Montana Bilger: Using Spaceflight and AI to Unlock Breakthroughs in Human Health on Earth

When you venture beyond Earth’s atmosphere, you don’t just leave gravity behind—you unlock a living laboratory where the human body’s most stubborn secrets are laid bare. In our conversation with the co-founder and CTO of Deep Space Biology, we discovered how the harsh realities of space are accelerating breakthroughs on the ground.

EcoAero had the opportunity to speak with Montana Bilger, a soldier-turned-entrepreneur whose path began with a B.S. in Physics from West Point and continued through a career as an Army Engineer Officer. Following his military service, he earned a Master’s in Analytics from Georgia Tech, where a class project evolved into Deep Space Biology. Today, his team works closely with NASA GeneLab, the Mayo Clinic, and MD Anderson Cancer Center, fusing spaceflight data, machine learning, and biology to transform the extreme conditions of orbit into powerful insights for treating Earth’s most difficult diseases.

Deep Space Biology's Yotta platform was born from a class project where Montana and his co-founders set out to model how radiation and microgravity influence biological systems. In a bold move, they cold-emailed space researchers and stumbled upon an out-of-office reply containing a Zoom link to a quarterly NASA meeting called the AI for Life and Space Committee. "We joined the call completely uninvited," Montana recalls. "We pitched our school project, hoping to collaborate—and they loved it." That unexpected opportunity opened doors. The team went on to develop proprietary algorithms—"digital twins" of human diseases—that identify genes and pathways most vulnerable to spaceflight. These insights now inform in-vitro cell studies and in-vivo rodent trials, laying the foundation for novel drug targets.

Space is an unforgiving crucible. Conditions like aging, metabolic disorders, cancer, and bone loss that take years to manifest on Earth can unfold in mere weeks or months in orbit. For Montana, that compressed timeline isn't a drawback—it’s a catalyst for accelerated discovery. By training AI models on decades of NASA bioscience data, Deep Space Biology identifies novel disease targets revealed by space’s extreme environment. Their upcoming collaboration with MD Anderson will even send new experiments to the ISS, exploring T-cells and immune system response in microgravity to help fight cancer.

Behind every lab-coat breakthrough is the grind of rigorous data science. “Garbage in, garbage out,” Montana reminds us: the fidelity of their models hinges on the quality of input data. To ensure predictive power, his team curates high-resolution spaceflight datasets, supplementary publications and partner-provided clinical records. This scientific rigor not only bolsters accuracy but also protects months—or years—of costly wet-lab validation.

Looking ahead, Montana envisions Deep Space Biology's Yotta platform as the go-to platform whenever researchers ask, “What happens when we expose biology to the extremes of space?” With launch costs plunging thanks to reusable rockets and a new generation of commercial space stations on the horizon, he predicts a surge in off-Earth R&D. Whether it’s protein crystallization and drug development or AI-driven disease models, space is poised to become the premier R&D lab of the 21st century.

At EcoAero, our mission is to shine a light on the often-overlooked intersections between aerospace innovation and sustainability on Earth. Montana’s work exemplifies this synergy, using the void of space to fill critical knowledge gaps in human health. As Deep Space Biology charts new frontiers, EcoAero will continue to bring these stories to our readers, highlighting how every breakthrough beyond our atmosphere reverberates back home.

Image courtesy of Deep Space Biology, used with permission.