, investing in healthcare technologies. He serves on boards including those of Raytheon and MassMutual, and continues to harness a deep passion for learning and for imparting a love of the sciences to future generations.

“I get as much out of it as the students do,” he said. “I get energy.”  

Dr. Harris has been a part of the Texas Medical Association (TMA) for nearly four decades and credits the organization with keeping him connected to medicine.  

“I’ve known a number of the [physicians] in leadership through the years, and I think that TMA is so significant for physicians in Texas,” remarked Dr. Harris. “I keep up with policy and what’s happening with the state legislators through the periodicals and information newsletters that get sent out, so it’s a valuable tool for not only me but all physicians as we navigate these changing times in health care.”

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