NASA Launches the Area Tech Catalyst Prize

NASA’s Area Expertise Mission Directorate (STMD) is launching an modern technique to spice up outreach efforts, take away obstacles, and appeal to numerous concepts for revolutionary house know-how analysis and growth throughout the US. The NASA Area Tech Catalyst Prize goals to increase the community and engagement inside NASA’s Early-Stage Improvements and Partnerships (ESIP) portfolio. The prize seeks to acknowledge people and organizations that have interaction underrepresented and numerous house know-how innovators, providing $25,000 awards to a number of winners. The winners shall be invited to an in-person occasion at NASA’s Goddard Area Flight Heart, the place they’ll study trade greatest practices for fostering range within the house know-how neighborhood and about NASA’s plans and partnership potential.

Innovation & Tech At the moment spoke with Denna Lambert, the NASA inclusive innovation staff lead. As an African-American blind girl, Denna’s life work is to advocate for the underrepresented within the house know-how trade. Denna talks about her expertise working with NASA, the aim of the Area Tech Catalyst Prize, and the way inclusivity can propel larger innovation for the long run.

Innovation & Tech At the moment: Are you able to share your expertise at NASA? How has NASA promoted range all through your time there?

Denna Lambert: I went to the College of Arkansas and went by way of their enterprise program, which was nice. I received a number of actually good training and plenty of alternatives, however one of many challenges that I confronted was recruiters being not sure how it might work out hiring any individual who’s blind.

I’ve been blind since delivery. I obtained rejection letter after rejection letter, though I labored within the profession heart for a work-study. And it wasn’t a lot of my interview expertise. It was extra of simply recruiters not having that consciousness of how an individual with a incapacity could possibly be profitable in a company setting. Fortunately, I received a possibility to talk at Microsoft in 2003. NASA was there and requested if I’d be keen to maneuver outdoors Arkansas. So, I used to be employed as a contract specialist at Goddard Area Flight Heart in 2004.

The federal government, significantly NASA, has been very proactive in addressing numerous obstacles to employment and retention. NASA promotes range in a really holistic means of among the structural issues and by making our processes as clear and intuitive as attainable, but in addition within the relational side of making certain that everybody feels they’re welcomed and invited to have interaction in our aggressive funding processes. After which additionally constructing neighborhood with these innovators that is probably not close to a NASA heart.

I&T At the moment: Are you able to present an outline of the NASA Area Tech Catalyst Prize?

Lambert: The Area Tech Catalyst Prize is a part of an engagement technique for inviting innovators who’re out there- whether or not they’re from a smaller college that’s simply beginning their aerospace applications, diploma applications, analysis departments, or small companies which might be simply tapping into the house tech ecosystem.

I believe for lots of communities on the market, some people and mentors are these shepherds on the market which might be actually nurturing and growing this type of subsequent era of innovators on the market. And that’s what the Area Tech Catalyst Prize is for. It’s open to each people and organizations throughout academia and trade who’re addressing obstacles which will exist inside analysis and innovator communities. Whether or not it’s a sort of structural barrier to offering capability funding or whether it is serving to folks to really feel that they’ll think about themselves an area technologist.

Lots of people have a really slender view of who can contribute to NASA’s mission, and we’d prefer to broaden that view. So the prize is $25,000 per winner with as much as 20 winners. Once more, these winners will be people and organizations so long as they’re U.S. residents or have companies based mostly within the U.S. We hope that we’ll create an environment the place we’ve got funding alternatives that happen all year long. We want for the winners to assist unfold the phrase about these alternatives and possibly even function mentors sooner or later.

I&T At the moment: There’s no query that range is necessary in each trade. How can inclusion contribute to larger innovation in house know-how? How have you ever seen that transpire in your expertise up to now?

Lambert:  After I exit to conferences or return house and point out that I work for NASA, they could be like, “Whoa! You’re employed for NASA?” For one, they might not have met somebody who works for NASA. However I could not match the profile of who they assume works for NASA. I imply, lots of people have seen the film Hidden Figures and among the challenges that these ladies confronted.

However as an example, we’ve got a program known as NIAC, NASA’s Innovation and Superior Ideas Group. They’re thought of essentially the most open funding alternative. So innovators can suggest concepts to NIAC which will contribute to a future mission. However we don’t put any parameters as to whether or not they need to have sure credentials or levels.

This fall, I had an opportunity to go meet a few of their fellows from NIAC, and one in every of them was a filmmaker who occurred to have an optics know-how that he developed on his personal, which is in the end one thing we used whereas flying on a mission. And that’s a fantastic instance of not essentially needing a physics diploma or engineering diploma. You solely want that keenness for developing with options to technical challenges, and people options can come from adjoining fields like drugs, agriculture, and movie.

I&T At the moment: What message do you have got for potential candidates or people within the NASA Area Tech Catalyst Prize?

Lambert:  I’d love for candidates to see house know-how or the house trade as a brand new alternative and a brand new frontier of kinds. We’re on the cusp of in all probability a multi-trillion-dollar trade. We need to be sure that everyone seems to be introduced alongside and that we’re contributing to each earth-based challenges and space-related challenges in order that there’s mutual profit for folks on Earth and past.

I’d say that each side of life we’ve got right here on Earth will want an answer as we enterprise past, whether or not it’s how we go, how we land in these different locations, how we discover, and in the end, how we dwell. So all-encompassing, there’s a resolution on the market, and I consider that individuals who could assume that house shouldn’t be for them stands out as the ultimate folks we’re in search of.

The competitors is open to lecturers, mentors, people, universities, non-profits, companies, and organizations. members ought to register on-line by February 8, 2024, and full submissions by February 22, 2024, together with a brief video outlining their engagement approaches, addressed obstacles, and the potential influence of NASA’s funding on their work.