For three years I supervised teams of Boise State students working on a Microgravity team. These students wrote a proposal to do scientific experiments in NASA's Zero-G airplane. These were competitively reviewed. Then students did grant proposal writing and fundraising to purchase supplies and pay for a trip to Houston to test their experiment on the Zero-G airplane.

PARTICIPANTS:

Faculty: Elisa Barney Smith, Julia Oxford, Barbara Morgan

Graduate Students: Matt Dolan, Jill Hettinger

Undergraduate Students:

• 2012: David Connolly, Eugene Castro, Matthew Dolan, Jason Archer, Marie Tharp, Reilly Clark, Lindsey Catlin, Nic Baughman, Travis Baker, Kellen Mather, Landon Nye, Audra Phelps, Daniel Lambert

• 2013: Nic Baughman, Tara Smith, Kellen Mather, Travis Baker, Landon Nye, Daniel Lambert, Jim Pelton, Kevin Warburton, Shaun Millard, Libby Stewart, Ashley Kelly

• 2014: Roxanne Stone, Janos Cserna, Jordan Scott, Carl Barcroft, Scott Warren, Douglas “Mac” Jones, Libby Stewart, Kaytlin Smith, Tara Smith

FUNDING:

• NASA Idaho Space Grants Consortium

One of the earliest projects I worked on at Boise State was to take a notice that a Gamma Ray Burst had been detected and swiftly turn a small telescope in the direction of the burst to try and optically detect the visual component.

PARTICIPANTS:

• Elisa H. Barney Smith, John Gardner, Daryl Macomb, Scott Smith (BSU), Henry Willmes (University of Idaho)

FUNDING:

• NASA EPSCoR

• Idaho Space Grants Consortium

PUBLICATIONS:

• Darin Dutson, MSE EE, “Image Alignment Method for Matching a Telescope Image with a Star Catalog,” May 2005.