David Nordling ’96, David Lenhert ’97, Ian Goodman ’00 and Timothy Wetzel ’00, who is shown here during research activities at NASA this past fall, have all experienced the adventures of microgravity, thanks to Wichita State’s strong relationship with NASA. Such exciting research opportunities are made possible in large measure by NASA educational grants to Wichita State — and by the student engineers’ own flights of imagination.
Wichita State and NASA sport a longstanding, mutually beneficial relationship built from years of cooperative education and research ventures, and David Koert, WSU associate professor of mechanical engineering, is continuing the tradition.
Koert, who since 1995 has obtained the funding to help qualified students participate in microgravity research at NASA, is working with Daniel Dietrich, a research scientist at NASA in the microgravity combustion science group, to develop a new WSU student design team project for the NASA Reduced Gravity Student Flight Opportunities Program for next year. The program is designed to allow engineering senior design teams to plan, build and perform experiments aboard the KC-135.
“The program is an outreach activity to enhance interest in science and engineering and bring visibility to the College of Engineering at WSU,” Koert explains. “If students know they can participate in exciting research at the undergraduate level, then that makes WSU more attractive to the brightest and the best.”
