mentorship

NASA SARP Graduate Mentor 2025

I served as a graduate mentor during NASA’s Student Airborne Research Program (East). During this experience, I worked daily with 6 students in the ‘oceans group’ to design and complete independent research projects. The first 2 weeks of the program took place at NASA Wallops Flight Facility, where we all participated in an airborne campaign focused on atmospheric sampling. The last 5 weeks of the program were spent at VCU, where students had time to work on their research projects and presentations. Student projects spanned many different research areas and encompassed many different measurement techniques, including both passive and active remote sensing. A list of mentored student projects can be found below.

• Classifying Coastal Sea Ice Extent and Freshet Event Timing in Prudhoe Bay, AK with Sentinel-1 (Isabella Showman, UW)
• Investigating the Impacts of the January 2025 California Wildfires on Phytoplankton Blooms in the Pacific Ocean (Sarah Gryskeqitz, SUNY Oswego)
• How Well Can Machine Learning Forecast Kelp Biomass Along the Central California Coast? (Philip Espinal, Texas A&M)
• Impacts of Atmospheric Rivers on Phytoplankton in the Central California Current System (Joshua Chapin, UAH)
• Predicting phytoplankton pigment groups in coastal southern California with PACE (Eli Mally, UCI)
• Sea Surface Temperature as an Indicator of Benthic Symbiont Loss in the Florida Keys: A Comparative Analysis of ECOSTRESS and MODIS (Carolyn Chen, UF)