KIP Newsblog

Day: April 3, 2018

KIP Students and Faculty Receive Michigan Space Grant Consortium Awards

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Ian GreenlundGraduate students Ian Greenlund (Bio Sci/KIP) and Kevin Phillips (KIP) along with KIP faculty member Steven Elmer were among the 2018-19 recipients of the Michigan Space Grant Consortium (MSGC) Awards.  Greenlund and Phillips each received $5,000 research fellowships while Elmer received a $5,000 pre-college education grant.

Ian will work with Jason Carter on his project entitled, “Sleep in Space: Sleep Restriction, Neurovascular Control, and Orthostatic Intolerance.”  This project aims to compare nervous and cardiovascular responses between chronically sleep restricted individuals (most college students) and normal sleep individuals.  This will provide potential insight to how proper sleep may impact orthostatic challenges like standing, which is a problem for astronauts post-spaceflight.

Phillips
Kevin’s project entitled, “Cold Water Therapy as a Recovery Intervention during Spaceflight Operations” will focus on how cold water immersion may improve performance and its effect on the brain. Specifically, Kevin is examining how the prefrontal cortex responds to fatiguing exercise following cold water immersion.  He will work with Steven Elmer and Tejin Yoon on this project.
In addition to the two students, Assistant Professor, Steven Elmer was awarded $5,000 for pre-college education with his project entitled, “Introducing Space Medicine to High School Students in the Upper Peninsula”.  Elmer’s abstract states, “Our objective is to implement space medicine activities as part of existing regional, national, and international educational outreach events to highlight the integration of Health Science and STEM (H-STEM).  Through the construction of 3-D physical models, calculations/graphing, exercise, demonstrations, and teamwork, high school students will learn how astronauts live, move, and work in space.”  KIP Academic Advisor, Kathy Carter, and Portage Health Foundation Endowed Professor, William Cooke, will assist Elmer with this project.
MSGC provides funding opportunities each year for undergraduate and graduate fellowships, research seed grants, pre-college education, teacher training, and public outreach pertaining to space-related science and technology in an effort to support their vision and mission to “foster awareness of, education in, and research on space-related science and technology in Michigan.”
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