Neil Yorio

Recognized under Tier 6 — Food Production & Space Agriculture, Neil Yorio has built a career at NASA Kennedy Space Center researching controlled-environment plant growth for space applications. Yorio's work on plant responses to light quality, photoperiod, and the optimization of LED lighting systems for plant growth in space habitats has been central to the development of efficient, effective plant growth hardware for long-duration missions. As energy efficiency is a critical constraint in any space habitat, this research on maximizing plant productivity per unit of energy input is directly relevant to the practical design of food production systems for a Mars colony.