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March 7, 2022

It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane…..It’s NASA’s P-3 Research Aircraft!

MNA is very proud to evaluate the 5-year NASA’s Student Airborne Science Activation, or “SaSa,” (in Kiswahili meaning, Now) program.

SaSa is on a mission to broaden the ethnic and racial diversity of researchers in the Earth/Geosciences. To achieve this goal, SaSa will train up to 25 undergraduate applicants each year (freshmen and sophomores) who will be competitively selected from six Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs) including: Coppin State University, Hampton University, Howard University, Morgan State University, University of Maryland (Baltimore County), and University of Maryland (Eastern Shore) to participate in an intensive, residential, 8-week summer internship to forward NASA’s airborne campaign and research efforts in promoting atmospheric sciences.

SaSa’s goals are:

  1. To create a student geoscience learning ecosystem to enable effective student engagement with NASA scientists & engineers, academic advisors, peers, and the local communities.
  2. To provide students with new skills to work with NASA science equipment and real data from field/airborne campaigns and satellites.
  3. Provide students with problem solving skills in the areas of instrument development, operation and mathematical tools, and methods to analyze field data.
  4. Provide research, mentoring, and networking opportunities for early-career undergraduates to address the shortage of individuals from historically underrepresented groups graduating with STEM degrees from Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs) and a need to prepare these students to enter STEM graduate programs as well as the NASA and research workforce.

Students and mentors will gain hands-on research experience in all components of a scientific research campaign, including flying onboard the NASA P-3 research aircraft to collect land, ocean, and atmospheric measurements.

More information about the program can be found here: https://www.nasa.gov/sasa

Here’s a cool video to learn more about the program: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFRIA_C-l2c

 

Filed Under: News and Updates

Kavita Mittapalli

Kavita Mittapalli, Ph.D., is the CEO of MN Associates, Inc. She brings over 18 years of experience in conducting research and evaluation for various programs and initiatives. She started MNA while in grad school at George Mason University (VA). An agriculture graduate turned applied sociologist and a mixed methodologist by training, Kavita brings her extensive qualitative and quantitative research skills to the evaluation work she does.

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