The New York Space Grant Consortium has been awarded $99,421 by NASA in one-year funding to help train and prepare the space agency's future workforce. The NASA award, one of 45 made nationally, is aimed at strengthening the collaboration between academia and space research and engineering companies in the state.

Cornell University is the lead institution in the New York consortium, a group of 14 institutions in New York state whose goal is to enhance education and research in space-related fields. Yervant Terzian, the David C. Duncan Professor in the Physical Sciences at Cornell, is the group's director.

The New York consortium's proposal to NASA was fully funded as submitted by Terzian. The proposal noted that space industry and geo-spatial research require a significant increase in the workforce, and proposed using the extensive network of scientists, engineers and science teachers in New York state to recruit and train students in colleges and universities, science centers and in industry.

The NASA Space Grant College and Fellowship program was created by Congress in 1988 and today consists of consortia in every state plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. In its latest round of funding, NASA selected 45 state consortia to receive a total of $3.56 million for aerospace workforce development. The awards ranged from $20,000 to $100,000 and averaged approximately $78,000.

The space agency said the winning proposals were selected based on a competitive evaluation of their plans to enlarge and enhance the resource pool of higher education graduates and faculty members who stay connected to or become involved with NASA as employees, contractors or principal investigators.

"These awards will allow Space Grant to continue its work of attracting talented individuals who are qualified and trained to make significant contributions to the NASA mission," said Frank Owens, director of NASA's Education Division. In his proposal to NASA, Terzian said the New York consortium's proposal for workforce development in the state has four components:

• A summer 2003 undergraduate research program at the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.
• NASA-related undergraduate research programs in the state.
• The Cubesat/Student Satellite Project, which is a national program to bring together universities, industry and government to develop a network of student-built and – operated satellite programs.
• The Midatlantic Regional Collaboration/NASA/Raytheon Synergy Project: This program will characterize the landscape of the Chesapeake Bay watershed and Mid-Atlantic region using Landsat 7 satellite imagery.

Other affiliates of the New York consortium are Barnard College, City College of the City University of New York, Clarkson University, Colgate University, Columbia University, Lockheed Martin Systems Integration-Owego, Manhattan College, Polytechnic University, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Ithaca Sciencenter, SUNY Buffalo, SUNY Geneseo and Syracuse University.