Research takes Cornell students to the edge of space -- and to Santa Fe

By Thomas Oberst

The air is aglow hundreds of miles above the Earth, and Mike Kelley, a professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) at Cornell, is taking pictures. He is using remotely operated ground-based digital cameras, two of which are looking up from atop Haleakala volcano on the island of Maui, Hawaii. The third recently returned home from the Greek island of Milos and will soon journey to Peru. He calls them "airglow cameras" because they are taking snapshots of airglow, the faint luminescence of ionospheric plasma in the outer region of the Earth's atmosphere.

Undergraduate Cornell researchers in electrical and computer engineering, from left, Sharene Williams '06, Talia Kohen '06 and Ankur Moitra '07 pose in 596 Rhodes Hall in front of a 2D Doppler colorscaled image of airglow. Robert Barker/University Photography

Pictures of airglow reveal turbulent structure in the ionosphere, which can disrupt signals from satellites, such as those used for communication and Global Positioning System navigation. Kelley calls this "space weather," and eventually he hopes to be able to predict it.

To help run the high-tech cameras, along with graduate students Pamela Loughmiller and Mike Nicolls, Kelley has enlisted the help of ECE undergraduate students Can Erdogan '06 from Turkey, Talia Kohen '06 from New York City, Ankur Moitra '07 from Massachusetts and Sharene Williams '06 from Florida -- a group he handpicked from his classrooms and that he affectionately calls the "airglow team."

Unlike most Cornell undergraduates who do research for only one or two summers and switch research groups in between, Erdogan, Kohen, Moitra and Williams will stay together on the airglow team and work for Kelley until they graduate. They are the second such team since Kelley came up with this novel concept eight years ago as a way to give freshmen the opportunity to stick together long enough to find a niche and form close personal and professional relationships. The idea, Kelley said, is to emphasize teamwork over textbooks and lectures, which is what today's employers are looking for.

Earlier this summer, airglow team members were hard at work in Rhodes Hall sifting through data from the cameras. But from June 27 to July 2, they took a break from studying weather at the edge of space to travel to the Coupling, Energetics and Dynamics of Atmospheric Regions (CEDAR) annual meeting in Santa Fe, N.M. The students attended a workshop, where they had the opportunity to learn about new atmospheric science research -- as well as to get tips about graduate studies and finding a job.

At the workshop, Kohen presented a poster on her fourier analysis (a mathematical method of breaking down waves) of images from one of the airglow cameras in Hawaii called the Cornell Narrow Field Imager.

"She started at the beginning of June, and now she's got something she can defend," said Kelley. "I'm very impressed with these kids."

Said Kohen, "I enjoy working for Kelley because he likes to give you challenging projects."

Erdogan has been using airglow images to study stable auroral red arcs (similar to the northern and southern lights, except they emit a barely visible faint red glow that can stretch across the entire sky at lower latitudes). "I was able to meet all the top people of the field whose articles I have been reading," he exclaimed. "I saw results corresponding with my research that made me realize what I'm doing is worthwhile."

The four undergraduates agree that one of the most impressive events of the weekend was a dinner for all the Cornell professors, alumni, postdoctoral researchers, graduates and undergraduates attending the CEDAR meeting. Moitra described it as being like "a huge family gathering with great-great-grandchildren."

When Erdogan, Kohen and Williams graduate in 2006, the team will finally part ways to take paths beyond the study of airglow: Erdogan is thinking about a graduate degree in engineering as well as getting his MBA; Moitra plans to be a lawyer; Williams would like to get her Ph.D. and become an engineering professor; and Kohen wants to attend law school and become involved with Israeli politics.