April 18, 2024

Boston Consulting Group (BCG) announced strategic collaborations with NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley and the Universities Space Research Association (USRA) to launch a generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) lab for science and engineering.

March 2024

The NASA Life Sciences Platform Team was recently nominated for the Rotary National Award for Space Achievement (RNASA) Foundation’s prestigious Stellar Award. The nomination is “recognition of the respect the team has earned for its hard work and exceptional accomplishments” in developing the platform that hosts the NASA Life Sciences Portal (NLSP).

December 22, 2023

In a recent paper published in Physical Review Letters,  Universities Space Research Association's Filip Wudarski and his team showed that understanding the source of noise is of primary importance for quantum computers. The paper discusses how scientists can study the specific features of low-frequency noise in a quantum bit (qubit) using relatively short measurements. These measurements are shorter than the time it takes for the noise source to explore all its possible states, and thus reach the ergodic limit.

December 22, 2023

The Universities Space Research Association (USRA) has been issued a subaward from the NSF's ExpandQISE program, a major effort part of the National Quantum Initiative connecting leading institutions in quantum science with diverse student populations. The grant will enable USRA and its partners to develop and test cutting-edge quantum algorithms, enhance educational resources, and establish new quantum science labs, contributing significantly to the nation's quantum research and education landscape.

November 29, 2023

An international team of researchers led by Rafael Luque of the University of Chicago discovered a system with six planets that orbit their central star in a rhythmic beat, a rare case of “in-sync” gravitational lockstep that could offer deep insight into planet formation. Universities Space Research Association’s Senior Scientist David Rapetti was a coauthor on the paper and findings were published in the journal Nature on November 29, 2023.

November 14, 2023

Research from a team of scientists from Universities Space Research Association (USRA), Rigetti Computing, and NASA Ames Research Center has led to the development of a significant step toward the challenging goal of combinatorial optimization for harnessing the power of quantum computing. This research is part of the DARPA Optimization with Noisy Intermediate Scale Quantum (ONISQ) program -- awarded to USRA in 2019 to direct a tight scientific collaboration between USRA, NASA and Rigetti Computing. The work is focused on developing fundamental advances in quantum optimization methods that will impact the U.S. military capabilities in the future.

May 22, 2023

In a groundbreaking achievement, a team of machine learning scientists and astronomers from Universities Space Research Association (USRA), the SETI Institute, and NASA discovered 69 new exoplanets using advanced machine learning techniques. The findings have been accepted for publication in the Astronomical Journal. This significant breakthrough was made possible by harnessing the power that artificial intelligence promises to expand our understanding of the universe and pave the way for future discoveries.

October 11, 2022

The team aims to develop advanced machine learning approaches to forecasting natural disasters, such as floods and cyclones, and explore how current-generation quantum processors, future quantum computer designs and physics-based hardware solvers could be leveraged to improve beyond the state-of-art achievable by classical machine learning techniques. Standard Chartered and Universities Space Research Association partner on Quantum-Inspired Machine Learning for Environmental, Social and Governance applications. Advances in quantum computing technology have such broad applicability in the long term that they could positively impact all 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

October 2022

This fiscal year, technical staff in USRA’s NAMS Program led the development and release of the new NASA Life Sciences Portal, which replaces the legacy NASA Life Science Data Archive (LSDA). The NLSP provides information and data on life science studies involving human, plant and animal subjects from 1961 (Mercury Project) through current flight and flight analog studies (International Space Station).

September 2022

Version 1.3 of the United States Geological Survey (USGS) Scoops3D slope stability model was made available for public download on the USGS software release site. The Scoops3D Fortran code was developed by Sarah Christian, Associate Scientist (USRA), working under cooperative agreement with Mark Reid (USGS).

September 2022

"Artificial gravity partially protects space-induced neurological deficits in Drosophila melanogaster," was published in the Cell Reports journal authored by scientists from NASA and USRA, Siddhita Mhatre, Janani Iyer (USRA), Juli Petereit, Roberta Dolling-Boreham, Anastasia Tyryshkina, Amber Paul, Rachel Gilbert, Matthew Jensen, Rebekah J. Woolsey, Sulekha Anand, Marianne Sowa, David Quilici, Sylvain Costes, Santhosh Girirajan, Sharmila Bhattacharya. The study shows the effects of space on “model organisms,” other kinds of life that are biologically similar to humans. It also shows how fruit flies on the International Space Station suggest that space travel has an impact on the central nervous system, but that artificial gravity provides partial protection against those changes. 

September 2022

Jeffrey Marshall, Ph.D., Associate Scientist (USRA) received a 2022 NASA Ames Honor Award for being an exceptional contractor employee. Jeffrey Marshall, Ph.D. (USRA) and the other Ames Honor Awards recipients will be honored in an upcoming virtual ceremony.

April 2022

The USRA NAMS Environmental Analytics team's article, "A Deep Learning Approach for Meter-Scale Air Quality Estimation in Urban Environments Using Very High-Spatial-Resolution Satellite Imagery" was published in the Atmosphere Journal as part of the Special Issue Air Pollution in Industrial Regions. The article was chosen to be on the cover of the journal, including images and the publication title.

January 2022

Universities Space Research Association (USRA) announced January 27, 2022 the start of operations for phase-2 of DARPA’s Optimization with Noisy Intermediate Scale Quantum devices (ONISQ) program. This award follows the ONISQ phase 1 launch in 2020, in which USRA was selected to lead the “Scheduling Applications with Advanced Mixers” (SAAM) project, in collaboration with Rigetti Computing and, through DARPA, under DARPA-NASA Interagency agreement (IAA) 8839 Annex 114, with the NASA Quantum AI Laboratory.

December 2021

NAMS staff, Meytar Sorek-Hamer, Ph.D., Manager and Scientist (USRA) and Irina Hallinan, Software Engineer, (USRA) under the guidance of Marit Meyer, Ph.D. (NASA GRC), created the NASA Ames International Space Station Particle Databases website as a collaborative effort between different research fields including aerosols, air quality, health in space, and data science. The website hosts an interactive plotting tool for a unique data set of airborne pollutant particles sampled on the International Space Station (ISS). The International Space Station Particle Database is a public-facing web tool for developing an air quality index for space missions.

June 2021

Publications from the team in the last 12 months. The team works primarily with NASA Ames Quantum AI Laboratory led by Eleanor G. Rieffel under the NASA Academics Mission Services Contract. It is supported as well by the National Science Foundation SpecEES and Expeditions in Computing program and by the DARPA ONISQ program.