Undergraduate students get chance to work with heliophysics scientists

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. (August 4, 2014) - Twelve undergraduate students - six females and six males - completed 10 weeks at The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) working with scientists from either NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) or the Center for Space Plasma and Aeronomic Research (CSPAR) on research projects related to various topics in heliophysics.

The National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded Heliophysics Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) is a partnership between CSPAR and MSFC, just completed its 10-week 2014 summer program.

Students came from Alabama, Tennessee, Florida, Colorado, Georgia, Texas, Kansas, New York and Virginia, as well as one non-NSF funded student from Cambridge University in the United Kingdom.

Research projects ranged from testing the next generation of solar instruments to using Voyager data to understand the structure of the heliosphere. Each student presented a poster on his or her work during the last week of the program, and each has submitted an abstract to present a version of the poster at the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting in December.

Students were housed in dorms on campus, shared office space in the UAH's Cramer Hall and participated in various group activities including caving and an astrophotography workshop.

This is the third year of the program, and a proposal is being written to continue it. The principal investigator is Dr. Jacob Heerikhuisen of CSPAR and the co-investigator is Dr. Amy Winebarger of MSFC.

More information can be found at http://www.uah.edu/cspar/research/reu.

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