The GEMS Spring/Summer 2007 & 2008 programs take place at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) on the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign campus. The 2008 program consists of five evening sessions April-June and a week-long day camp June 30 - July 3. Approximately 40 girls, aged 11-14 and drawn from a wide range of local schools, will be attending the sessions.
The primary focus of the program is an exploration of the content and large-scale structure of the Universe using electronic data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and NASA. Over the course of the GEMS program, the girls acquire a number of computational data tools, which enable them to make their own multi-color images of galaxies and supernovae, measure the colors of stars and quasars, identify a large range of objects in the astronomical “zoo”, detect asteroids and black holes, and even measure the expansion of the Universe!
Each day during the summer session, the program hosts a professional female scientist for a short talk and Q&A session. The list of previously invited speakers included highly accomplished female astronomers and physicists from the University of Illinois, as well as others who joined us via video uplink from as far away as Australia!
The GEMS Digital Astronomy program was designed and led by UIUC graduate student Britt Lundgren, UIUC postdoctoral researcher Dr. Brian Wilhite, and past and present UIUC undergraduates Kate Grier and Jenny Ginter. Funding was provided by NASA as part of a research grant to P.I. Professor Robert Brunner, UIUC Department of Astronomy. Additional support from the NCSA staff was provided by Edee Wiziecki, Pam Joop, and Gowri Kannan.
Girls Engaged in Math and Science (GEMS)
Spring/Summer 2008:
Exploring the Universe with Digital Astronomy
GEMS has partnered with the Department of Astronomy at UIUC for 2007-2008!