New York Space Grant Program
Highlights of NASA-partnered STEM education and workforce development programs across the state of New York.
Space Grant: NASA in New York
Credit: Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum
Space Grant is a program housed at NASA that provides funding and partnership for 52 state-based consortia to encourage STEM-related workforce development and education programs across the country.
New York Space Grant (NYSG) works with colleges, universities, industry partners and museums across the state to provide STEM-focused education, outreach and workforce development in fields of interest to NASA.
Locations
New York's Space Grant Consortium consists of 19 colleges and universities, four industry partners and two museums. Our membership represents both urban and rural areas of the state.
- Western: Moog, Inc., University at Buffalo
- Finger Lakes: Cornell University, Cosmoptera, Rochester Institute of Technology, Sciencenter, SUNY Geneseo, University of Rochester, Ursa Space Systems
- Southern Tier: Alfred University, Binghamton University, Lockheed Martin (Owego)
- Central: Colgate University, Syracuse University
- North Country: Clarkson University
- Capital District: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Union College
- New York City: Barnard College, City College of NY, Columbia University, Intrepid Museum, Medgar Evers College, New York University, York College.
- Long Island: Stony Brook University
Request
National Space Grant Alliance Request for FY 2022 Appropriations
National Space Grant Alliance Programmatic request with Funding Justification (pdf) This document defines the National Space Grant Alliance's request for the National Space Grant and Fellowship Program in the FY22 Appropriations package.
Program Highlights
With 25 member institutions across the state, we are able to impact thousands of New York residents each year. The programs and students highlighted below provide a few examples of how the New York Space Grant Consortium works with member institutions to provide STEM-focused outreach, eduction, and workforce development opportunities across the state.
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Outreach: Virtual Astronomy Live
Space Grant funds are normally provided to offer in-person talks and stargazing events at the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum during the summer months, but the events of last year forced our team to adapt to a virtual format - to astounding success. They were able to shift their in person experiences into the virtual space and engage in astronomy and space science events on Twitch TV and exponentially expand their audience from about 250 per session to thousands. Intrepid has also been able to secure amazing talent from astronauts to scientists who may not have traditionally been able to participate due to limited time to travel to the museum. They plan on continuing this new virtual program indefinitely, and provide recordings of the monthly events on their Virtual Astronomy Live page. The next event is centered around the images from the Perseverance Mars Rover landing.
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Outreach: Columbia K-12 and Public Events
Columbia Astronomy Public Outreach is large part of the Space Grant funded activities at Columbia. They provide public education and outreach activities to the New York City Metropolitan Area, as well as K-12 educational events. Over the past year many of these events have successfully transitioned to virtual offerings, reaching thousands of students, educators, and members of the public.
Pupin Physics Laboratory and Rutherfurd Observatory: The historic Rutherfurd Observatory resides on the top of Columbia University's Pupin Physics Laboratory housing the university's astronomy and physics departments. More recently, astronomical research at the observatory has been curtailed by the advent of light pollution; nevertheless, it is still one of the best places in Manhattan to view the stars. Space Grant funded Night Sky viewing events are held here.
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Profile: Medgar Evers College
Medgar Evers College has been a member of the New York Space Grant Consortium for 15 years. The Space Grant-funded student research programs at Medgar Evers focus on student development of engineering and computer science skills through project collaborations with NASA Goddard and the Goddard Institute for Space Sciences , the latter of which is located in manhattan on the Columbia University campus. Current projects include monitoring surface changes in plants with high-altitude balloon launches, the development of numerical models to study the chemical composition of the Martian atmosphere, and dynamic 3-D visualization of ocean model datasets. Several students in these programs were hired by Lockheed Martin after graduation last year.
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Internships: Lockheed Martin
The Space Grant Internship program at Lockheed Martin in Owego, New York is a partnership with Lockheed's Engineering Explorers program - undergraduate interns design, develop and test a prototype that is used the following academic year to provide high school students gain a better understanding of career opportunities in engineering through project-based learning. This past summer, interns from Binghamton University, Cornell University, and the University of Rochester developed a functioning smart greenhouse, and fully completed the testing and documentation all while working in a remote environment. They were so successful that Lockheed was able to use what they had learned to offer a remote option for the Engineering Explorers program as well.
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Student Highlight: Michelle Gelbs
Michelle Gelbs is a Ph.D student in Biomedical Engineering, working with Dr. Susannah Fritton at CCNY. She has received funding through Space Grant for her research in bone mechanics, and determining the adaptive response of bone to muscle paralysis. When she graduates, she will look for a position that combines industry and biomedical research to improve a person‘s quality of life.
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Student Highlight: Angela Martinez
During summer 2020, Angela received Space Grant funding to participate in the LSAMP program at Syracuse University. During her summer research project she virtually developed an experimental method to analyze the effect of UV light degradation of methylmercury and total mercury on various concentrations of dissolved organic matter.
During this current school year, she is conducting further research and experiments and will be writing a report on her results.
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Profile: Syracuse University
Space Grant partners with the Center for Environmental Systems and Engineering (CESE) Lab at Syracuse University to provide undergraduate students summer opportunities in environmental research. The CESE facilities allow for the characterization/analysis of biogeochemistry of complex ecosystems, microbial characterization, soil/sediment processing, organic analytical, inorganic analytical, trace metal processing and analysis, and a state-of-the-art, Class 1,000 clean room. They also include computer laboratories for environmental modeling and GIS. Through Space Grant support the CESE lab is able to provide in-depth summer internships and training to 2-4 undergraduates per year,
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Opportunity Grant: AeroBing
AeroBing is a student run research group at Binghamton University aiming to launch a rocket beyond the Karman Line. If successful, it will be the first New York amateur rocket to reach the boundary of space. Space Grant funds were awarded to these students to help offset the costs of testing the prototype. This group hopes to successfully launch their rocket later in 2021.
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Student Highlight: Georgia Mraz
Undergraduate student Georgia Mraz was supported through NYSG for summer research at Union College in astronomy. Georgia’s research helped initiate a new collaboration between the Union College Observatory and the Follow-up team for NASA‘s TESS satellite to research exoplanet candidates with the Union College observatory. In the summer of 2020, Georgia was selected as one of four Space Grant-funded summer interns at Ursa Space Systems in Ithaca, NY. Ursa Space is a U.S.-based satellite intelligence company that provides business and government decision-makers access to on-demand analytic solutions.
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Student Highlight: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Tom Donlon was supported through NYSG through a graduate fellowship working with Dr. Heidi Newberg on Milky Way stellar dynamics. A second year graduate student at RPI, Tom will be able to grow his portfolio as a researcher, adding to his current collection of two first author papers and three others as a co-author.
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Internships: Ursa Space Systems
Ursa Space Systems is a satellite imagery startup in Ithaca, NY. They joined the New York Space Grant Consortium only a few years ago, but have provided a stellar workforce training experience for undergraduates through the NYSG Industry Internship program. This past year they were able to provide twice the number of internship positions than the prior year, despite the difficulties with the COVID-19 pandemic and virtual work. Students get extensive training and experience in data modeling, image processing, and machine learning techniques, and several have continued working for Ursa after the internship conclusion. We look forward to expanding this internship program further in the coming years.
