STEM Enhancement in Earth Science High School Interns Shine at AGU

Prachi Ingle and Matteo Kimura were high school research interns with the 2020 STEM Enhancement in Earth Science (SEES) Summer High School Intern Program’s Mosquito Mappers team. In 2021, their work was selected as the Outstanding Student Presentation Award (OSPA) winner for the American Geophysical Union's (AGU's) Earth and Space Informatics Division. They were invited to return the following year to present updates to their research in the Union session, “Student Engagement to Enhance Development: Outstanding Student Presentation Award Winners from Fall Meeting 2021.” This research, completed by these two high school students, was evaluated alongside that by undergraduate and graduate students, making this honor even more impressive and exciting.

Prachi Ingle made this inspiring statement, “NASA SEES was my first authentic research experience. I learned so many important research skills like how to craft a compelling research question, how to leverage computational tools to investigate my question, and how to effectively share my findings with the broader scientific community. These research skills have helped me in college, as I continue to learn computational techniques to investigate and address real-world problems.”

In addition, twenty-three teams of SEES Earth System Explorers summer high school research interns presented their research at the Bright STaRs poster session during the AGU 2022 Fall Meeting. Several of these students were able to travel to the meeting and present their research in-person. Not only did students participate in the poster and science sessions, the SEES Earth System Explorer team members were also honored with invitations to a Bright STaRs lunch, the public science night at the Adler Planetarium, and an informal NASA Citizen Science gathering.

The STEM Enhancement in Earth Science (SEES) Mosquito Mappers and Earth System Explorers high school summer internship teams are initiatives of the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies, sponsored by NASA’s Earth Science Education Collaborative (NESEC, cooperative agreement award number NNX16AE28A), which is part of NASA’s Science Activation Portfolio. Mosquito Mappers and Earth System Explorers are offered in partnership with the SEES Summer High School Intern Program, sponsored by the Texas Space Grant Consortium and The University of Texas at Austin Center for Space Research (cooperative agreement number NNX16AB89A).