Gannon University alumna Angelica de Rosa will conduct a presentation on Thursday, Oct. 3, at 7 p.m. in the Zurn Science Center, Room 104, on 143 W. Seventh St. Her presentation is called “Radiation Induced Bone Loss: Space Flight and Beyond,” and it will focus on the problem of radiation-induced osteoporosis, both in space flight and cancer radiotherapy applications. The event is open to the public.

De Rosa is a 2011 Gannon graduate with a degree in mechanical engineering and she is currently pursuing her doctorate in biomedical engineering at North Carolina State University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her laboratory experiments have flown on numerous space shuttle missions, most recently STS-135. De Rosa was selected to present at the National Space Grant Director’s Meeting last spring, and she was also chosen to attend the NASA Space Radiation Summer School at Brookhaven National Laboratories this past summer.

De Rosa is using her engineering skills and researched knowledge of radiation bone loss together to determine more about the molecular causes of osteoporosis in long-term pediatric cancer radiotherapy patients.