Howard University Receives $5 million From NASA

Howard University was selected as one of seven minority institutions to receive NASA's Minority University Research and Education Program grant...

The Howard University Beltsville Campus will benefit from this grant, which amounts to $1 million per year for five years for each participating institution. The goal of NASA's education program is to establish significant, multi-disciplinary scientific, engineering and commercial research centers at the host universities that contribute substantially to NASA programs. With this grant, NASA plans to increase the number of underrepresented minorities who obtain advance degrees in science related fields.

 Everette Joseph, associate professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy

The Howard University Beltsville Campus will benefit from this grant, which amounts to $1 million per year for five years for each participating institution. The goal of NASA's education program is to establish significant, multi-disciplinary scientific, engineering and commercial research centers at the host universities that contribute substantially to NASA programs. With this grant, NASA plans to increase the number of underrepresented minorities who obtain advance degrees in science related fields.

“This grant helps Howard to better prepare our students to become acknowledged leaders in the field,” said Everette Joseph, associate professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy and principal investigator for the NASA grant. "It also allows us to continue to build an internationally recognized program engaged in leading research for solutions to important environmental challenges facing society."

The center will play an immense role in helping Howard’s unique program to make sustainable research contributions that are valuable to NASA Science Mission Directorate’s (SMD) long-term goals, and help provide a diverse well-qualified workforce to achieve those goals. The goals of the center include improving weather, climate, and air quality prediction and analysis through collaborative research in atmospheric observations with NASA and producing more minority Ph.D.s in the science fields. Students will be engaged in cutting-edge weather and climate discovery through the application of state-of-the-art atmospheric observing systems and analytical methods. In addition to impacting the diversity of the atmospheric sciences workforce, the center will also contribute to national and international climate monitoring programs and networks designed to provide authoritative evidence of climate change.

The other colleges and universities selected to receive the minority university research grant from NASA consist of California State University, Florida International University, Morgan State University, Prairie View A&M University, Texas Southern University, and University of Puerto Rico.

For more information about the awards, visit http://mured.nasaprs.com.

Howard University Beltsville Center for Climate System Observation
The development of a research center for climate system observation at the Howard University Beltsville Campus is proposed in response to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration solicitation for a Group 4 University Research Center (URC). The new research center builds upon existing research, infrastructure, and NASA and NOAA collaboration that have been established at the Howard UniversityBeltsville Campus through extramurally funded programs.

Howard University is one of 48 U.S. private, Doctoral/Research-Extensive universities and comprises 12 schools and colleges. Founded in 1867, students pursue studies in more than 120 areas leading to undergraduate, graduate and professional degrees. Since 1998, the University has produced two Rhodes Scholars, a Truman Scholar, 19 Fulbright Scholars and 10 Pickering Fellows. Howard also produces more on-campus African- American Ph.D.s than any other university in the world. For more information about Howard University, call 202-238-2330, or visit the University’s Web site at www.Howard.edu.