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The projects available for ASSURE interns will vary from year to year. To give you an idea of the kinds of projects available, here are the descriptions from previous years. Almost every project is multidisciplinary in nature, and will require you to learn some new skills, while putting what you know to the test. 

SSL is a research laboratory where self-starters and independent thinkers can excel. Although the research projects will have a clear pathway, many also have some flexibility for students to decide the direction they wish to take. 

You can get an idea of the types of projects below. Click on the posters for each project to see the results achieved by each student. 

Mentors:

Dr. Andrew Siemion - Director of the Berkeley SETI Research Center
Dr. Dan Wertheimer - Chief Scientist at the Berkeley SETI Research Center

Project Description:

The student will work on an experimental SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) SERENDIP project with scientists at the Berkeley SETI Research Center. Depending on the student's interest and skills, this project could involve building new instruments, performing massive data processing of 100TB data sets or performing observations with the world's largest telescopes.

Fields of study:

Physics, Math, Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Chemistry, Geology

Desired skills:

2 years experience programming in some language in a unix environment. Understanding of basic principles of computer networking (TCP/IP, Ethernet). Basic knowledge of astronomy phenomenology (e.g. stars, planets, galaxies, Kepler's law, gravity). Basic understanding of electromagnetic radiation.

Intern profile:

Kyle is a former Chaffey Community College student who has recently transferred to UC Berkeley where he is majoring in Mechanical Engineering. His ultimate career goal is being in a position where he can both make positive contributions to communities and continue to feed my inquisitiveness.

Mentors:

Dr. David Anderson - Director SETI@Home and BOINC 
Dr. Dan Wertheimer - Chief Scientist at the Berkeley SETI Research Center
Dr. Eric Korpela - Project Scientist, Berkeley SETI Research Center

Project Description:

The student will investigate and design new architecture to improve the efficiency of the SETI@home project to create a scalable and robust way of analyzing possible extraterrestrial signals.

Fields of study:

Physics, Math, Computer Science, Electrical Engineering

Desired skills:

Students should have programming experience (C, python, or other programming language). astronomy, physics and/or math courses helpful but not all of these are required. experience using electronic test equipment helpful for some of our research, but not required.

Intern profile:

Kevin is a computer science undergraduate from Sacramento City College. "Hunting Space Aliens" all summer helped him get a little closer to his goal of pursuing a PhD in Artificial Intelligence.

Mentors:

Dr. Juan Carlos Martinez Oliveros - Research Scientist, Solar Physics Research Group at SSL
Juan Camilo Buitrago Casas- Graduate student, Solar Physics Research Group at SSL

Project Description:

This is an observational project uses data from the Interferometric Bidimensional Spectropolarimeter located at the Dunn Solar Telescope and data from the IRIS, SDO/HMI, RHESSI and Hinode spacecraft. The goal of this project is to find traces of loop systems observed white-light continuum and the study of coronal rain events at different wavelengths, temporal and spatial scales.The observation of loop systems in the white-light continuum is relatively new and their physics at this point are not well understood. The relation of these structures to coronal rain, is also poorly understood. This is a observational challenging project which involves multi-wavelength imaging and data analysis. The student will be required to use and develop routines using Python and help in the physical analysis of the results, contributing directly to development of this active research field.

Fields of study:

Physics, Computer Science

Desired skills:

A general knowledge of physics and mathematics is required. Knowledge of computational mathematical methods is germane.

Intern profile:

Kevin is a computer science undergraduate from Sacramento City College. "Hunting Space Aliens" all summer helped him get a little closer to his goal of pursuing a PhD in Artificial Intelligence.

Mentors:

Dr. Lauren Blum - Research scientist at the Space Sciences Laboratory
Dr. Brian Walsh - Research scientist at the Space Sciences Laboratory

Project Description:

Hundreds of spacecraft populate the near-Earth space environment. Some are designed for scientific discovery while many are launched and operated to support industry needs, including communication and GPS navigation. These spacecraft operate in a harsh space environment, experiencing huge swings in temperature and constant bombardment by energetic particles, and they often exhibit anomalous resets or failures of electronics components onboard. With a comprehensive set of measurements from the THEMIS satellite mission, operated by Space Science Laboratory, we seek to understand how the space environment impacts the health and performance of satellites. The student participating will gain experience learning about variations in the local space environment as well as the impact of different radiation environments on spacecraft electronics

Fields of study:

Physics, Astrophysics, Data analysis

Desired skills:

An interest in physics or space and some very basic programming skills for plotting and sorting data.

Intern profile:

Ronnie is an Astronomy major from the College of San Mateo. With a goal of transferring to UC Berkeley, he has ambitions of becoming a planetary scientist and astrobiologist.

Mentors:

Dr. Katelynn Greer - Postdoctoral Researcher at the Space Sciences Laboratory
Dr. Thomas Immel - Principal Investigator for NASA ICON mission

Project Description:

The equatorial ionosphere is a highly variable feature of our space environment. NASA is launching 2 new missions in 2017 to better understand and predict its behavior (ICON and GOLD). The Low-Latitude Ionospheric Sensor Network (LISN) currently provides extensive measurements from a ground based network of conditions in this region. It shows remarkable examples of day-to-day variability in the ionosphere that should be further investigated, using other data from the LISN network or from other sources including tropospheric inputs. This work could identify areas of focus for the upcoming missions.

Fields of study:

Physics, Math, Computer Science, Data Analysis

Desired skills:

Familiarity with computer programming, linear algebra, and electrodynamics would all be helpful.

Intern profile:

Mentors:

Dr. Thomas Immel - Principal Investigator for NASA ICON mission
Colin Wilkins - ICON FUV project team member

Project Description:

NASA's upcoming ICON Explorer mission, which is being led and partially built at UC Berkeley's Space Sciences Lab, will provide several data products for the atmosphere and ionosphere after its launch in 2017. The products, which are different at day and night, could be made available in widely used visualization tools (Google Earth, Worldwide Telescope, etc). This project will support the mission by investigating the capability of these tools for visualization of 1) observatory characteristics and FOVs, 2) data acquisition 3) science modes and 4) representations of the data products. Eventually, the initial work done this summer could lead to the addition of a downloadable visualization packages for mission demonstration or science visualization.

Fields of study:

Physics, Math, Computer Science

Desired skills:

Knowledge of spherical geometry. Some CAD or 3D modeling experience. Video game visualization experience possibly helpful (3d models and volumetric lighting)

Intern profile:

Rick is an undergraduate from Napa Valley College, where his is majoring in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS). Starting out as an English Major, participating in ASSURE has helped to reinforce his decision to switch to a STEM field.

Mentors:

Dr. Lindsay Glesener - Researcher in the Solar Physics Research Group Juan Camilo Buitrago Casas - Graduate student in the Solar Physics Research Group

Project Description:

This project is the calibration of semiconductor detectors for the FOXSI solar sounding rocket experiment. The Focusing Optics X-ray Solar Imager is a hard X-ray instrument that uses direct focusing optics to produce images and spectra of X-rays from the Sun. FOXSI uses thin, high-resolution semiconductor detectors manufactured out of silicon (Si) or cadmium telluride (CdTe). Recent examination of the data from our second flight indicates that a becer detector calibration is needed. This project will involve (1) taking data using sealed radioactive sources with known X- ray lines to calibrate the silicon detectors; and (2) investigating statistical methods to improve the calibration.

Fields of study:

Physics, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering

Desired skills:

Familiarity with some form of programming language would be beneficial.

Intern profile:

Andres is an Electrical Engineering student from Hartnell Community College in Salinas, CA. Before he came to SSL, he had a goal of transferring to UC Berkeley and focussing on semiconductors. Having spent the summer working in this field, he is a step closer to achieving his ambition.

Mentors:

Dr. Gregory Dalton - Mechanical Engineer at Space Sciences Lab
Dr. Tony Mercer - Mechanical Engineer at Space Sciences Lab

Project Description:

The successful participant will work with the engineering team from the NASA Solar Probe Plus mission to modify, design, build, test and integrate the calibration chamber manipulator motor controller to prepare hardware for space flight.

Fields of study:

Computer Science, Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering

Desired skills:

Computer aided mechanical design (preferably Solidworks), hands-on electrical component assembly, and some coding experience.

Intern profile:

Returning to SSL for the second summer, Kitcia is an intern leader and former Hartnell Community College student. She has since transferred to UC Irvine to pursue her dreams of becoming a Mechanical Engineer.

Mentors:

Dr. Nicole Kelley - Postdoctoral Researcher at the Space Sciences Laboratory Dr. John Sample - Researcher at the Space Sciences Laboratory

Project Description:

Studing gamma-rays from lightning require gamma-ray detectors are installed at various locations worldwide. In order to do the best science, lightning near these detectors needs to be known. Lightning is nominally detected worldwide via the radio waves that the lightning emits. Due to limited coverage of radio detectors in certain areas, we are sometimes required to use flash-bang detectors. This is a simple device involving a photodiode that would be sensitive to the lightning "flash" and a microphone that would be sensitive to the thunder "bang". The time difference between the lightning flash and thunder can be turned into a distance that would be dependent on the ambient temperature, that would also be measured. During the summer, the student will be building this flash-bang detector, figuring out how to maximize the sensitivity to lightning and thunder, testing the detector and working on recording the data.

Fields of study:

Physics, Computer Science, Electrical Engineering

Desired skills:

Experience with circuits or programming may be beneficial.

Intern profile:

Nick comes from the College of San Mateo. Majoring in computer science and applied mathematics, he aspires to push the boundaries of technology to create something new and innovative. Although originally not confident in math, he has turned that around and successfully built a lightning detector from scratch this summer.