Arizona/NASA Space Grant Consortium

10/07/2026

💫University students - lend a hand and receive a $200 stipend!

The Institute of Competition Sciences is looking for university students to review submissions for their Build The Moon Challenge! Here are the details:

Eligibility: junior, senior, or graduate students with relevant coursework, professional work, or extracurricular activities (aerospace, engineering, material science, or related studies).

Dates: One hour of training on Thursday, November 5; term runs November 17-29, 2026

Expected Commitment: ~10 hours over a twelve-day period

Responsibilities: Reviewers will conduct a preliminary round of reviews of the submitted materials based upon a scoring rubric provided by the competition management.

Compensation: Each reviewer will receive a $200 stipend for their support of the BTMC.

Arizona Space Grant loves the Build the Moon Challenge, and has helped support several teams across the state with K-12 classroom kits to participate in the program. What a great way to now get our university students involved!

A link to the website to learn more and apply can be found in the comments below.

10/06/2026

Highlighting Space Grant Alumni, Audrey! Audrey is a NAU/NASA Space Grant student who had the opportunity to attend and present in Poland over the summer!
“The research I present at Asteroids, Comets, Meteors (ACM) is lab based studies of water and water isotopes’ v***r pressure. I look at my samples both pure and in mixtures. This is helpful when looking at D/H ratios from telescope data and for modeling the evolution of the solar system.” ☄️🔭
National Space Grant Foundation

10/05/2026

🔬🌍 Look who we spotted in the University of Arizona news! 🎉

Congratulations to Supriya Roy, a 2024–26 UA Space Grant alum, who was recently featured for her incredible experience as a BRAVO! Summer in Cambridge researcher!

Through BRAVO! (Biology Research Abroad: Vistas Open!), an immersive international research program for UA undergraduates, Supriya spent her summer at the University of Cambridge, working in the VISIONLab under the supervision of Prof. Sarah Bohndiek and Dr. Stephen Mead.

Her research focused on developing an image-analysis framework to identify spatial biomarkers that could help distinguish low- and high-risk states of esophageal cancer and support earlier detection. 🧬🔬

This digital pathology approach could one day help reduce the need for staining, ease the workload of histopathologists, and even be integrated into endoscopes for real-time identification of cancerous lesions during diagnostic procedures.

🌟 Way to go, Supriya! We’re so proud to see UA Space Grant scholars taking their research abroad.

To read the article, see link in comments.

10/02/2026

🚀 Big news for Arizona’s future AI workforce!

The Arizona Space Grant Consortium has been awarded a $600,000 NASA AI Workforce Development Grant to expand AI education and workforce opportunities across Arizona over the next three years!

The grant will launch the Arizona Artificial Intelligence Workforce Development Cooperative, connecting universities, students, faculty, and industry through:

🤖 NASA-focused AI coursework & microcredentials
🎓 Student-faculty curriculum development
🛰️ Five Space Industry Internships each year

And we’re kicking things off by celebrating our Space Industry Interns! 🎉

The application process was highly competitive, and we’re thrilled to welcome this talented group to the program. Congratulations, interns! We’re excited to see all that you accomplish and wish you an incredible internship experience! 🚀

10/01/2026

Tomorrow! 🔭🧬 In collaboration with Flagstaff Festival of Science, USGS, and the NAU/NASA Space Grant Program, join us on 10/02/2026 for the Flagstaff Festival of Science Poster Session!🔬🥼

Who can attend?
Anyone and ALL STEM Majors
Who can register to present research?
Faculty, Grad Students, Undergrad Students, local affiliates
To present, you will need to register using the QR code or link below.
Presenters do no need to stay the entire time.
We ask that all attendees also register using the QR code or link below.
Light Food and Beverages will be provided.
First come, first served
And the Flagstaff Festival of Science Poster Session is free!

Present research you conducted in the past academic year or are continuing to conduct!

09/30/2026

Join us for the Next Math on Tap, on 10/07/2026, Mother Road Brewery!
Arrive early, we fill up fast!

The Mathematics of Congressional Apportionment
The Congressional Apportionment Problem is one of the oldest and most persistent mathematical challenges in American democracy: how to fairly divide a fixed number of political seats among states with constantly changing populations. While the U.S. Constitution requires that seats in the House of Representatives be distributed based on population, achieving perfect fairness is mathematically impossible. Over the past two centuries, this dilemma has sparked fierce debates among founding fathers like Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton, leading to different mathematical formulas that favor either larger or smaller states. The talk will provide a brief history of the methods used and considered for its solution, along with the pitfalls of each.

09/29/2026

🚀 Now Open!

Last month, we made everyone aware of the NASA TechRise Student Challenge. The time has come, and the challenge is now open and accepting applications through November 2, 2026.✨

Who is this for? 6th–12th grade students. This is your chance to design, build, and launch an experiment on a commercial suborbital flight! 🛰️

Working with an educator, student teams from U.S. public, private, and charter schools can submit their experiment ideas for a chance to:

💰 Receive $1,500 to build your experiment
🛠️ Get technical support from Future Engineers
🚀 Earn a spot on a NASA-sponsored flight with an industry provider

60 winning teams will be selected!

Have an idea that’s out of this world? 🌌 Start building your team and get ready to take your experiment to the next level.

09/28/2026

The Horizons Challenge is a national competition from xFoundry, run in partnership with NASA and open to students at any accredited North American university or community college. Teams of two to five pick one of four focus areas and spend the semester finding and validating a problem worth solving in it:

Predictive User Interfaces: smart interfaces that know what you need before you do.

Human Performance Monitoring: health and safety tools that tell us when we are at risk.

Autonomous Asset Inspection: AI that warns before failure in infrastructure, systems and parts.

Adaptive Learning: systems that learn, adapt and reconfigure in high-stress environments.

Teams research and analyze the problem rather than build a product, then pitch what they find to industry leaders. Each team has to span at least two disciplines, drawn from technology, entrepreneurship, arts and athletics, marketing, and science, so this is not a competition only for engineers.

There is no cost to enter. Fall registration runs through November 27, submissions are due December 19, and finals are at the NEXPLORE Summit in April 2027.

Full details at xfoundry.org/horizons-challenge

In the Horizons Challenge, you'll work on a small team, diving into societal challenges and conducting essential market research to identify a significant problem that, if solved, could help improve society today.

09/25/2026

We had a great night of collaboration with CEFNS Career Development, Space Grant, and the NAU/NASA Space Grant! Students stayed, networked, and asked MANY great questions on career and academia. Nights like this is why we do what we do.

09/24/2026

Yesterday, the NASA Inspiration Tour made a stop at the University of Arizona, and it was truly an out-of-this-world day! 🚀

Members of our University of Arizona SEDS ASCEND high-altitude ballooning team had the incredible opportunity to present their work directly to Jared Isaacman, NASA Administrator, as part of a student showcase. The team did an outstanding job and even fielded several questions from Administrator Isaacman. We couldn’t be prouder!
Go team, and go ASCEND! 🚀🎈 Your hard work, creativity, and dedication continue to make an incredible impact.

AZ Space Grant also had the opportunity to participate in the main event, where Administrator Isaacman, along with NASA and University of Arizona leadership, spoke to an audience of more than 650 people. It was an amazing opportunity to showcase the work happening across Arizona and connect with students, educators, researchers, and members of our community.

A huge thank you to everyone who helped make this event possible. These events take an incredible amount of coordination, preparation, and teamwork, and we are grateful to everyone who contributed—and especially to those who invited AZ Space Grant to be part of such a special day.

Special thanks to NASA OSTEM, including Tara Strang; UA Space Institute Director Erika Hamden; our Arizona Near Space Research affiliate Clayton Jacobs; NAU Space Grant Manager Nicholas Alfonso Diaz; UA Assistant Director Yancy Shirley; and everyone from across the state who showed up to support the event such as Casa Grande Union High School ASCEND—way to represent! 👏

It was a quick-turnaround event and an absolute whirlwind of a week, but seeing our students step up and represent Arizona Space Grant with such professionalism and enthusiasm made it all worthwhile.

We are incredibly proud of our team and excited for what’s ahead! 🚀

To learn more about the event, check out this UA News article (credit to photo #4): https://news.arizona.edu/news/nasa-administrator-jared-isaacman-inspires-u-students-help-shape-golden-age-space-exploration?