Massachusetts Life Sciences Center (MLSC) is to expand the STEM workforce pipeline -- and an important element of our strategy is to promote excitement about STEM among students at the middle school level. In this spirit, the MLSC is pleased to announce the Space Station STEM Challenge - an exciting new grant opportunity for Massachusetts middle schools!
In partnership with the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS), the MLSC's new grant will enable students to compete for resources to send a life sciences research experiment of their design to the International Space Station (ISS) U.S. National Laboratory. The competition is modeled on the CASIS National Design Challenge, a research competition that facilitates authentic student research and experiment design with selected experiments being sent to the ISS.
The MLSC's new Space Station STEM Challenge competition will run parallel to our previously announced Galactic Grant Competition, which enables life sciences companies in Massachusetts to compete for up to $500,000 to fly commercial experiments to the ISS. As a reminder, the deadline for Galactic Grant applications is coming up on Thursday, April 30th.
The MLSC will utilize the STEM platform provided by CASIS to facilitate the Space Station STEM Challenge for middle school students. Teams of students will compete to design, build, and send original research experiments to the ISS in the spring of 2016. The student research projects will spend approximately 30 days on the ISS. Afterwards, data from the experiments will be retrieved and returned for the student teams to analyze and compare to their ground-based experiments.
CASIS will select one winning flight-based project from competing Massachusetts middle schools, along with one runner up. The runner up team will be awarded funding for a ground-based project. The winning team will receive a flight-based NanoLab, and a grant in the amount of $6,000 to purchase materials to support the experiments. CASIS and its industry partners will provide technical workshops and support in designing and implementing the experiment as well as transporting it to and from the ISS. The runner up team will receive an award in the amount of $5,000 to purchase materials for one ground-based experiment and to assist other activities in support of the flight project.
Eligibility criteria are provided in the grant solicitation. The application period for the competition will be open May 8, 2015 - June 5, 2015. Projects will be selected by June 22, 2015 and the winners will be announced at the annual ISS Research and Development Conference in Boston on July 7, 2015 at the Boston Marriott Copley Place.
To learn more, please visit our website: www.masslifesciences.com/programs/space-station-stem-challenge
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