Space Grant Success Stories

"This summer I will be interning with the new Quantum Engineering and Sensing Technology (QuEST) lab at GSFC, helping build their new cold atom interferometry lab."

Marquez was one of three Interplanetary Initiative students who received an ASU NASA Space Grant internship for AY23-24, enabling him to embark on a self-directed project exploring the use of AI-powered chatbots for exoplanet research

Burgard is graduating in May with a bachelor’s degree in environmental engineering, a Spanish minor and a certificate in environmental humanities, with honors from Barrett, The Honors College at ASU. She put her skills into action through research, community service and entrepreneurship.

As an ASU NASA Space Grant recipient and intern, Ortiz assisted with the processing of James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) cosmic ray rejection data, which cleans JWST images by identifying and removing stray cosmic rays from images.

Ritisha Das, a Senior studying Mechanical Engineering and Mathematics with an emphasis in computational mechanics at Arizona State University, was one of 47 student awardees.

Kristen graduated in December 2023 and says that one of her most cherished memories during her time as an undergraduate student was participating in Space Camp at Biosphere 2, which led her to pursue a career in Space Biology.

Shae Henley is a Senior in Aerospace Engineering and was a UArizona Space Grant intern from 2021-23.

Hailing from diverse backgrounds, each of the selected students is pursuing a degree in the Interplanetary Initiative’s technological leadership program, a unique degree that prepares students to answer tomorrow’s questions in the fields of science and technology.

The UArizona College of Science hosted the ‘Brunch with Bennu’ event to celebrate the 7-year UArizona-led NASA OSIRIS-REx mission and sample return from asteroid Bennu. Space Grant students had the opportunity to engage with the public during this event. Photo Credit: Julius Scholsburg