2006 Graduate Student Summer Program in Earth System Science

Deadline for applications is February 28, 2006

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center’s (GSFC) Earth-Sun Exploration Division, in collaboration with the Goddard Earth Sciences and Technology (GEST) Center of the University of Maryland Baltimore County, is offering a limited number of graduate student research opportunities through its Graduate Student Summer Program (GSSP). This prestigious program is in its sixth year and is designed to stimulate interest in interdisciplinary Earth science studies by enabling selected students to carry out an intensive research project at GSFC, which can be applied to the student’s graduate thesis. GSSP 2006 will take place from June 5 to August 11, 2006.

Positions are available to students interested in any Earth system science conducive to the research of NASA GSFC. Each student will be teamed with a NASA Goddard scientist mentor with parallel scientific interests. NASA mentors can be drawn from any of the participating Earth Science laboratories. GSFC laboratories in Greenbelt, MD include: The Laboratory for Solar and Space Physics, The Laboratory for Atmospheres, and The Laboratory for Hydrospheric and Biospheric Sciences. Additional laboratory locations include oceanography and instrumentation research on coastal zone processes at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility (WFF) on the Eastern Shore of Virginia, and global climate change studies at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York City.

The program begins with an introductory lecture series aimed at current popular Earth system science topics. Students will be expected to participate in the introductory lecture series, and produce final oral and written reports on their summer research activities at the end of the program.

In addition to the standard summer internships, two positions will be made available to interested doctoral students who require large-scale numerical modeling on massively parallel architectures for their dissertation research in Earth system science. Selected participants will be awarded a short-term summer internship to acquire hands-on training with the super computers housed at GSFC. Supercomputers include a 416-processor Compaq, a 1360-processor Cray T3E, a 512-processor SGI Origin 3000, numerous middle-sized supercomputing platforms, and several Beowulf-class systems.

Application Requirements
The program is open to students enrolled in accredited U.S. graduate programs in the Earth, physical or biological sciences, mathematics, or engineering disciplines. Preference will be given to students who have completed at least one year of graduate study.

Students must commit for the full ten-week period (June 5 - August 11, 2006). Participants must be either U.S. citizens or foreign nationals in U.S. schools who are either permanent residents or who possess a valid F1 or J1 visa. All selected students will be subject to a pre-employment security background check under the current security guidelines.

Please download and complete the 2005 GSSP application form: 2006_GSSP_Application.doc (72 kb) or