Space Day @ Western 2017 summary
Space Day @ Western was celebrated for 2017 on Wednesday, April 6.
It was a long eventful day full of energy and activity.
During the morning, two sections of Gordon Osinski's class presented their poster papers in the Physics and Astronomy atrium. These were judged by a select panel of graduate students and faculty members.
Visiting keynote speaker, Dr. Bernard Foing of the European Space Agency, strolled amongst the undergraduates and took a great interest in their projects. The students, some of whom had cited Dr. Foing in their research results, were thrilled by his presence.
After lunch, the afternoon began with the graduate students displaying their poster papers. Dr. Foing also seemed to enjoy chatting to this group about their own research.
Following this everyone adjourned to PAB100 where the oral presentations were conducted.
Prior to the talks, Gordon Osinski welcomed everyone and also made a surprise presentation of volunteer appreciation certificates to students Elise Harrington, Sarah Simpson, Matthew Svensson, Derek King, and Danny Bednar.
The talks by local students and researchers went as follows:
- Liam Innis and Matthew Svensson spoke on a High Altitude Balloon research proposal
- Zachary Morse and Derek King spoke on the topic of a farming robot.
- Postdoctoral Fellow Matt Cross spoke on a proposed research program to locally develop cube-sats and nano-sats.
Keynote speaker Dr. Bernard Foing of the European Space Agency gave a talk titled, "European Space Agency (ESA) Research and Moon Village Initiative". Bernard Foing was introduced by Faculty of Science Associate VP of Research Mark Daley.
A reception followed, during which Adjunct Professor in Earth Sciences Livio Tornebene, along with grad students Jon Kissi and Gavin Tolometti gave tours of the Mars Mission Control room where they were taking part in an Mars rover photography mission.
The successful event was organized by a hard working group of volunteers led by Jennifer Thompson, Zachary Morse and Paul Weigert.
