Dr. Elisa Torresani Co-PI on Collaborative NASA – MUREP Grant Advancing Regolith-related Technologies and Education
The funding of $444, 000 for the project advances research capabilities at two HSI (NMSU, SDSU) in support of the NASA Artemis program with a focus on enhancing diversity and inclusion.
MUREP Advancing Regolith-Related Technologies and Education (MARTE) is a collaborative initiative created by a multidisciplinary group of faculty at New Mexico State University (NMSU) and San Diego State University (SDSU). NASA has awarded $444,000 to the project. The PI on the project at SDSU is Dr. Marta Miletic, Assistant Professor of Civil Engineering. Drs. Margherita Capriotti, Assistant Professor of Aerospace Engineering, and Dr. Julio Valdes, Professor of Civil Engineering, are also co-PIs. MARTE, meaning Mars in Spanish, sets out to develop the research support capabilities needed for our Hispanic Serving Institutions to contribute to the Artemis program, while also providing authentic STEM engagement opportunities for middle-school, high-school, undergraduate, and graduate students related to NASA missions.
The Artemis program's commitment to bringing the first woman and the next man to the Moon highlights NASA’s focus on diversity and inclusion. It is only fitting that the teams working to support the program be similarly diverse and inclusive. MARTE brings together 10 faculty members from two Minority Serving Institutions. We draw expertise from five different engineering fields (Aerospace, Civil, Electrical and Mechanical Engineering), the Geological Sciences, and Agriculture, Consumer, & Environmental Sciences. Half of the team members are women and three of the faculty are Hispanic, including the PI. Indeed, three members (75%) of the leadership team belong to one or two underrepresented groups in their respective professional fields. All united by a shared interest in regolith-related research, and a common need for access to basic infrastructure to pursue exploratory studies on regolith-based construction, regolith subsurface exploration, and resource recovery.
Completing the MARTE team are three industrial partners, Russell Sand Gravel Co., Inc, and AeroAggregates LLC, and Spaceport America; three STEM outreach and education partners, the NMSU STEM Outreach Center, the New Mexico Alliance for Minority Participation, and the New Mexico Space Grant Consortium; and a representative from the STMD funded Lunar Surface Innovation Consortium at John Hopkins University.
