Space research
Fifth annual Delaware Space Grant Consortium research symposium held
2:57 p.m., April 26, 2011--The Delaware Space Grant Consortium, of which the University of Delaware is an affiliate, held its annual symposium Friday, April 8, to highlight research work that has occurred as a result of funding support from the NASA Space Grant program.
David McGrath of ATK Propulsion and Controls Division in Elkton, Md., gave the keynote address. McGrath is a ballistic/combustion analyst and was formerly the chief engineer for NASA’s Ares I-X rocket. Currently, he is systems engineering director at ATK Elkton, has four patents, and has published more than 30 technical papers.
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NASA’s Space Grant program was started by congressional mandate in 1989 in order to ensure that NASA would continue to have access to a well-trained workforce in the areas of interest to the agency's missions. These areas include science, technology, engineering and mathematics -- the so-called STEM fields -- and geography.
Each year since 1989, Congress has appropriated up to $40 million annually to NASA to administer the national Space Grant program. Within each state, a consortium of colleges, universities and industrial partners works together to award fellowships, scholarships and internships to graduate and undergraduate students in the STEM-G areas. Space Grant funds are also used for in-service training of pre-college teachers in STEM-G.
In Delaware, the consortium includes the following academic affiliates: the University of Delaware, Delaware State University, all four campuses of Delaware Technical and Community College, Goldey-Beacom College, Wilmington University and Wesley College.
U.S. citizens at any of these institutions are eligible to apply for three types of funding: graduate fellowships (including a stipend of $26,000 per year), undergraduate tuition scholarships (up to $3,000 per year), and summer research internships (up to $3,500 on campus, and up to $6,000 at a NASA Center).
During the current year, consortium funds are supporting six graduate fellows, 10 undergraduate tuition scholars, 15 undergraduate summer researchers and three NASA interns.
At the annual research symposium April 8, graduate fellows and undergraduate research interns presented results, either orally or by poster, of their work during the past year. With an audience of about 50, oral reports were received from undergraduate students at Delaware Tech, UD's Department of Biological Sciences, UD's Department of Physics and Astronomy, an undergraduate summer research intern at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory from UD's Department of Physics and Astronomy, and graduate fellows studying marine biosciences and physics and astronomy.
Announcements of opportunities for fellowships, scholarships and internships are made from February through April each year. Information about applications is circulated to each affiliate in the state.
Within UD, the information is circulated through contact faculty members in the colleges of Engineering (Bingqing Wei, associate professor of mechanical engineering); Earth, Ocean, and Environment (Xiao-Hai Yan, Mary A.S. Lighthipe Professor of Oceanography); and Arts and Sciences (Tracy DeLiberty, associate professor and interim chair of the Department of Geography; William H. Matthaeus, professor of physics and astronomy; Dermott J. Mullan, professor of physics and astronomy; and Barbara A. Williams, associate professor of physics and astronomy).
For further information about NASA’s Space Grant program in the state of Delaware, contact Rebecca George in the consortium office, Room 212 Sharp Laboratory on the UD campus in Newark, telephone 302-831-1094.