NASA Grants to Support Collaborative STEM Programs in L.A. County

NASA has awarded $3.9 million to 13 teams at under-resourced academic institutions across the country, to support collaborative projects with NASA that offer students mentorship and career development in science, technology, engineering and math. Two of the teams are based in Los Angeles County.

This is the second round of seed funding awards given through the agency’s Science Mission Directorate (SMD) Bridge Program, which was established in 2022 to improve diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility in the science and engineering communities as well as NASA’s workforce.

“We are thrilled to welcome 13 new teams into our community,” said Padi Boyd, director, SMD Bridge Program at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “We look forward to nurturing these collaborations between faculty and NASA researchers, while supporting the development of the next generation of researchers.”

NASA’s SMD Bridge Program funds research projects at academic institutions - including Hispanic-serving institutions, historically Black colleges and universities, Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander-serving institutions, and primarily undergraduate institutions – that build or strengthen relationships with NASA. The projects offer hands-on training and mentorship for students that will help them transition into graduate schools, employment at NASA or STEM careers.

In February, the program awarded a first round of seed funding to a selection of 11 teams, which also included two Los Angeles-based projects at California State University, Los Angeles and California State University, Northridge.

This second cohort of grant recipients includes 13 teams with projects connected to seven NASA centers. A third round of seed funding will be awarded this summer.

The two L.A.-region projects that were selected among the second cohort to receive seed funding include:

“Bridging NASA and Cal State L.A. Partnerships for Research Capacity Building in Remote Sensing”

• Principal investigator: Jingjing Li, California State University, Los Angeles
• California State University, Los Angeles, will collaborate with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California (JPL) in this project to strengthen research capacity and student mentorship and training opportunities in the field of remote sensing, including applications for pre- and post-wildfire analysis.

“Student Construction and Deployment of Low Cost Sensor Network in Whittier, California”

• Principal investigator: Peter Peterson, Whittier College
• This project, a collaboration with Whittier College and NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley, focuses on hands-on learning for students in the use of low-cost sensors and satellite-based measurements to study regional air pollution.