Goddard Welcomes Nearly 450 Summer Interns
Almost 450 interns will complete their “10-week job interview” at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center this summer. A majority of these students are graduate and undergraduate students from across the United States and its territories. Just under 350 participated in an intern orientation program to learn more about the Greenbelt campus on Monday, June 5, 2017, prior to meeting their mentors.
“I can guarantee you those of you who make an impression [are] most likely to be the ones that are coming back into our ranks in the future years,” said Dean Kern, the deputy director for the Office of Education at Goddard.
Throughout the summer, interns will seek out new ways to explore their career fields and engage NASA’s international scientific community in Goddard projects.
Karthik Garimella studies computer engineering at Washington University in St. Louis, and he comes to Goddard from Arkansas. He is excited to lend his coding skills to NASA’s Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS) by creating tools that will help key stakeholders, like educators and researchers, parse and analyze raw Earth science data correctly. He is happy to know there is plenty of room for computer engineers like himself at Goddard.
“I want to help people learn how to properly use raw data from different sources, like satellites and aircraft,” Garimella said. “I think especially in today’s world, it’s really important to be able to take data and understand it, and not skew the facts.”
Some students are sure of their role in their internship, but others are jumping in feet first, excited to explore subject matter that may be new to them.
“My internship is in ionospheric physics,” said Riley Siddorn, a physics graduate from Augsburg College in Minnesota, “but I’m not sure what to expect really.”
While the majority of interns are stepping onto campus for their first time, many interns are returning for their second, third or fourth internships with a NASA-sponsored program.
The internships cast a wide spectrum in science related areas, from astrophysics and planetary science, to sounding rockets and Earth science. Interns will gain hands-on learning experiences while working alongside scientists, engineers, educators and even Nobel laureates. The skills the interns learn during this internship will prove to be invaluable as they advance in their scientific careers.
This class of summer interns brings a variety of backgrounds and areas of expertise to Goddard, and the internship program is an opportunity to celebrate and support diversity NASA-wide.
“We pride ourselves that we are a diverse community because that’s the way that we get creative,” Kern said. “The more diversity that we bring to the table, to talk about, to design, to create, the better our instruments are.”
To learn more about internships at any NASA facility, visit NASA’s One Stop Shopping Initiative (OSSI).
