Giovanna Guevara
Giovanna Guevara Flores is an Environmental Research Engineerstudent at HSU who interned at NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California. She hasworked there every summer from 2008 to 2010. Before attending Humboldt State she went to City College of San Francisco where she was a member of the National Institutes of Health Bridges to Baccalaureate program, which provided mentorships and research opportunities to underrepresented students in science fields. She was put in contact with Dr. Weinstein of the biologydepartment at San Francisco State University whose wife works at Ames. She knew people who were looking for interns and research assistants and was able to obtain a spot for Giovanna. Normally obtaining an intern position at NASA Ames requires a long application process with very tough competition. This proves the importance of gaining contacts and meeting people in your desired field.
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NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View photo from: http://www.thelivingmoon.com/47john_lear/02files/Lunar_Orbiter_Tapes_Found.html |
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| Photo from: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=8814 |
The Internship
In 2008 she worked for Dr. Dov Adelstein and Dr. Mary Kaiser whose team was working on human perception under vibration. NASA is moving away from using dials and physical buttons in their space crafts and instead using computer touch screen displays for their control panels. During takeoff the vibrations make reading the new control screens difficult. The team that Giovanna worked for were experimenting on different panel schemes to see which was more effective. Giovanna personally was working on device design, using soldering irons and other tools. She spent the second summer programming with the same team. She was in charge of designing software and a hardware system for analyzing the comfort of the ride based on vibrations.During the third summer she was moved back to the physical aspect of the Engineering
and worked on a device called an X-pack. This device is used to reclaim
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| Photo from: http://searchgear.com/x-packwaterfilter.aspx |
drinkable water from waste such as urine and feces. Since it costs twenty thousand dollars to send a pound of anything on a space craft, it is very important to minimize the amount of water being brought aboard.
Her Impression
Even while working with such a large team on this large of a scale, every part of the project was important and she never felt like just another face. The work atmosphere during her time at NASA was very friendly. Every time she had a question or was just curious to know about someone else’s work she was never afraid to ask. Giovanna was at first worried that everyone else working there would be incredibly intelligent and really snooty about it, luckily only the first was true.
Giovanna has made long lasting contacts through her work at Ames. She stays in contact through post cards, which she says is a very good way of making sure they remember your name if they are ever in need of an employee. Giovanna has had a very pleasant experience working at NASA Ames Research Center and would most definitely recommend it to anyone looking for an exciting internship working on devices to help travers the final frontier. In addition to all the other benefits, Giovanna was also paid for her work at NASA
The first summer she worked there she was given a stipend of two thousand dollars. The second year it was changed to fifteen dollars an hour and by the third summer she was getting paid sixteen dollars an hour.