Kim Binsted

Timeline

1. 1991–1996

   Physics at McGill, AI at Edinburgh

   She earns a B.Sc. in physics at McGill University in 1991 and is a founding member of Montreal's On The Spot improv comedy troupe. She completes a PhD in artificial intelligence at the University of Edinburgh in 1996, performing with the improvised comedy troupe The Improverts while there.

2. 1994–1996

   JAPE, a punning-riddle generator

   With Graeme Ritchie in Edinburgh's Department of Artificial Intelligence, she presents JAPE at AAAI-94 in 1994, a program that generates punning riddles such as "What do you call a Martian who drinks beer? An ale-ien!" Her 1996 thesis, Machine humour: An implemented model of puns, describes the Joke Analysis and Production Engine and its generation of riddles from a humour-independent lexicon. In its evaluation, children aged 8 to 11 serve as joke experts, and the results show that JAPE's output texts are recognizably jokes.

3. 1997–1999

   Sony CSL and the Byrne commentator

   From 1997 to 1999, she is an associate researcher at Sony's Computer Science Laboratories in Tokyo, working on human-computer interfaces. In 1998, she presents Byrne, an animated talking head that turns RoboCup soccer simulator output into affective speech and facial expressions. After Sony, she starts I-Chara KK, a company that develops social software agents for mobile phones.

4. 2002–2004

   Joining Hawaii's ICS department

   She joins the Information and Computer Sciences Department at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa in 2002, researching artificial intelligence, human-computer interfaces and human factors for space exploration. In 2003 and 2004, she is a NASA Summer Faculty Fellow in the Neuroengineering Lab at Ames Research Center, working on sub-vocal speech recognition.

5. 2007–2009

   Chief scientist at FMARS 2007

   In 2007, as an assistant professor, she joins a seven-member crew for a four-month Mars simulation at the Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station on Devon Island in the Canadian High Arctic, where she serves as chief scientist. She spends a 2009 sabbatical as a visiting scientist at the Canadian Space Agency, working on its planetary analogues program.

6. 2012–2016

   Principal investigator of HI-SEAS

   As principal investigator of the NASA-funded HI-SEAS program, she oversees Mars simulations in a geodesic dome on the Mauna Loa volcano, a series of missions launched in 2012 to study crew composition and cohesion. After four-month and eight-month missions, six scientists begin a year-long mission in August 2015. She also earns an M.S. in planetary geology at UH Mānoa in 2015.

7. 2016–2019

   Astronaut bid and AAAS fellowship

   She spends the summers of 2016 and 2017 in Russia on a Fulbright Award. In 2017, she reaches the last 72 of 3,772 applicants to become a Canadian astronaut. In 2019, she serves as an AAAS Science and Technology Policy Fellow in Senator Whitehouse's office in Washington, DC.

8. As of October 2026

   HI-SEAS resumes with NASA funding

   In June 2026, she says a new NASA grant will let HI-SEAS resume testing after a hiatus of several years and extend its simulations to crews on the Moon and in transit from Earth to the Moon. She is a professor in the Information and Computer Sciences Department at UH Mānoa and the principal investigator for HI-SEAS.