Dr. Sheri Wells-Jensen is a professor of linguistics at Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio where she serves as director of both the linguistics and the English for Speakers of Other Languages Programs. Her research interests include braille and tactile graphics, disability studies, xenolinguistics, and astrobiology. She was the 2023 Baruch S. Blumberg NASA/Library of Congress chair in Astrobiology, Exploration and Scientific Innovation and worked as a linguistic consultant on the NASA Clipper probe which is now on its merry way toward Jupiter’s moon Europa.

She was the flight operations co-lead for AstroAccess, a nonprofit dedicated to increasing disability access to space flight. She flew aboard two zero G parabolic flights and was the accessibility officer for the first mission at the Space Analog for the Moon and Mars facility on the campus of Biosphere II. She is a writer, lifelong braille reader, bread baker, and unapologetic banjo and ukulele player.

She is on the boards of Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence International, SciAccess and the Society for Social and Conceptual Issues in Astrobiology. She was beyond thrilled to have been selected to fly aboard the first parabolic flight of Mission: AstroAccess which took 12 disabled people into a zero gravity environment, and she is currently at work on a book documenting that experience.