EXCEL

Intern Experiences

The EXCEL program was not simply a program designed to provide blind students with a token opportunity to work at the world's leading space agency. This program gave young blind people challenging work experience as well as an opportunity to expand their horizons and open doors in the future. As you will see by the following email from one of the students, the EXCEL interns had to work hard for their success:

Email from: Andrew Mayles (Colorado)
Sent: Mon 8/8/2005 2:25 PM

Hello to all,

I just thought I might show you guys just a little of what I have been doing this summer. As most of you know, I am working as an intern at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. I have been a part of several projects, the majority of which have been related to a project known as radioJOVE, an educational outreach program for radio astronomy.

As a part of this project I went out into the community to do a presentation for middle school kids on radioJOVE and radio astronomy in general. I also have been giving feedback on the construction of a kiosk that introduces the user to radio wave emissions and their relevance in astronomy. I have been constructing various parts of the radioJOVE assembly kit, not only to give feedback on its usability, in general and for users with visual impairments, but also to replace the current antenna and receiver because of Jupiter's southern declination. On a more technical level, I am participating with a committee looking for better algorithms for sonifying data (taking multi-dimensional data graphs and converting them to sound). Sonified data will help people interpret data in ways not before available, increasing efficiency and speed of analysis, and will be of particular use to blind users. I have also had the privilege to sit in on a seminar regarding recent findings in our understanding of the source of Jupiter's decametric radio emissions, given by Dr. Kazumasa Imai, a professor at Kochi National College of Technology in Japan. While all of these projects and activities are important to my overall participation in this division, these are not my main objectives as an intern this summer.

My official project for the summer is to correlate two data archives, one the Lockheed Martin Solar and Astrophysics Laboratory, the other the radioJOVE archive (the latter is an archive of submitted radio wave interceptions from the sun and Jupiter, our solar system's strongest sources of radio waves). I have written a Java application to present both archives in an easy-to-analyze format. The correlations I am most interested in are the accuracy and consistency of the radioJOVE antenna and receiver in picking up radio emissions from the sun, and specifically, which parts of the sun. Now, in my last week, I prepare a presentation of my activities this summer, my achievements and findings.

I would like to thank my NASA mentors Jim Thieman, Leonard Garcia, and Jim Gass for an awesome, unforgettable summer. I would also like to thank everyone who got me here-my family, Mr. Rohrbacker, Mr. Gordon, and Mrs. Mumford. I would finally like the thank NASA and the NFB for the opportunity of a lifetime. I apologize if there is anyone I excluded.

Thanks again to everyone,
Andrew