Born July 28, 1961, in Little Rock, Arkansas. Considers Little Rock, Palo Alto, California, and Evergreen, Colorado, to be his hometowns. Married to the former Gail Marie Vozzella. They have two children. He enjoys mountaineering, rock climbing, flying, SCUBA diving, skiing, travel, woodworking, and nature photography. A commercial, multi-engine, seaplane and instrument-rated pilot, Dr. Parazynski has logged over 2500 flight hours in a variety of aircraft. As a mountaineer, he has scaled major mountains in the Alaska Range, the Cascades, the Rockies and the Andes. His summits include Cerro Aconcagua (at 22,841 feet above sea level, the tallest mountain in the world outside of Asia) and 53 of Colorado’s peaks over 14,000 feet in altitude. In May of 2008, as a result of a serious back injury, he was forced to turn back at 24,500 feet on a summit bid on Mount Everest. Attended junior high school in Dakar, Senegal, and Beirut, Lebanon. Attended high school at the Tehran American School, Iran, and the American Community School, Athens, Greece, graduating in 1979. He received a bachelor of science degree in biology from Stanford University in 1983, continuing on to graduate with honors from Stanford Medical School in 1989. He served his medical internship at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital of Harvard Medical School (1990). He had completed 22 months of a residency program in emergency medicine in Denver, Colorado when selected to the Astronaut Corps.