December 2019

Dr. Egle Cekanaviciute (USRA), Dr. Eloise Pariset (USRA) and Sherina Malkani (Blue Marble) from the Radiation Biophysics Laboratory, working on a project led by Dr. Sylvain Costes (NASA), have just completed a successful 3 week-long irradiation run at the NASA Space Radiation Laboratory (NSRL) in Brookhaven, NY. This work completes a series of three irradiation runs at NSRL to generate the largest, to the best of our knowledge, dataset of human immune cells exposed to space-relevant ionizing radiation.

November 2019

The Technology Education Satellite (TechEdSat) Team was awarded the 2019 Ames Honor Award for Groups/Teams. The team was awarded for using rapid iteration, lean-ness, and flexibility to develop state of the art technology for small satellites and driving the current state of the art while providing valuable training to early-career positions and interns. The TechEdSat Team member from USRA included intern Nicholas Williams (UC Davis).

October 2019

The NASA Academic Mission Services (NAMS) Team was awarded a new cooperative agreement with U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) titled “Collaborative Research in Innovative Technologies for Investigation of Resources and Hazards.” The agreement is for collaborative research, development, and education to advance science and technology in areas of common interest between the NAMS Team and the USGS Geology Minerals, Energy and Geophysics Science Center (GMEGSC) and the USGS National Innovation Center (NIC) or other USGS Sources.

September 26, 2019

On September 26th, 2019 Yohei Shinozuka, Ph.D. (USRA) received the NASA Group Achievement Award as a co-representative for ORACLES (ObseRvations of Aerosols above CLouds and their intEractionS), a five-year NASA Earth Venture research project on aerosols and clouds over the South East Atlantic. Southern Africa produces almost a third of the Earth’s biomass burning (BB) aerosol particles, yet the fate of these particles and their influence on regional and global climate is poorly understood. The ORACLES experiment provides multi-year airborne observations over the complete vertical column of the key parameters that drive aerosol-cloud interactions in the South East Atlantic, an area with some of the largest inter-model differences in aerosol forcing assessments on the planet.

September 10, 2019

The NAMS-supported SMA Crystal Ball Team has been awarded the NASA Group Achievement Award for their outstanding contributions in the completion of Phase 1 – Data Integration of the SMA Crystal Ball Project. This award will be presented at the annual Honor Awards ceremony Tuesday, September 10, 2019 at Stennis Space Center. USRA team members being recognized include John Dunn, Anastasia Glyantseva Carrozzo and Irina Patrikeeva.

August 2019

Jinwoo Han, Ph.D. has fabricated the world’s smallest vacuum tube using conventional silicon integrated circuit manufacturing technology. This allows manufacturing of vacuum devices at a cost structure similar to silicon chips. Vacuum devices are immune to radiation and therefore are ideal for space missions. In addition, since there are no collisions in vacuum, electrons are much faster in vacuum than in silicon; thus, the vacuum devices operate at higher frequencies. His pioneering work has generated worldwide resurgence of vacuum device technology, combining the best of vacuum device physics and modern semiconductor fabrication techniques. Currently, Dr. Han is fabricating nanoscale vacuum tubes in silicon carbide for potential Europa missions.

June 2018

Adiabatic Quantum Computing (AQC) and Quantum Annealing are computational methods that have been proposed to solve combinatorial optimization and sampling problems. Several efforts are now underway to manufacture processors that implement these strategies. The AQC 2018 Conference brings together researchers from different communities to explore this computational paradigm. The goal of the conference is to initiate a dialogue on the challenges that must be overcome to realize useful adiabatic quantum computations in existing or near-term hardware.

August 2019

Myeonglok Seol, Ph.D. was awarded the 2018 Ames Honor Award and the Mike Sergeant Career Achievement Award, Institution of Engineering and Technology United Kingdom. Both awards are for Myenglok’s contributions to the development of triboelectric nanogenerators (TENG). The Mike Sargeant award is presented to an early career researcher who has made great engineering contributions and shows potential for a promising research career. Dr. Seol received this award in a ceremony held in London.

March 2019

In early February, Dr. Jessica Snyder sailed 500 miles through Antarctica’s South Shetland Islands as a Guest Scientist with Quixote Expeditions aboard the Ocean Tramp - a 66 ketch rigged sailboat. Pioneers of sailing the Southern Ocean and owners of Quixote Expeditions, Laura and Fede made Jessica’s trip possible through a program they established to support original scientific work and provoke exploration as part of their charter cruises. Jessica, a scientist with Space Science and Astrobiology Division working on the NAMS Synthetic Biology Task, took this opportunity to extend her research on life in the extremes to the South Shetlands. 

February 20, 2019

Dr. David Bell has been appointed as the new Director of NASA Academic Mission Services (NAMS) Program, effective February 20, 2019. In this role, Dr. Bell will serve as Site Manager for NAMS activities at NASA's Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, California. 

September 28, 2018

Dr. David Bell, Director, USRA Research Institute for Advanced Computer Science and Chief Technologist, NASA Academic Mission Services was a keynote speaker at the Quantum Summit held in San Francisco on September 19, 2018. His talk on the “Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab: Growing the Ecosystem for Quantum AI” generated much interest. He was also a panelist on a session entitled, “How should Enterprises prepare for the Quantum Revolution?” along with other panelists from Google, Morgan Stanley and Lockheed Martin. 

April 28, 2016

The Universities Space Research Association has been awarded the NASA Academic Mission Services (NAMS) contract from NASA's Ames Research Center to deliver new concepts, tools and technologies related to aeronautics, science and aeroflightdynamics. This five-year agreement for a $193 million award launches an integrated multi-year research effort to be conducted at NASA's Ames Research Center, which ranges from fundamental research and development through field test deployments and operational science missions.

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