CEDAR email: Aeronomy Citizen-Science Instructors and Proposals Sought

[Jason Reimuller]

Dear CEDAR Community,

We invite your participation in aeronomy citizen-science. The International
Institute for Astronautical Sciences (IIAS) is a 501c3 research and
education institution that hosts Project PoSSUM (Polar Suborbital Science
in the Upper Mesosphere), an aeronomy citizen-science organization
incorporated in 2012 that uses the inspirational power of human spaceflight
to educate and inspire new students to become involved in aeronomy.

Our research is generally funded through private sources and subsidies
through our partner organizations including the Canadian Space Agency, the
National Research Council, and other institutions in the US and Canada. We
can generally support campaigns up to about $100K through sponsorships,
media, and tuition. We currently have students that have attended IIAS from
46 different countries and we seek to leverage the highly-public and
international nature of our program to serve our aeronomy and CEDAR
community through science education and public outreach.

In our aeronomy concentration, we presently offer three courses: AER 101
(Space Environment), AER 102 (Mesospheric Modeling) and AER 103 (Remote
Sensing of the Mesosphere). AER 103 has involved ground and aircraft
observations of noctilucent cloud structures where students have trained
and deployed. Here, members have flown with the Canadian Air Force and
developed camera hardware for the NASA PMC-Turbo mission. It is this type
of hands-on fieldwork that we have found effective in best engaging our
students.

We are actively seeking to expand our aeronomy program and we invite
members of the CEDAR community that might be interested in becoming
involved with IIAS do so by one of the following ways:

1. Proposing a field research campaign either individually or in
partnership with your institution. Please consider field research campaigns
with maximum student involvement which might also incorporate their own
design opportunities. Lidar operations opportunities as well as low-cost
balloon and/or aircraft experiments are examples of campaigns that can be
supported in our program.

2. Proposing a distance-education course that you think might enable novel
and publishable citizen-science research. For consideration, we would
require a bio and a draft syllabus. Courses are typically taught at the
upper-division level and IIAS is presently in the process of accreditation.

3. Volunteering to share your professional experience through an interview
in one of our recurring public webinars so that our members and the general
public may keep informed about the state of current research activities in
aeronomy.

We are very international and socially engaged; our institute is actively
involved in science outreach programs including the ‘PoSSUM 13’ (to provide
international contests and positive representation for women in STEM), ‘Out
Astronaut’ (providing international contests and positive representation
for LGBTQ+ in STEM) and ‘Space for all Nations’ (engaging and creating STEM
outreach ventures in emerging space nations). All members are invited to
participate in any of these ventures.

More about IIAS may be found at astronauticsinstitute.org. Our instructors
are contracted individually and maintain all copyrights of instructional
materials. For consideration of a course or research campaign, please
contact Dr. Jason Reimuller at Jason.Reimuller at projectpossum.org. To
volunteer to share your work in a webinar, please contact Mr. Adrien
Mauduit at Adrien.Mauduit at projectpossum.org.


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Jason D. Reimuller, Ph.D.
Executive Director, International Institute of Astronautical Sciences
Office: (720) 352-3227
Jason.Reimuller at integratedspaceflight.com
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