The CUNY students join students from other minority institutions under the MUSPIN umbrella. This special opportunity was engineered by James Harrington, MUSPIN program manager in partnership with James Leary, Lead Engineer, MESSENGER, APL. Students are working with mentors in a variety of areas including space craft integration and testing, design and mechanical support. For a JHU description of the internship, see: The JHU Gazette. A list of participating CUNY students can be found on the Students link. CUNY student support was provided by the MUSPIN/CUNY NRTS and the NYC Space Science Research Alliance. Next summer, MUSPIN plans to provide similar opportunities for students with the APL New Horizons mission which will make the first ever reconnaissance with Pluto and its satellite, Charon, as well as explore objects in the Kuiper Belt.


MUSPIN/CUNY NRTS Summer Student Research Program Underway

CCNY is hosting an interdisciplinary summer program with graduate, undergraduate and high school students. The program is co-anchored by Dr. Jeff Steiner, Earth and Atmospheric Science, CCNY and Dr. Shermane Austin, Computer Science, Medgar Evers College. Other faculty involved with summer research include Dr. Stan Gedzelman, EAS, CCNY and Dr. Dipak Basu, Computer Science, Adjunct Professor, Computer Science, Brooklyn College and Medgar Evers College. The projects include an investigation of metallic aerosol transport, heavy metal and bacteria-bearing aerosols in the NYC area, mesocale modeling using MM5 and serving meteorological and related data using XML. The program is supported by NASA/MUSPIN, NASA/COSI, NASA/SHARP and NOAA/CREST.


Astronomical Image Processing Workshop in Holyoke, MA

The MUSPIN/CUNY NRTS joined forces with the NYC Space Science Research Alliance to lead a workshop on astronomical image processing using IDL for math and science faculty at Holyoke Community College, June 18-20. This follows a similar workshop conducted for faculty and students at Medgar Evers College. Topics included image calibration, aperture and point-source photometry, and spatial and frequency domain filtering. The workshop instructors were Dr. Shermane Austin and Dr. Leon Johnson and the host was Prof. Bart Estes, Math Department, Holyoke Community College.


Dewey High School Students Featured in PBS Mars Broadcast

"To Mars with MER" broadcast on Space Day, May 1, featured several students from Dewey High School, one of the MUSPIN/CUNY METNET sites. The program, produced by Geoffrey Haines-Stiles, provided an overview of the MERS mission and included students questions for the scientists. Dewey High School was selected because of an innovative course in which student teams design missions to Mars. Selected projects are submitted for competition in the NASA National Student Involvement Program (NSIP).


Research

Dr. Stan Gedzelman and Dr. Shermane Austin have an article in the current issue of the Journal of Theoretical and Applied Climatology (Volume 95, Numbers 1-2, June, 2003), titled "Mesoscale aspects of the Urban Heat Island around New York City". The article is based on preliminary work presented at the International Conference for Biometerology and Urban Climatology in Sydney, in November, 1999.


AMS Education Collaboration

Dr. Shermane Austin participated in a week-long workshop at the NWS Training Center in Kansas City, Missouri sponsored by the AMS Weather Studies program. The outcome of the workshop will be providing the online course in general education Physical Science courses as well as teacher-training for the MUSPIN/METNET project. Highlights of the workshops included presentations from Joe Schaefer, Director, Storm Prediction Center/NWS; Roderick Scofield, Director, NESDIS/NOAA; Louis Uccellini, Director, NCEP/NWS; Max Mayfield, Director, National Hurricane Center/NWS and Elizabeth Quoetone, Office of Climate, Water and Weather Services/NWS. Faculty also received a tour of the National Aviation Weather Center and were able to see a weather balloon launch. The Weather Studies Faculty Workshop was sponsored by AMS, NOAA and the NSF Diversity in Geosciences program.


LaGuardia Hosts MUSPIN Spring Workshops

LaGuardia Community College hosted the MUSPIN Semi-Annual Regional Workshops for CUNY partners on May 14-17. The workshop was co-sponsored by the NSF-funded New Media program based in the Computer and Information Sciences Department and hosted by Dr. James Frost. The workshop covered a range of technical sessions including wireless LAN technology, broadband technology, digital video editing and Palm computing. James Harrington, MUSPIN Program manager led sessions on NASA Earth and Space Science missions and Stephanie Stockman, MESSENGER E/PO lead, gave a presentation on the MESSENGER and New Horizons missions. The workshop was capped by a session on the Student Polarimeter Project.


Contact Information:
info@nrts.mec.cuny.edu