Wisconsin Space Conference: Highlights, photos

The 24th Annual Wisconsin Space Conference, hosted by the BioPharmaceutical Technology Center Institute in Fitchburg, Wis. on Aug. 15, featured dozens of presentations on topics ranging from granular dynamics to promoting women in physics and astronomy through a Distinguished Lecture series at UW-La Crosse.

More than 100 participants attended the conference from affiliate institutions across the state.

Keynote Speaker Jeff Johnson gave an introduction to the significant players and vehicles in the commercial space arena. Mr. Johnson, human support deputy manager at Orbital Technologies Corporation (ORBITEC, Madison, Wis.), is currently a program manager for Sierra Nevada’s Dream Chaser, where he oversees Environmental Control & Life Support Systems (ECLSS).

Conference highlights included a presentation by the Elijah High Altitude balloon Payload Team; the crowd-pleasing video presentation, The Granular Flow Zone, by Marquette Engineering students David and Nathaniel Helminiak; and a talk on the Simpson Street Free Press Space Sciences efforts by students McKenna Kohlenberg, Taylor Kilgore, Ali Khan, and Lucy Ji.

The Undergraduate Student Poster Competition was won by Carthage College students Eric Ireland and Daisy Bower, for their poster, Microgravity Propellant Gauging Using Modal Analysis.

The Graduate Poster Competition was won by Brian Harvey of UW-Madison, for his poster, Burn me Twice, Shame on Who? Testing for Wildfire Feedbacks in Forests of the US Northern Rocky Mountains. 

Poster Competition winners will be invited to attend and present their work at the Great Midwestern Regional Space Grant meeting in DesMoines, Iowa.