Columbia Space Initiative
Co-Director of Outreach and Operations for Columbia Space Initiative
Columbia News – https://news.columbia.edu/news/astronomy-zines-columbia-has-club-you
How do bacteria mutate in microgravity? A team of student Columbia Space Initiative members will launch experiments into space later this year to find out as part of NASA’s Stem on Station mission. The project is one of eight ambitious “missions” undertaken each year by CSI members—from launching payloads (including a plush Roaree) into space to developing tools to collect samples from the Moon and Mars.
“Everybody needs to find a place called home on campus, and CSI has been that for me,” says co-director of outreach and operations Theo Nelson, CC’24. “Students go after solutions to what seem like impossible challenges with creativity, passion, and humility.” Founded in 2015, the club sits within Columbia Engineering and is advised by Michael Massimino, Ioannis Kymissis, and David Vallancourt.
Outreach Lead for Columbia Space Initiative’s SPOCS (Student Payload Opportunity With Citizen Science)
“It is the opportunity to perform independent research among a group of peers that really crystallizes what it means to be a research scientist.”
Theodore Nelson – https://cs.barnard.edu/news/studying-antibiotic-resistance-space-nasa
Theo Nelson, a team member who serves as the organization’s Outreach Lead and Protocol Biologist, summarized the experiment by saying, “We hope to contribute significantly to current understanding of bacterial transcriptomics in microgravity environments with extensive RNA sequencing, given that there are fewer than five comparable pre-existing datasets for any and all bacteria. We will be able to hypothesize the new rules of the road for these bacteria in space.” – Columbia Engineering Outreach Press Release
“We hope to contribute significantly to the impact of microgravity environments on bacterial genomes, given that there are fewer than five comparable pre-existing datasets for any and all bacteria,” said Theo Nelson ’24CC, a team member who serves as both outreach lead and protocol biologist. “We will be able to hypothesize the new rules of the road for these bacteria in space.” – Columbia Engineering Press Release
Briefing on Research Launching to Space Station for SpaceX-24 – NASA TV: https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-invites-media-to-briefing-on-research-launching-to-space-station
Theo Nelson, outreach lead and protocol biologist at Columbia, points out that space radiation can cause increased mutation rates in bacteria, and the emergence of strains resistant to antibiotics pose a potential threat to future long-term space missions. “These bacteria are present in our bodies, so it is impossible to eliminate this threat with containment,” Nelson says. “Our investigation, Characterizing Antibiotic Resistance in Microgravity Environments, or CARMEn, aims to characterize the basic biology of a particular combination of bacteria and improve our understanding of how microgravity impacts the ability of these strains to cause disease individually and in combination.” – NASA SpaceX-24 Research Highlights
Columbia Space Initiative Panel: Swati Ravi, Theodore Nelson, Alfonso Ussia, and Gaurav Kulkarni! – IgnitedThinkers
Protocol Biologist for Columbia Space Initiative’s SPOCS (Student Payload Opportunity With Citizen Science)
https://columbiaspocs.weebly.com/
Team Press: https://nasa.tumblr.com/post/637497515582816256/get-to-know-the-5-college-teams-sending-their
Shout-out on “Houston We Have a Podcast” Episode 201: https://www.nasa.gov/johnson/HWHAP/citizen-science-on-station
“Hugo Favila: Yeah, and then our second mini project is aimed towards high schoolers. And it’s a bioinformatics type of project. And the person that spearheaded that, Theo [Nelson], who is actually a freshman on our team, he’s been putting together these really great tutorials. And they’re — just to show you how great they are, he’s actually using them to teach people in his lab some cool stuff about bioinformatics. So, the kids are going to be getting some good content out of that.”
Space Science and Exploration with Columbia Space Initiative
SPOCS – Columbia Tides
2/14/21
1:00 – 1:50 p.m. EST
ZOOM
From Apollo to Artemis, humans have tried to explore our place in the universe. Recently, SpaceX launched astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley to the ISS where they safely came back down to Earth, reigniting interest in space exploration. Columbia Space Initiative, in the spirit of human exploration, would like for you, the Artemis Generation, to join us in this excitement! In this lecture series, CSI members will be presenting their student mission progress and how each of those missions relates to space and science.
Columbia University Educational Outreach Profile – https://columbia.learningu.org/teach/teachers/TheoN/bio.html