That philosophy has landed the UCF industrial and organizational psychology doctoral candidate on a mountain in the middle of a blizzard during an Arctic ski trip. It’s what has encouraged him to complete 50-mile ultramarathons. And it’s a big part of what is pushing him into his next big endeavor: rowing across the Atlantic Ocean.

According to the , 1,736 rowers have successfully crossed an ocean as of November 2025. Exponentially more people (over 7,000) have summited Mount Everest.

Motivated by the pursuit of a life well lived, and for the betterment of his research into optimizing teamwork in isolated, confined and extreme environments like outer , KĂ€osaar has every intention of adding his name to that exclusive list despite what his team is up against.

They are not experienced sailors or fishermen. In fact, in their everyday lives they are a wood chemist, a geneticist, a psychologist and a banker who had never held an oar in their hands until three years ago when they committed to this goal.

“We just have one life. We have to allow ourselves to dream, even if they seem wild.” — Andres KĂ€osaar, UCF student

They had not attempted to actually row on the Atlantic, whose waves can measure up to 20 feet high, until a few days ago when they performed a test run ahead of their official embarkment Dec. 11.

Their 30-foot-by-5-foot vessel must be self-sustaining with enough food and provisions to withstand a 5,000-calorie/day diet over their 3,000-mile voyage westward. There is no getting off the boat once the endeavor has started. If an emergency dictates otherwise, they will forfeit their journey.

They intend to row in pairs in two-hour time blocks. That’s 12 hours of rowing a day, with never more than a two-hour break in between shifts, for 40 days straight.

The challenges — and potential glory — ahead are as vast and wide as the ocean itself.

“We just have one life. We have to allow ourselves to dream, even if they seem wild,” KĂ€osaar says. “If someone asks me if I would like to do something extraordinary, I can’t say no.”

What It Takes to Row the Ocean

Races across the Atlantic have been formally organized since 1997, and since 2015, the World’s Toughest Row Atlantic competition has been held annually every December.

In 2025, more than 30 teams and another 10 individuals in solo boats will participate in the challenge. KĂ€osaar’s team, Team Rowtalia, will be on the starting line Dec. 11, in San Sebastian de la Gomera, Canary Islands, when they push off for English Harbour, Antigua and Barbuda.

“The race organizers actually say that 80% of the whole endeavor is getting to the starting line,” KĂ€osaar says. “The rowing itself is the easy part. There is nothing else to do. There is nothing to think about anymore. You just have to cross the ocean.”

KĂ€osaar learned about the World’s Toughest Row three years ago when a friend in his home country of Estonia approached him with the idea to enter the race. His now teammate prepared a 30-minute presentation to sell him on the idea.

KĂ€osaar isn’t easily intimidated. He spent a month in Antarctica for research earlier this year. He was willing to say yes 60 seconds into his buddy’s presentation, but he politely sat through the full pitch before agreeing. They decided to recruit two of their former fraternity members “bold and naĂŻve enough” to join their daring mission.

They found a coach to teach them the rowing technique since none of them had any experience. They raised $163,000 of their $184,000 goal, which includes the cost of the boat they purchased in May. They accumulated 200 hours of individual training time on the Baltic Sea, with more than half of those hours accumulated during a five-day practice session. Most of their training has been done on indoor rowing machines.

They have listened to podcasts of former ocean-crossers to get a sense of what to expect. Their biggest takeaway: “While it’s going to be hard, you’re there to get the experience. Just try to enjoy it.”

They also prepared with a team-building trip to the Finnish Arctic, camping in a tent in remote snowfields for six days to pressure test how they worked as a team in such a harsh environment.

KĂ€osaar’s field of research and the expertise he has gained in his years studying at UCF make him uniquely suited to navigate how their team dynamic and effectiveness will be impacted by factors like emotions, personalities and situational behaviors that will inevitably reveal themselves under such environmental strain.

While they each have their individual motivations and aspirations for this endeavor, they have also discussed their shared vision as a unit. One definition of a successful mission, KĂ€osaar points out, is solely focused on the optimization of the desired outcome. A team could despise each other and the experience throughout the entire process, never wanting to interact with their teammates again once the mission is complete, but still be considered successful if the goal is completed.

KĂ€osaar likes to define a successful team more holistically.

“I think a better way of looking at it is to think about this concept of team viability; do we think that in the future we could work again successfully?” he says. “Our ultimate goal is that we hope to cross the ocean such that we are willing and able to do that again in the next few years with the same team.”

Ocean Tides to Outer Space

Part of what makes this journey so appealing to KĂ€osaar is the insight and street cred he will gain in his field and research subjects.

The psychology behind teamwork in isolated, confined and extreme environments applies to fields with life-and-death stakes on the line: think submariners, certain military deployments, oil riggers and his specialties, astronauts and Antarctic-based researchers.

KĂ€osaar first zeroed in on this specialized field as a clinical psychology graduate student in Estonia as he wrote a cover letter applying for a European Space Agency internship.

“I was thinking in space we have astronauts, we have people, so we need psychologists,” he says. “I realized that that’s me. That’s what I want to do. That’s my life. My eyes went big and I was like, ‘Wow, OK, let’s go.’  From that moment I started dedicating my life and time toward that.”

As he looked for research opportunities, he came across Research Professor Shawn Burke at UCF’s Institute of Simulation and Training, whose work in team leadership and resiliency has been funded by powerhouse names including the U.S. Army Research Institute, Air Force Office of Scientific Research, Office of Naval Research, the U.S. National Science Foundation, DARPA and NASA.

Since joining her lab in 2021, he has contributed to two NASA research grants, once an unfathomable dream that has now become his reality. He credits Burke for molding him into a confident researcher who has grown considerably from his immersive experiences.

“Without UCF being so big in its focus on the space field, seeing rockets launching in the evening when I’m driving home, just this widening of understanding what’s [achievable] — I think this has been something that wouldn’t be possible without being exactly here,” KĂ€osaar says.

He hopes this rowing challenge will build upon the practical skills he has gained at UCF for his future research by providing him with firsthand knowledge of the isolation and extreme circumstances his astronaut subjects in space work through.

“I don’t think I would be able to fully understand the participants of the studies or the subjects we’re studying without putting myself in that situation and really being like, ‘OK, that’s what you guys feel,’ ” KĂ€osaar says.

With his impending graduation in the spring, KĂ€osaar is looking forward to continuing his work, making real contributions and impact to this next frontier of space exploration.

“I don’t want to use the cliche words of becoming interplanetary species, but that’s basically what we are thinking about. I think this could have huge implications for the sustainability of humans in space,” he says. “I think being able to support those endeavors and support this development of humanity, that’s a big part of why I do it, and I’m passionate about it.”

Andres KĂ€osaar’s team, Team Rowtalia, will have solar-powered internet on board. You can follow their journey across the Atlantic on Instagram at .

Stephen Fiore and Shawn Burke’s project is one of 27 selected from 18 institutions around the country, which will receive money from a $12 million pool over three years. The projects were selected because NASA is preparing to send astronauts on distant missions, including Mars.

Most of the studies selected will look at space travel’s impact on the human body, including visual impairment, bone and muscle loss, human performance, cardiovascular health, and sensory and motor adaptations, among other issues.

“This is important because studies suggest that cognitive processes may be negatively affected by the spaceflight context,” Fiore said. “So we need to understand how problems with memory or attention will impact the spaceflight team’s ability to function and successfully perform their mission.”

The idea is to mitigate the effects as much as possible, he said.

Fiore, the lead investigator, is director of the Cognitive Sciences Laboratory and a faculty member with the cognitive sciences program in the Department of Philosophy and the Institute for Simulation & Training.

Burke is a research professor at the IST specializing in team dynamics and behavior.

Burke said this is just one of several studies they have been working on for NASA that look at team dynamics. The others address issues such as leadership behavior, crew dynamics, impact of confined spaces on these dynamics, and cultural differences. NASA has been funding the grants the past couple of years, she said.

This project is funded by the agency’s Human Research Program and the National Space Biomedical Research Institute, which seek to answer questions on astronaut health and performance in long-duration space missions. The Human Research Program also plans strategies to monitor and mitigate risks humans may face on missions.

NASA has been pushing to return astronauts to the moon by 2020. That effort would be in preparation to travel to Mars, a planet believed to be capable of hosting life, and possibly beyond.

The goal of the current studies is to better prepare astronauts to manage the mental and physical demands of space travel.

Some of the studies will be conducted aboard the International Space Station, NASA said. Others, including UCF’s studies, will be conducted in settings that mimic the space environment.

It’s estimated that a round trip to Mars will take at least two years. That’s why is investing millions of dollars trying to figure out the right recipe for creating highly effective, collaborative teams that can troubleshoot themselves out of any problem. The space agency is investigating the role leadership plays in such dynamic groups, as well.

For the past several years several experts on teamwork have been helping NASA with that question. This month, several șŁœÇֱȄ of Central experts earned more than $1.2 million to continue their work as NASA looks to prepare its workforce of the future.

“We are looking for ways to identify key social and task-oriented roles on long-duration missions,” said Eduardo Salas, a psychologist and the lead investigator for the NASA Human Research Program grant. “Generally, we know you want people on a team who are emotionally stable, extroverts, catalysts. But by the end of this three-year study we hope to have a taxonomy to allow NASA to select or compose teams according to desirable social roles.”

Seems like common sense, but difficult to deliver. Everyone who has co-workers knows how a disagreement or clash of personalities can create a nightmare work environment that is depressing and demoralizing if not handled correctly. From a business point of view, that kind of conflict can lead to distractions that take away from productivity and cost the company money.

And unlike most office environments, a clash between astronauts could result in dire consequences for the entire crew. And unlike missions to the moon or the International Space Station, where astronauts can call Houston to help solve a problem, that won’t be so easy on long missions when the communication lag is expected to be 20 minutes each way to and from Earth.

“There’s not a lot of hard science yet with respect to team dynamics in long-duration exploration missions,” Salas said. “There are several groups working on it. We’ve been doing it for a while with other teams as well. But we hope to have a good foundation by the time we finish our study.”

Salas is a trustee chair and Pegasus professor of psychology at UCF. He also holds an appointment as program director for the Human Systems Integration Research Department at the university’s (IST). His co-investigators on this grant are Stephen Fiore, director of the Cognitive Sciences Laboratory at IST and an associate professor of cognitive sciences in the philosophy department, and James Driskell, a social psychologist with Florida Maxima Corp. in Winter Park.

To compliment Salas’ work, NASA awarded a $100,000 grant to associate professor of research Shawn Burke so she can look at the role leadership plays in dynamic and stressful environments. Burke works next door to Salas at IST and is also a co-investigator on Salas’ new grant.

“Complex environments, especially like those seen in long-duration exploration mission, will require more autonomous teams,” Burke said. “So we need to identify the challenges to leadership in such environments and the most effective forms of leadership to combat the challenges. That’s what I’m looking at.”

Burke will review behavioral data from NASA experiments conducted in remote environments that are designed with many of the same characteristics expected as long duration space flight.  Archival documentation from other teams that work in isolated and extreme environments (oil rigs, Antarctic exploration, firefighting, military) will be examined to look for clues.  Interviews with astronauts and key NASA personnel will also be conducted in an effort to gain their perspective and learn from their experience.

Burke earned her Masters and Doctorate degrees in Industrial/Organizational psychology from George Mason șŁœÇֱȄ. Her areas of expertise are team dynamics and leadership roles. She’s been at IST since 2000 and was a research fellow at the U.S. Army Research Institute before that. She’s published more than 80 journal articles and book chapters related to teams and leadership and has presented at more than 100 conferences.

Burke’s co-investigators on this project are Salas and Marissa Shuffler, an assistant professor of industrial/organization psychology at Clemson șŁœÇֱȄ and a UCF alumnae.

Salas and Burke will also likely bump into each other in Houston when they travel to Houston as part of their grants to visit NASA’s research facility that focuses on behavioral health and performance. The facility mimics some of the isolated and harsh conditions astronauts are likely to encounter, which should aid researchers.

The conclusion of UCF studies will not only help NASA, but may also help companies and organizations that work in extreme environments on earth, such as oilrigs and the military.

The UCF teams were selected from 123 proposals. NASA awarded $17 million in grants to 26 projects from 16 institutions in eight states.

UCF has a long history working with NASA, from helping it develop hardware to take accurate color pictures of the Mars surface to groundbreaking work on teamwork conducted by Salas and psychologist Kimberly Smith-Jentsch.