Alumni Roundup: April 16, 2013

See What SUNY Alumni are Accomplishing This Week!

The Power of SUNY

In addition to our regular Alumni Profile series, we hear about great things our graduates are doing around the country. Why not share them?

 

An endowment by SUNY Geneseo alumni Jack and Carol Kramer, both 1976 Geneseo graduates, made a keynote speech by a former New York Times science reporter at the school’s annual GREAT Day possible.

SUNY Oneonta alumnus and ESPN reporter Sal Paolatonio is set to deliver the school’s Class of 2013 Commencement Address.

SUNY Plattsburgh alumnus Chris Marchitelli, Vice President of Litepanels, Inc., donated $70,000 in lighting to help upgrade the Albert R. Montanaro Television Studios, home of the PSTV college TV station and a training ground for communication students.

Five SUNY Geneseo alumni artists are scheduled to perform this week during the Geneseo Dance Ensemble’s “Dancing Past to Present: Celebrating 45 Years.”

Rosemary Cardamone Crane, a SUNY Oswego alumna who has built a career in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries, will join in recognizing more than 100 academic achievers at the college this week.

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SUNY Potsdam graduate Ryan Zeigler visited the college this past week to talk with current students about his work with NASA.

Click to watch video on YNNZeigler, who curates the Apollo moon samples, spoke with students about the importance of the missions in an event titled “What We Have Learned Since the Apollo Missions”.  He brought with him moon samples from the collection, some of which were billions of years old.

The Potsdam alumnus spoke to local news station YNN:

“We haven’t been there in about 40 years. Our understanding of the moon has evolved a lot since then, so I think going back to the moon would be a very important step as NASA goes out into the solar system to explore again,” Zeigler said.

Zeigler also noted to YNN that it is important to note humans’ technology abilities when we went to the moon.  For example, we hold in our hand today more computing power in smartphones and tablets than the entire NASA rocket was capable of when we were making trips to the moon.

SUNY has an extensive relationship through alumni, students, and joint projects with NASA.  Zeigler’s trip to the North Country last week was one of many outreach efforts that our supportive alumni embark on every day.

Research: SUNY Contributes Researchers, Development, Data Analysis to NASA

SUNY contributes to NASA research

Three SUNY campuses may now tout relations with the world’s leading aerospace engineering organization, NASA.

  • SUNY Oswego recently announced that three more undergraduate students will intern this summer in NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory;
  • NASA last week announced that it will be launching a satellite into orbit which was designed by students from the University at Buffalo; and
  • A Stony Brook University expert this year utilized data from two NASA tools to help Look for Life on Mars.

Read on to learn more about these opportunities and success stories from some of SUNY’s leading astro-researchers, developers, and analysts.

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Looking for Life on Mars

Stony Brook_Deanne Rogers_Geosciences_Mars_01222013

Deanne Rogers, Assistant Professor, Department of Geosciences at Stony Brook University

Up to half of all life on Earth consists of simple microorganisms hidden in rocks beneath the surface. Scientists have suggested that the same may be true for Mars. When meteorites strike the surface of Mars, they act like natural probes, bringing up rocks from far beneath the surface.

Recent research has shown that many of the rocks brought up from the Martian subsurface contain clays and minerals whose chemical make-up has been altered by water, an essential element to support life.  Some deep craters on Mars also acted as basins where groundwater likely emerged to produce lakes.  McLaughlin Crater contains clay and carbonate minerals formed in an ancient lake on Mars. The fluids that formed these minerals could carry clues to as to whether the subsurface contained life.

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STEM Hub Happenings: Teachers Work With NASA to Recreate Curiosity ROVER in Classrooms

STEM Mars roverAt Pine Grove Middle School in East Syracuse, NY eighth-grade students are preparing to land ROVER robots on the planet of Mars. Their Mars might be simulated, and their ROVER robot might be made out of LEGOs, but this three month-long project requires students to work collaboratively and learn skills in design, building, and programming to successfully pull off their Mars landing.

The students are led by two of their S.T.E.A.M. (Science, Technology, Engineering, English Language Arts and Mathematics) team teachers, Jason Fahy and Tim Patterson. The Pine Grove Middle School is an innovation platform school within the Empire State STEM Learning Network (stewarded by the SUNY Office of the Education Pipeline) and a founding member of the Central New York Regional Hub of Empire STEM, which also includes SUNY College of Environmental Science & Forestry and Onondaga Community College.

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A New Direction for Space Industry

UB engineering graduate Jared Kuhl is working at one of the hottest companies in the space industry.

Some of the biggest names in aeronautics came to Buffalo for SpaceVision 2012, the nation’s largest student-run space conference. And this year, it was hosted by the University at Buffalo’s chapter of Students for the Exploration and Development of Space (SEDS). In a nod to changing times, the conference theme was “Crossroads: How Our Generation Will Take Us to the Space Frontier.”

Two UB alumni were among the presenters: Christopher Scolese, director of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, who received a BS in electrical engineering from UB in 1978; and Hussein Jirdeh, head of communications and public outreach for the Space Telescope Science Institute, who received a PhD in mechanical engineering from UB in 1988. Continue reading