Beyond the Lab: Himmele, Bowman, and Perera shine in outreach excellence

One team of young physicists are taking their outreach missions to a whole new level. 

Leading the charge is Gabriela Himmele, a third-year graduate student in the WVU Department of Physics and Astronomy. She is working in the NASA Climate Change Research Initiative Program (CCRI), a year-long interdisciplinary, collaborative, science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) engagement and experiential learning opportunity for educators and graduate students. Through this competitive program, Gabriela works directly with NASA scientists and research teams on a NASA research project. 

The CCRI connects the lab, the field, and the classroom to provide a structured research and mentorship experience for educators and students, offering valuable and comprehensive training experience to young scientists seeking a research-centered experience during their graduate school career. 

This opportunity affords Gabriela the chance to work alongside NASA scientists and lead research projects aligning with her current area of research in the WVU plasma physics group. She also plays a key role in inspiring young scientists to pursue physics, drawing them into the field through extensive outreach initiatives. 

NASA Program Principal Investigator, Matthew Pearce, leads the CCRI and its mission. “The research that comes out of this program is critical to the agency and its work,” Pearce said. “These elements they’re studying and creating new knowledge for us is critical to our understanding of climate change and climate impacts.” 

Gabriela's efforts have an impact beyond physics. “I gave a virtual presentation with two other NASA scientists to students at Lexington School for the Deaf along with Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez,” reflects Gabriela. In April, she led the presentation on eclipse totality, alongside two other NASA scientists, to hearing-impaired students at the school in Queens, New York.

Rep. Ocasio-Cortez (NY-14) gave the opening remarks then transitioned to Gabriela, who spoke to the students about current plasma physics research at WVU and explained how plasma physics on the sun played a role in this year’s unique eclipse. In the theme of outreach, Gabriela discussed the importance of research in plasma physics and fusion science, while making the scientific topics accessible to the young audience

Rep. Ocasio-Cortez played along on social media, playfully promoting the event through the eyes of her dog, Deco. 

Incorporating her scientific journey into the talk, Gabriela touched on her personal experiences in order to connect with the students and hopefully inspire young scientists to consider a future in plasma physics. She reflected back on her STEM journey, which originally began with the Pulsar Science Collaboratory and her early research opportunities at the  Green Bank Observatory in Pocahontas County, WV. The interconnectivity of the programs and initiatives are all connected to ensure young researchers, like Gabriela, are given a rich, diverse research experience with which to build a foundation of physics for future studies. 

Gabriela currently works alongside Prof. Earl Scime in the WVU Department of Physics and Astronomy in the  Center for Kinetic Plasma Physics to further the machine learning component of the project with PHASMA, which stands for PHAse Space MApping experiment. PHASMA is designed to make three dimensional measurements of the motion of ions and electrons at kinetic scales. WVU houses the only facility in the world capable of performing these detailed measurements.

Scime, on Gabriela’s determination and success, notes "since she joined my group, Gabriela has really driven us towards using advanced data analysis methods, like machine learning, to better characterize and understand our measurements."

Additionally, Gabriela was invited to present her research in Washington D.C., where she discussed the PHASMA research projects currently being performed in the Scime Lab. She explained why it is so important to continue these projects while promoting the critical need for future investment in physics research.

The outreach continued as Gabriela and fellow WVU Physics and Astronomy graduate students, Justin Bowman and Hasith Perera, led a public balloon launch outreach event as part of the West Virginia National Eclipse Ballooning Project (WVNEBP). This event was part of the NASA-funded National Eclipse Balloon Launch Project. Gabriela led the physics outreach efforts, while Justin and Hasith designed the board and served together as systems engineers.

According to the WVNEBP website, “educators and student teams use innovative larger balloon systems to live stream video to the NASA eclipse website, observe  in situ perturbations in atmospheric phenomena, and conduct individually designed experiments. Atmospheric science track teams will make frequent observations by launching hourly radiosondes on helium-filled weather balloons.” 

Hasith entered with the goal of starting and running a collaborative open-source project to track and downlink data from weather balloons. The project relied on commercial subscription services, an unsustainable long-term solution. The aim was to create a budget-friendly, DIY platform for high schools, transforming it into a self-paced science course. The primary goal was to broaden the tracker's reach and accessibility. The tracker is currently in its second iteration with 4 successful test flights. 

The team credits support from a NASA Space Grant Consortium grant to the Physics and Astronomy Graduate Student Organization (PAGSO). The grant was used to build a model that would be inexpensive and modifiable for future outreach use. “One goal of mine in joining this initiative was to create and run a collaborative open source project, and we were able to achieve this through the grant,” notes Hasith.

The team oversaw the weather balloon launch, organized similarly to a NASA mission launch, while gathering data. Then, they detailed their research at WVU and shared with spectators what they expect to see with their measurements in the path of totality. Measurements like temperature, pressure, and relative humidity were discussed and hypothesized as to how they will change as the payload travels through stable versus unstable layers in the atmosphere.  

Justin continues his work on the NASA RockSat Project with the WVU team, building a payload with the hopes of being awarded a spot on the rocket.  According to the RockSat website, it is “a program for students to design, build, and fly a sounding rocket experiment on a Terrier-Improved Orion sounding rocket.” Justin’s involvement in this competition led to him being awarded a fellowship to work as the mechanical student lead for the entire payload, which involved integration of all the experiments and modeling the deck. 

“As part of the fellowship, I gave a presentation to NASA IV&V about our payload and the outreach we were doing. This outreach was inspired by the idea of what it takes to design, build, and fly a NASA mission,” Justin said. 

As if this wasn’t enough, the team will be partnering with NASA to build physics lesson plans which will also be used for teaching through the WVU Upward Bound program. In this effort, the team will be teaching underserved students from Preston County, WV who will then present their work to NASA scientists for a final presentation. Gabriela notes, “this is may be the coolest thing I have been a part of as a graduate student.”

Breaking out of the lab and into the community has always been the goal, according to Hasith. “This gave me an opportunity to interact with students and the larger community outside of my typical field of study,” Hasith said. “It gave me some great experience in doing hands-on field work.”

The team will continue the mission of physics outreach through a multitude of programmatic collaboration and networks to inspire the next generation of physicists.