Established and sponsored by the French Society of Aerospace Medicine in memory of Marie Marvingt (1875-1963), a pioneer French pilot and surgical nurse who, for more than 50 years, actively and untiringly involved herself in the conception and development of air ambulance services and in the education of the general public regarding their use and benefits. The award is presented annually to honor excellence and innovation in aerospace medicine.

George Pantalos, BSAAE, MSBE, Ph.D., FAIMBE, received the 2025 Marie Marvingt Award for his research in aerospace physiology, medical procedures, and medical device innovation in the lab, drop-towers, parabolic flight, suborbital flight, and orbital spaceflight. His research has used physical models of the cardiovascular system, instrumented animal and human test subjects, and he has always shared his adventures with students. The realization, when he was a teenager, that many technical problems in medicine have an engineering solution led him to use engineering knowledge, tools, and skills to become involved in medical research, development, and innovation to advance healthcare. As a university professor, he began organizing project teams to pursue parabolic and orbital flight experiments. He instrumented an artificial heart he helped create and connected it to a physical model of the circulation to demonstrate that the hydrostatic pressure inside the heart alters cardiac diastolic function during parabolic flights and two orbital flights on the Space Shuttle. Data from four aggressively instrumented human test subjects (including himself) in parabolic flight corroborated instantaneous reduction in central venous pressure with entry into microgravity reported from orbital spaceflight. For the last 20 years, his project teams have pursued the advanced healthcare technologies for spaceflight including CPR, longterm preservation of red blood cells for transfusion therapy, and surgical devices and techniques in ground, parabolic flight, and suborbital flight studies with orbital studies planned.

Dr. Pantalos earned a BSAAE in 1975 from Ohio State University and then an MSBE, also from Ohio State, in 1978. He was awarded his Ph.D. in 1984 from Ohio State University, Department of Physiology. He has been a cardiovascular explorer for over 50 years. Much of that effort has included the development of surgical devices and procedures to make his research projects possible. He has been a Professor of Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgery and Biomedical Engineering at the University of Louisville, in partnership with Jewish Hospital and Norton Children’s Hospital, since July 2000, after holding similar appointments at the University of Utah for 17 years. His efforts to investigate cardiovascular function have focused on understanding and treating heart failure with mechanical devices, including artificial hearts, ventricular assist devices, and cardiopulmonary support systems which he has helped develop, test, and implement clinically in patients with two legs and with four legs, with big hearts and with little hearts.