BGU's She Space, a first-of-its-kind educational project to encourage high school girls to pursue STEM education and eventually careers in space research, hosted an internet seminar in mid-July to mark the end of the program's first year of international programming.
The program, named in memory of Deborah Blumberg, was founded in 2018 by Dr. Shimrit Maman, research associate and director of BGU's Earth and Planetary Image Facility (EPIF). The program's goals are to engage high school-age female students from southern Israel in STEM research and encourage them to pursue academic study and careers in space research. The collaborative effort between EPIF and Beit Yatziv, was funded with assistance from the Israel Space Agency, an arm of the Ministry of Science and Technology. She Space expanded internationally this year, including groups from Germany (DLR School Lab Oberpfaffenhofen), the United States (Aerosol Group at Texas Tech University) and Brazil (Rural Federal University of Pernambuco) (pictured above)
Two dozen young women from around the globe learned about advanced remote sensing and image analysis techniques, and also gained first-hand experience working together with research teams from around the world.
"We thought that forming this project just for a small group of girls from Israel would be a terrific experience, and it certainly was. The hands-on experience of using satellite technology and the challenges of collaborating with research teams around the world created a sense of purpose and camaraderie for all the students and mentors involved. It has been an inspiration and a privilege to be a part of that process," says Dr. Maman.
The all-female pilot project lasted just under three months and served to lay the groundwork for longer, more involved programs. Each group worked with imagery (or data) provided by a satellite managed by that county's space agency. The German team worked with images from Sentinel-2, a satellite managed by the European Space Agency (ESA); the U.S. team worked with LandSat-8 images, from a long series of satellites jointly managed by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS); the Brazilian team worked with data from communication satellites managed by the Brazilian Space Agency (AEB); and the Israeli team used images from the satellite VENµS, a joint French-Israeli research satellite managed by the Israeli Space Agency (ISA) together with the French (CNES).
Simonetta Di Pippo, Director of the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs Director (UNOOSA) congratulated the participants and encouraged them to continue to dream and pursue careers in academia and in space research.
Each country was able to independently develop their research idea and plan related to the local environment and available satellite data from the national space agency. Dr. Lonia Friedlander led the Israeli team of students who were also individually mentored on their research by Shiran Havivi, Inbal Ronay, and Chen Meged of the EPIF team. Tobias Schuettler with Andrea (Lisa) Nagel led the DLR student team; Dr. Karin Ardon-Dryer led the Texas Tech team; The RFUP team in Brazil was led by Prof. Rodrigo Eiji Hakamada.
The up-and-coming scientists also worked on research questions specific to their local environments and to the data provided by their satellites. The Israeli students used VENµS images over the Sea of Gallilee (Kinneret), Beer-Sheva, and Ashdod to answer questions about water quality and quantity in Israel and its effect on plant health throughout the country.
After a short and intensive period, all of the students presented their preliminary results for presentation to one another – a learning experience that also included exposure to the limitations of video conferencing in academic research (see figure 1). These included the occasional technical glitch or missed word, but ultimately every group successfully presented their results in the true style of a large international scientific collaboration.
