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The Office of Sponsored Programs is proud to announce that the following Carthage faculty have each been awarded significant research fellowships in the current Wisconsin Space Grant Consortium (WSGC) funding cycle.

Lisa Anderson-Antle has been awarded a $10,000 grant under the WSGC Research Infrastructure Program to carry out work under her proposal “Effects of Photobiomodulation in Osteoclast-Formation in Vitro.” Her grant will fund summer research students at Carthage and will continue an existing line of research with which she has been involved for several years. Lisa has a long history with both NASA and WSGC and the WSGC Team is thrilled that her work can continue with the involvement of Carthage students.

Brant Carlson was awarded a $6,000 grant under the WSGC NASA Team Project Program to partially support his work with ten students who have been selected to participate in the Colorado Space Grant Consortium’s RockSat-X program. Brant and his students have been working all year on designing and building a sounding rocket payload for launch on a two-stage suborbital rocket in August at NASA Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. The project will make measurements of atmospheric lightening from the upper atmosphere and space. This will be the first time that Carthage has participated in the RockSat-X program (Carthage has been involved in RockSat-C for many years) and will confront the students with the challenges of designing a space payload that must handle the vacuum and radiation environment of space, as well as the re-entry heat associated with a high-velocity return to earth. What a challenge!

Andrea Henle receives a $10,000 grant under the WSGC Research Infrastructure Program for her proposal entitled “Isolation and Analysis of Bacteroiophage Aboard the International Space Station.” Andrea’s work will fund Carthage students to work over the summer and travel to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA to work with a collaborator as they develop protocols to search for bacteriophage in samples returned from the International Space Station. Andrea’s work could eventually be incorporated into the highly successful “phage” introductory biology curriculum and may lead to some big surprises - this is the first comprehensive effort to identify bacteriophage in samples taken from a space environment. Carthage is very excited to see where this project leads and we expect that it will be an extremely rewarding experience for the students.

These WSGC programs are highly competitive and each proposal is reviewed by a technical advisory panel comprised of faculty and administrators from around the state. As Dr. Kevin Crosby nicely states, “These Carthage faculty performed so well is a testament to the strength we’re building in the sciences and beyond. If you see Lisa, Andrea, or Brant, please congratulate them on their work!”

Finally, on the WSGC front, Carthage student Tessa Rundle ’16 will accompany Dr. Kevin Crosby and Christine Thompson to Capitol Hill later this month. Tessa will meet with our eight state congressional offices and two senators. Together, they will speak on behalf of the National Space Grant Program and ask for renewed congressional support of the Space Grant program in the 2017 budget deliberations. Tessa will describe the impact Space Grant programs have had on her life and career direction, and she will discuss some of the opportunities she’s had because of Space Grant funding. In addition, Tessa will receive Hill-visit training from the National Space Grant Alliance partners.