Research, Education, and Outreach in the NASA MIRO FIELDS Program

Fellowships and Internships in Extremely Large Data Sets (FIELDS), a five-year NASA program, aims to train underrepresented minority students in STEM fields to prepare the workforce essential for future NASA missions. Based at University of California, Riverside (UCR), the FIELDS program develops research, education, training, and collaborative opportunities in big data and visualization for students and scholars ranging from high school to postdoctoral levels. These include supporting high-school students to attend summer-session STEM courses at UCR, providing undergraduates with summer internship opportunities at JPL/IPAC, implementing an online Master-level Data Science course at UCR, offering fellowships to graduate students to conduct research involving large data sets, and recruiting postdoctoral scholars to work between UCR and JPL/IPAC to strengthen collaborations. The collaboration among undergraduates, graduate students, and postdoctoral scholars has led to the development of the latest technology, including Virtual Reality, Machine Learning, and computer simulations, which could be beneficial for both education and research purposes. The FIELDS program also actively engages in public outreach, with multiple programs specifically designed to target Spanish-speaking audience. By organizing classroom visits, telescope viewings, science talks, and public exhibitions, the FIELDS program hopes to foster interest and improve science literacy of the public in the Riverside County.