Location | Mission Briefing Center
From September 15 through October 15, Hispanic Heritage Month is recognized in the United States. Space Center Houston is celebrating the historical and cultural contributions of Hispanic innovators to the U.S. spaceflight program with a month-long speaker series! Hear from these innovative aerospace-industry professionals as their work charts the future of human spaceflight. These presentations are included with general admission.
Cristian Barinaga
2026 Astronaut Scholar
Purdue University
Cristian Barinaga is a Cuban-American 4th year undergraduate student at Purdue University, where he has worked in various research projects ranging from medical wearable devices to analog circuits for machine learning. Cristian is passionate about interdisciplinary research and encouraging others to pursue unconventional paths.
Cristian is a 2026 Astronaut Scholar and a recipient of the 2023 Purdue Stamps Scholarship. Outside of Purdue, he has spent his undergraduate career studying abroad in both Southern Patagonia and Spain, completing his travels to all 7 continents (including Antarctica). Over his summers, he has interned twice at NVIDIA, where he has worked on the memory channel for NVIDIA’s CPU products. He hopes to pursue his Masters in Engineering at Cambridge this upcoming academic year and contribute to the emerging field of brain-inspired computing, enabling highly-efficient and low-cost AI computers.
