NASA Trains Puerto Rican Students Interested in Oceanography – Metro Puerto Rico

About 20 students from Puerto Rico with an interest in oceanography and seas were the protagonists of the first generation of interns for the project’s summer internship Engage and raise awareness of ocean communities affiliate The National Center for Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA, for its English acronym).

supported initiative NASA Science Enablement ProgramFocuses on educating and training high school and university students in the study of oceans, marine ecosystems, coasts, atmosphere, planet Earth, and terrestrial surfaces, among other topics.

oceans It is a project led NASA Ames Research Center It is being implemented for the first time in Puerto Rico in collaboration with collaborating scientific and educational entities.

“Project OCEANOS presents a unique opportunity created to attract the first generation of high school and university students from Puerto Rico to marine and ocean sciences with the goal of completing a summer internship on the island. Students are trained in the use of NASA tools for remote sensing, analysis of water quality, and ecology of tropical marine ecosystems. At the end of the internship, students are expected to act as agents of change by taking the message of marine resource conservation back to their families and community.”said Juan Torres Perez, initiative leader and research scientist at NASA Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, California.

As part of the internship project, the students had the opportunity to develop research papers on five main topics with the guidance of scientific resources and experts in the field of marine and ocean sciences, namely: Marine plankton, corals, temporal water quality, spatial water quality, and beach profile.

Similarly, students participated in educational activities at the Inter-American University of Puerto Rico and experiential visits to the Marine Ecology Society’s facilities in Culebra and the Marine Science Laboratory’s Marine Science Laboratory in Magíes Island.

for his part, Jenny M GuevaraExecutive Director of EcoExploratory expressed it,”We feel proud to be part of the network of key collaborators along with the NASA Ames Research Center to implement the OCÉANOS project so that young Puerto Rican students, educational tools and experiences will have the opportunity to learn in depth in oceanography and anchorages on the islandGuevara pointed out.

Interns participated in a closing event where they presented their research work to the scientific community and their families as part of the culmination of the internship educational program that ended on June 30.

The summer internship of the OCÉANOS project will continue in the academic year 2024 with the second generation of interns and will provide the opportunity for 20 students from public schools and academic centers on the island for a total of 40 students within the educational project.