A $15,000 gift from the Liberty Mutual Foundation made it possible for disadvantaged students to take part in UNH’s Project SMART, a summer residential program for high school students that celebrated its 20^th anniversary this year. The grant from the foundation provided tuition assistance for high-achieving students who might not otherwise have the opportunity to take part in the innovative program. This is the second consecutive year the foundation has provided this support.

Project SMART is designed to help spur upper-class high school students into careers in science and mathematics. Students work with faculty in three disciplinary modules—space science, marine and environmental science, and bio- and nanotechnology.

One student group made history sorts when its one-of-a-kind reentry vehicle, built from Styrofoam and corrugated cardboard, fell back to Earth without aid of a parachute following a 15-minute balloon ride up to 100,000 feet – the edge of outer space. The dish-shaped “Ulysses” vehicle carried a payload of a miniscule Geiger counter, two temperature sensors, and two video cameras about the size of a pack of gum. During the flight, students obtained real-time measurements of changing levels of cosmic rays and atmospheric temperatures.

Unfortunately, the experimental vehicle got caught in a 120-mile-per-hour jet stream and landed 90 miles from the Plymouth launch site in the ocean near the Isles of Shoals off of Portsmouth. Had the cameras not ended up in the drink, video images would have shown the balloon bursting under pressure at 100,000 feet, the curvature of the Earth, and the blackness of outer space.

Subhash Minocha, director of Project SMART and UNH professor of plant biology and genetics says this year’s summer institute provided the opportunity for 44 students to learn the interdisciplinary nature of the various scientific fields and how math and computers converge with scientific research.

Noting that student diversity and broad representation has become a major goal over the past three years and, as a result, he says this summer’s crop “was one of the most diverse ever in terms of geographic, ethnic, racial, and economic backgrounds, thanks to financial support from Liberty Mutual and the NH EPSCoR program, which is supported by the National Science Foundation.” Attendees included 16 New Hampshire students, nine from other New England states, 13 from around the country, and six international students.

Megan McLaurin, a rising junior from Londonderry High School, analyzed data from the Ulysses spacecraft to study the effects of atoms or “pick-up ions” that enter our solar system and get ionized by the solar wind. The Project SMART experience helped McLaurin, who attended a science camp at MIT last summer, reinforce her desire to pursue a research career in astrophysics, potentially beginning at UNH in two years. The balloon experiment, she says, provided some very real-world, hands-on science. “You don’t always get the results you hope for,” she says. “We worked really hard for a good three weeks only to have the payload land in the ocean, which was disappointing. But we did recover all the science data.”