A second batch of high-performing New Zealand tertiary students and recent graduates are set to fly to California to participate in the NASA International Internship Programme.
According to a recent press release, the students will be travelling to NASA’s Ames Research Centres in Silicon Valley, with financial support from the New Zealand Space Scholarship.
Their internships will last 16 weeks until December. While there, the students will work on several projects.
The interns and their projects
A student completing his PhD in Bioengineering at the University of Auckland focuses his work on using computational methods to improve the efficiency and performance of electric vehicles.
At NASA, he will be working on aircraft aerodynamics, particularly on rotorcraft such as drones, which may be used for planetary exploration.
The second student is undertaking her MSc in Computer Science at the University of Waikato. Her work focuses on human-computer interaction and data visualisation.
At NASA, she will be working on Novel Media Visualisation, which will take data and raw images from space and planets and translating them into different media that people can understand.
The third student had recently graduated from the University of Canterbury with a Bachelor of Engineering specialising in Mechatronics.
At NASA, he will use images captured by the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) and apply new ways of analysing them to find undiscovered earth and super-earth sized planets hundreds of light years away.
Learning from the best in the space industry
New Zealand’s Economic Development Minister Phil Twyford is delighted to see Kiwi students grabbing hold of this opportunity to learn from some of the best in the space technology field.
There are few places in the world where they could get an experience like this.
The Government is committed to building an innovative space industry in New Zealand and the skills, knowledge and connections interns will bring home and share will help the country in building its space capability and inspire more young people to get involved in the sector.
The new group follows in the footsteps of the first four Kiwi students to participate in the International Internship Programme from June to August 2019.
Interns were selected from a pool of 250 applicants by the New Zealand Space Agency, which is a part of the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE.) NASA then selected from that pool.
The first four interns have described an amazing and valuable experience and this opportunity should also be extended to the next three.
The Government-funded New Zealand Space Scholarship covers the costs of the internship, including airfares to the United States, accommodation, living expenses and visa-related fees.
OpenGov Asia earlier reported on NZ expands space industry through scholarship.
The standard applications for the program demonstrates he high quality of New Zealand’s tertiary education and the way students are prepared to achieve at the highest level in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.