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On August 12-13, 24 students from the West Coast cohort of NASA\u2019s Student Airborne Research Program (SARP) gathered at University of California, Irvine (UCI) to present their final research to a room of mentors, professors, family, and NASA personnel.<\/p>\n
SARP is an eight-week summer internship for undergraduate students, hosted in two cohorts: SARP West operates out of Ontario Airport and UCI in California, while SARP East operates out of Wallops Flight Facility and Christopher Newport University in Virginia. After research introductions from faculty, instrument scientists, and staff, students are assigned one of four research categories: for SARP West, these categories are aerosols, terrestrial ecology,\u00a0 whole air sampling (WAS), or oceans. Each group is led by a dedicated researcher who is a specialist in that field, along with a graduate student mentor. Over the course of the summer, each intern develops their own research project as they conduct field work, collect data, and fly onboard either the P-3 or B200 NASA flying laboratories.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou really see them become scientists in their own right,\u201d said Stephanie Olaya, Program Manager for SARP East and West. \u201cA lot of these projects are PhD level: they are researching and making novel discoveries for the field. They don\u2019t even realize the magnitude of the things they\u2019ve accomplished until the end of the program.\u201d<\/p>\n
Stephanie olaya<\/p>\n
SARP Program Manager<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Research is not the only focus of the program, however. Faculty and mentors alike commented on the confidence they watched grow in the cohort over the two month internship, and the sense of camaraderie with their peers. Olaya says building a sense of community is a primary goal of the program, which encourages close friendships through communal living, regular group dinners, and weekend trips, in addition to the hours of team fieldwork, data collection, and laboratory analysis.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
The final presentations are another critical facet of the program, as it teaches students how to communicate scientific research and results to a non-scientific audience. \u201cWe want to impress on these students that science is not just for scientists,\u201d Olaya said. \u201cScience is for everyone.\u201d<\/p>\n
The event finished with closing remarks by Barry Lefer, Tropospheric Composition Program Manager at NASA Headquarters. \u201cI want to welcome you to the SARP family,\u201d Lefer said, \u201cand to the NASA family.\u201d<\/p>\n
To watch videos of these student\u2019s presentations and\/or read their research abstracts, please follow the links below.<\/em><\/p>\n Introduced by Oceans Group PhD student mentor Lori Berberian, University Of California, Los Angeles<\/p>\n Introduced by Atmospheric Aerosols PhD student mentor Madison Landi, University of California, Irvine<\/p>\n Introduced by WAS PhD student mentor Katherine Paredero, Georgia Institute of Technology<\/p>\n Introduced by Terrestrial Ecology PhD student mentor Megan Ward-Baranyay, San Diego State University<\/p>\n\n
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