The State Exposition will be held on Friday, May 2, 2025 – Saturday, May 3, 2025
at the University of Illinois - Urbana/Champaign. This is a NEW two-day format with THREE POSTER judging sessions. The PAPER session has moved to Saturday. Students can only compete in ONE event at the State Exposition, either the paper or the poster event. This new format will allow for students to present to more judges, more reliable scoring, and even more student events. Students are required to be present at ALL THREE poster sessions. Students will be allowed to leave and experience UIUC on Friday after meeting with their judges during each session. NO special judging sessions or special time arrangements will be given to any students. Stay tuned to IJAS social media feeds for up-to-date information!

The State Exposition will be held on May 3–4, 2024 at Millikin University in Decatur, Illinois. More information coming soon!

The Contest Deadlines for the design and essay contests have been updated. View the contests page for more information. We would like to see many more submissions!

• Student decal design and T-shirt design contest submissions are due on March 9, 2024.

• Student essay contest submissions are due on March 16, 2024.

This was the first year that IJAS introduced the Decal Design Contest. Below are the winning and the finalist designs. The winner of the 2022 IJAS Decal Design Contest is Winnie Choi and the finalists include Sela Nucum, Finn Donnelly and Peter Jankowski. Congratulations to the winner and our finalists for this year! The decals will be made available for purchase at the 2022 IJAS State Exposition on Friday and Saturday. 

Thank you to students who have submitted your essay in the 2022 IJAS Essay Contest! The winner of this year's essay contest is Indigo Wall! The finalists are: Indigo Wall, Gabriella Thalos, and Sophie Mae McPhail! Finalists were invited to present their essay to the IJAS Student Board on the morning of Friday, April 22 at the Peoria Civic Center. Congratulations!

Coralie first started studying and imaging asteroids at age 16, and has since been involved in many small body exploration missions including OSIRIS-REx, New Horizons, ROSETTA, Stardust-NExT, EPOXI, and Lucy. Since 2011, she has worked in the Space Navigation and Flight Dynamics division at KinetX where she has made significant contributions to the exploration of small bodies in our solar system. Ms. Adam was a navigator for the historic first reconnaissance of the Pluto system by NASA’s New Horizons mission in 2015. Next, she began working on the OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample return mission – a challenging mission that has now achieved multiple spaceflight records, including smallest body every orbited by a spacecraft, and first U.S. mission to collect a sample from the surface of an asteroid.

For her contributions to NASA’s planetary exploration initiatives, she has received many honors, including a NASA Early Career Achievement medal and main belt asteroid 128314 dedicated in her name. Coralie’s enthusiasm for public outreach inspired the building of Muddy Run Observatory in Lancaster, PA, where one of the telescopes was dedicated in her name.

Coralie is currently the Optical Navigation Lead at KinetX, where she manages a team of engineers supporting multiple planetary exploration missions. In her next role as Deputy Navigation Chief on NASA’s recently-launched Lucy mission, Coralie is looking forward to exploring a new population of asteroids, the Jupiter Trojans, which will further expand our scientific understanding of our solar system and planet’s origins.