Celebrating Student Success and Scholarship
“Aquaponics: Farming of The Future” by Eamonn Cronin
This year’s celebration of student scholarship occurred on April 24th. The event included presentations from many student researchers. To complete their research projects, the students received local NASA grants. During the 2:45 p.m. session Eamonn Cronin, Dawn Sargent and Mattison Johnson presented their research findings.
Chair of the sessions, Thomas Cuchta, stated, “I think it is wonderful to have an event like this on campus where students can be recognized for the extracurricular work that they do. Eamonn and Dawn & Mattison did great jobs sharing what they’ve done. Explaining a project to an audience is the best way to make sure you understand any kind of material in any field of knowledge.”
The first presenter, Eamonn Cronin, described the process of using aquaponics as a sustainable source of farming technology in “Aquaponics: Farming of The Future”. As for the next presentation, Dawn Sargent and Mattison Johnson explained the implications of data mining and data visualization in their presentation, “Using Computer Simulation, Data Mining and Data Visualization for Common Quantum Mechanics Problems for NASA”.
Dawn Sargent spoke highly of her experience, stating, “I was very honored to be asked to be a part of it and to gain this experience. I really enjoyed learning from and working with NASA and my professors. Our research wasn’t exactly about obtaining previously unknown knowledge, but more about using different methods – specifically Monte Carlo simulations, machine learning, and data mining – to come to the same conclusions. Hopefully, the next step is being able to successfully apply these same methods to similar problems, and especially for NASA.”
