FibroBiologics adds retired NASA astronaut Kate Rubins to board of directors

FibroBiologics, Inc. (Nasdaq: FBLG) announced on July 9, 2026 that it had appointed Kathleen "Kate" Rubins, Ph.D. to its Board of Directors. According to the company's 8-K filing, on July 2, 2026, Matt Link notified FibroBiologics that he was resigning from the Board of Directors, effective that same day.¹ The board then appointed Rubins as a Class III director on July 8, 2026, with a term running until the company's 2029 annual meeting of stockholders.¹ She was also named to the Audit Committee, the Compensation Committee, and the Governance and Nominating Committee.¹

Rubins holds academic and military roles alongside her space career. She leads the "Trivedi Institute for Space and Global Biomedicine" at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, where she also holds a faculty post in computational and systems biology, per the filing's description of her title. Separately, she serves as a US Army Reserve Innovation Officer, holding the rank of Major, in the 75th US Army Innovation Command.¹ Her NASA tenure ran from August 2009 to July 2025, according to the filing.

The company said Rubins, selected by NASA in 2009 as part of Astronaut Group 20, completed two spaceflights to the ISS as a flight engineer on Expedition 48/49 and Expedition 63/64, logging 300 days in space, and became the first person to sequence DNA in space during her first mission.¹ She retired from NASA in 2025 after 16 years and was elected to the National Academy of Medicine that year.¹

On compensation and conflicts, the filing states Rubins will receive pay consistent with the company's other non-employee directors under its Non-Employee Director Compensation Policy¹ and is not party to any transaction requiring disclosure under Item 404(a) of Regulation S-K, with no arrangements tied to her selection as director.¹ FibroBiologics also entered into its standard indemnification agreement with her.¹