Whether it’s launching rockets from the world’s northernmost settlement, exploring the potential of fusion as a future power source or building hardware for satellites that will orbit Mars, the Space and Atmospheric Instrumentation Lab (SAIL) offers opportunities for students to get their hands on the future — literally. “SAIL is one of the most research-rich laboratories on the Embry-Riddle campus,” said Dr. Aroh Barjatya, professor of Engineering Physics and the lab’s founder and director. “Hard-working, capable and bright students have an opportunity to either join the ongoing research or propose their own.” SAIL was started in 2007 when Dr. Barjatya arrived at the university, and its mission was to give students pursuing degrees in Engineering Physics, Space Physics, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering and Aerospace Engineering a place to do hands-on research work and get the practical experience that today’s top flight employers are looking for. “Dr. Barjatya has built a world-class lab in space and atmospheric research,” said Dr. Peter Hoffmann, dean and professor of Physics at the College of Arts & Sciences. “The most impressive and important feature is how student-driven it is. Students design, build and deploy the hardware around the world to do cutting-edge research. This is a prime example of how Embry-Riddle and the College of Arts & Sciences provide opportunities for students that would be difficult to find anywhere else.” The lab, located in the College of Arts & Sciences building, has since grown to include two more faculty members, Dr. Jeremy Riousset and Dr. Byonghoon Seo, along with Research Scientists Dr. Robert Clayton and Dr. Shantanab Debchoudhury. SAIL has a long history of research and engineering milestones that have helped students land rewarding careers with stellar employers that include Google, Lockheed Martin, the Goddard Space Flight Center and MIT’s Lincoln Labs, to name a few. The lab’s full suite of equipment and facilities also allows students to pursue research in a variety of ground-based vacuum and plasma chambers or onboard many different types of high-altitude balloons, suborbital sounding rockets and orbital satellites. “We have opportunities for doing plasma physics modeling or atmospheric physics modeling, as well as a large dataset from past missions to pursue unanswered science questions related to terrestrial weather and space weather phenomenon,” Dr. Barjatya added. For those students who arrive at Embry-Riddle within the next two years, the SAIL schedule is already packed with opportunities for research and fieldwork that would not be available to undergraduates at any other school.
Just within the past two years, SAIL students have been involved in pioneering projects that have included: Two recent NASA sounding rocket launches, one in far-north Ny Ålesund, Norway, and another at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. Using a $670,000 federal grant to research technology that could make thermonuclear fusion power generation economically viable. Building, calibrating and configuring instruments for CubeSats under an international collaboration with the University of Chile, with the CubeSats launched into Earth orbit by SpaceX last year. Developing hardware for the ESCAPADE spacecraft, which are scheduled to explore the Martian atmosphere in 2026.
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