Fenstermaker named Project Director
for Nevada’s NASA EPSCoR and Space
Grant
L
ynn Fenstermaker, Ph.D., was named Project Director
for Nevada’s NASA Experimental Program to Stimulate
Competitive Research (EPSCoR) and Space Grant
Programs in January 2015.
The goal of the Space Grant Program is to—
“contribute to the nation’s science enterprise by
funding education, research and public service projects
through a national network of university-based Space
Grant consortia.”
The program supports NASA’s national mission
to develop a strong S.T.E.M. (science, technology,
engineering and math) education base through the
funding of research and higher education programs,
and by supporting students through scholarships,
fellowships and internships, and by partnering with
industry and local government.
Fenstermaker adds to a distinguished list of
NSHE research faculty who have helped lead the
NASA EPSCoR and Space Grant Programs since its
inception.
FACULTY
ACCOMPLISHMENTS
AND OTHER EXCITING
NEWS FROM 2015
Huntington called to the Nevada
Governor’s Drought Forum
G
10
overnor Sandoval established the Nevada Drought
Forum on April 8, 2015 to bring together the best minds,
managers and all interested stakeholders to assess the
drought in Nevada, identify best conservation practices
and policy needs, and make recommendations to the
Governor regarding next steps.
Sandoval called upon Justin Huntington, Ph.D., a
DRI associate research professor of hydrology to serve
on the Nevada Drought Forum.
Huntington’s research focuses on remote sensing,
drought monitoring and hydrologic modeling. Huntington
and his colleagues leveraged the Federal Government’s
extensive, freely-available climate-relevant data resources
and access to one petabyte (1,000 terabytes) of cloud
storage and 50-million donated hours of computing time
on Google’s Earth Engine, Maps Engine and App Engine
cloud computing platforms.
This state-of-the-art drought monitoring web
application (www.ClimateEngine.org) is accessible
to the public and provides local communities with
information to better understand changes in water use
associated with changes in land use and climate.