UMaine Students Chosen for NASA Research Internships
Contact: Ali Abedi (207) 581-2231; Tom Weber (207) 581-3777
ORONO — Three undergraduate students in the University of Maine’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering have been selected to spend the summer at NASA field centers to conduct cutting-edge wireless technology for the next generation of space vehicles.
The students, Stephanie Duy of Caribou, James Knarr of Carmel and Fred Schwaner of Hebron are all juniors who now work as research assistants in UMaine’s WiSe-Net lab, directed by Assistant Professor Ali Abedi.
The summer internships, which will take place at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., and the Johnson Space Center in Houston, are funded by NASA through the Maine Space Grant Consortium’s workforce development program. The internships will provide each student a $6,000 stipend for the summer as well as pay their travel expenses.
At the end of May, Duy will join the research team at JPL to work on new developments in Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP), the communication technology that is expected to one day link astronauts by digital telephone from space to Earth.
Knarr and Schwaner will travel to NASA’s Johnson Space Center to work on a wireless sensor network design for the next generation space telescope.
Abedi says he hopes the unique research opportunities will inspire his students to pursue graduate-level studies at UMaine, and perhaps join him in his ongoing NASA-funded research into battery-free wireless sensors for use in space and other harsh environments.