Chelen Johnson
Luminous Data Miners: Using ultraviolet images from the Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) satellite and infrared images from the Spitzer Space Telescope to find a correlation between the color and luminosity of gas emission and dust emission around supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies.
I kept wishing this program had been available when I was a kid. Wanting to be a scientist, I had no role model or support and never pursued it.
NITARP is without a doubt one of the two most valuable pieces of professional development work I have done in 25 years of teaching, and by far the most rewarding content-related work. I think that what you are doing is really unusual and valuable.
This experience has reinforced to me the importance of learning science by doing science.