He graduated from La Jolla High School, San Diego, California in 1974; received a bachelor of arts degree in physics (graduated cum laude) from Dartmouth College in 1978, a master of arts degree and a doctorate in physics from Rice University in 1982 and 1984, respectively.

Selected by NASA in January 1990, Dr. Newman began a year of astronaut candidate training in July 1990 and became an astronaut in July 1991. His technical assignments since then include: Astronaut Office Mission Support Branch where he was part of a team responsible for crew ingress/strap-in prior to launch and crew egress after landing; Mission Development Branch working on the Shuttle on-board laptop computers; Chief of the Computer Support Branch in the Astronaut Office, responsible for crew involvement in the development and use of computers on the Space Shuttle and Space Station. A veteran of two space flights (STS-51 in 1993 and STS-69 in 1995), Newman has logged over 496 hours in space.

Additional biographical information on the STS-88 crew members and other NASA astronauts is available on the World Wide Web at: http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/astrobio.html