A recent article from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel highlights a project of an alum of the MRSEC Research Experience for Teachers (RET) program. Lalitha Murali is one of a handful of teachers selected to participate in the NASA/ Wisconsin Space Grant Consortium, Embedded Teacher Program in collaboration with the International Space Station National Lab and the Zero Gravity Corporation.
From the article: “In a few weeks, a Glen Hills Middle School teacher will spend 11 minutes in zero gravity with NASA to conduct an experiment she and her students designed.”
Murali was a participant in the MRSEC RET program in the summer of 2022. Her experiences during that program catalyzed her ongoing work to bring research experiences to her students in the Milwaukee Public School system.
A documentary is being made about her students’ experiences and will feature the mentoring program on which her students are collaborating with Professor Jason Kawasaki’s lab. The film crew was on campus this past summer to film students with Kawasaki and his team.
MRSEC Assistant Director of Education and Outreach, Shelly Grandell, has been working with the Space Foundation to have the film clips screened during the annual Space Symposium in Colorado Springs, CO in April. The production team and Murali will participate in a Q&A session at the symposium, while all of her students that worked on developing the experiment will stream live during the event from a news station in Milwaukee.
Murali was also just accepted into the Space Foundation Teacher Liaison Program as a new inductee.
For more information about the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article or Murali’s projects, contact Grandell at sgrandell@wisc.edu.