REMEMBERING NATE SZEWCZYK
BY RYAN SCOTT
Nathaniel “Nate” Szewczyk, Ph.D., was a remarkable scientist, mentor, and colleague who passed away on July 26, 2025, in Athens, Ohio. He had the rare gift of blending technical acumen, collaborative clarity, and genuine kindness. Nate earned a B.S. from Carnegie Mellon University and a Ph.D. in Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology from the University of Pittsburgh. He then completed postdoctoral space biology research at NASA Ames, an anchor that shaped his career at the University of Nottingham and later at Ohio University.
A pioneering space biologist, Nate’s work with Caenorhabditis elegans reframed how our community studies neuromuscular adaptation in microgravity. His team flew worms on the Space Shuttle and the International Space Station, building a platform for flight-relevant omics and countermeasure discovery. Alongside his NASA support, in 2017 his group received funding from the UK Space Agency’s Microgravity Science Programme, and in 2021 Ohio University highlighted his research with “3 million worms” headed to the ISS.
Nate was an early, vocal champion of open science through NASA GeneLab and, later, across the NASA Open Science Data Repository (OSDR). He was among the first to join the GeneLab/OSDR Analysis Working Groups (AWG) and presented at its first workshop in Orlando in 2018. At a time when many of his peers were hesitant to share data, he became one of the strongest advocates for transparency, reuse, and collaboration.
He helped shape the Animal AWG’s culture and priorities by showing up at workshops, publishing across teams, and coaching trainees on best practices for high quality data sharing and analysis. He also lent his voice to early efforts in the Ames Life Sciences Data Archive AWG in 2020-2021, which worked to standardize many data types beyond genetics and omics, reinforcing the principle that well stewarded legacy data can power new discovery and innovation. During his years in the U.K., he also helped steer a European Space Agency topical team that advocated for life-science data sharing and stronger omics capabilities, and helped found the collaborative International Standards for Space Omics Processing. He also co-authored several papers part of the ‘Space Omics and Medical Atlas’ Nature Portfolio package in 2024.
Beyond the papers and flights, Nate will be remembered as a generous mentor and a genuinely kind human being. He inspired trust, curiosity, and dedication in all who worked with him. ASGSR and the global space biology community mourn the loss of a brilliant scientist and a builder of communities whose example will continue to guide our work. His belief in a bright future, full of goodness, wonder, exploration, and expanding human horizons throughout the solar system will stay with us.
For those who were impacted by Nate here is an obituary from his family and those wishing to leave a note for his family can share them via this guest book.
Figure: Collage showing Nate in five contexts of his career in space biology and open science clockwise starting top left: Mentoring a student in the laboratory at Ohio University; Presenting the Molecular Muscle Experiment mission patch at a science/art event; Participating virtually in the 2025 AWG Catalyst Summit on GatherTown; At the launching of Columbia Space Shuttle in January 2003 which had C. Elegans aboard; Discussing spaceflight biology in a 2014 European Space Agency interview. Photo Credits: Matt Love/Ohio University; Beata Science Art 2019, Twitter/X; GatherTown/AWG Catalyst Summit 2025; CMU.edu/Stuart Kim; ESA Multimedia.