For Texas A&M U. seniors Amy Oliver and Emily Jernigan, reaching for the stars is no longer a tired cliché. They were chosen for an internship program with NASA researchers organized by the National Space Biomedical Research Institute.
Oliver and Jernigan are among the 19 students chosen from a pool of 250 from universities including Cornell, Harvard and Rice. The program places students in fields such as audiology, flight medicine, radiation and behavioral sciences.
“Students are getting valuable hands-on experience with space and biomedical research,” said Brad Thomas, senior communications officer for the program. “They are able to go into the laboratories and work with NASA scientists.”
In addition to working with top NASA researchers, interns chosen for this program attend lectures from other scientists and astronauts in their fields of research, Thomas said.
“It is a lot of different things [interns] are getting immersed in, and different work they are getting the opportunity to be exposed to,” Thomas said.
Oliver, a biomedical engineering major, was placed in the research field of audiology, a field she did not consider.
“I am not an audiology student, but this is where the program placed me,” Oliver said. “I really enjoy it though. I did not have audiology in my future, but if that becomes an opportunity, that would be really great.”
Oliver works on software to test the hearing of astronauts during space missions.
“The old computer really needs to be updated, and that is including [astronaut] hearing tests,” she said. “There are definitely possibilities of hearing being affected because the launch is really loud and the space station itself is very loud.”
She works with a NASA audiology researcher, compiling data from hearing tests to see how the astronauts’ hearing is affected by the conditions of space travel.
Jernigan, a senior biology major, was put into the research field of flight medicine, which was a field she planned to pursue.
She works on updating instructional videos that are sent up to space to instruct astronauts on medical procedures such as catheter insertion and laceration care.
“The videos we have currently are not meant for orbit, so a lot needs to change based on flight differences,” Jernigan said. “I have worked in mission control, and I have gotten to observe [astronauts’] physical tests in the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory, which is the largest pool in America.”
Jernigan said she is fortunate to experience such an opportunity.
“I have gotten to do so many cool things,” she said. “I was always considering doing flight medicine and becoming a flight surgeon. Now I know it is something that I want to do.”