University of Kentucky alumna Barbara Landrum Rice will talk about her career as a research dietician for NASA during an upcoming lecture. 

Rice will speak about the "Nutrition and Foods of Space Flight," at 10 a.m. April 15 in the W.T. Young Library Auditorium on UK's campus. The public is welcome to attend.

A 1962 graduate of what is now the UK School of Human Environmental Sciences, Rice has worked at NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston for the past 20 years. At NASA, she selects food for astronauts and monitors what they eat before, during and after space flights. She also conducts metabolism studies to monitor the astronauts' protein and calcium intakes.

While working at NASA, Rice performed a preflight food research study in 1994 in Russia, where she worked with astronauts and cosmonauts who would be living and working on Russia's Mir space station.

Prior to working at NASA, Rice served as a dietician for several school systems and hospitals in California.  She also was a nutrition instructor at the University of Texas in Houston, Los Angeles Valley College and California State University at Los Angeles. She maintains a private nutrition consulting practice.

Rice has received several professional awards throughout her career including the NASA Technology Inventions and Contributions Award, the NASA Group Achievement Award and the Silver Snoopy Personal Award for Professional Excellence from the Astronaut Corps at the Johnson Space Center. She is a member of UK's School of Human Environmental Sciences Hall of Fame and will be inducted into the UK Hall of Distinguished Alumni April 16.