Building Tomorrow's Earth Science Workforce, One Spectrum at a Time
How NASA's STELLA Instrument is Multiplying Mission Impact Through Student Engagement
The Participants
Nick Barbi, founder and president of the Science and Technology Society and a NASA STEM Ambassador, sat down with Michael Taylor, NASA STELLA’s team lead to discuss the program. They were joined by Tara Bergstrom Merino, a technology professional at Bank of America and coach of the state championship Java the Hutts robotics team, and her son Michael Merino, one of the student participants.
Their conversation reveals how NASA’s STELLA (Science and Technology Education for Land/Life Assessment) instrument is doing more than teaching science—it’s building pathways to careers students didn’t even know existed while multiplying the impact of NASA’s Earth observation missions.
More Than Rocket Ships
“The common answer back was, doesn’t NASA just do like rocket ships?” Tara recalled. “Learning that there’s so much more to what NASA does and that they actually work on instruments and they’re doing observational things and they engage with students and they’re doing research, I think was eye opening for the students.”
For Michael Merino, who participated in COASTWISE, the revelation was profound. When asked if he knew NASA monitored Earth from space, he admitted: “I was not aware to the extent that they do.” But working hands-on with STELLA changed that understanding completely.
“The concepts, yes, as well as the type of technology that they’re using,” Michael explained. “And as well as the extent to which NASA does, you know, take notes and record data on the environment, given how direct STELLA is.”
A Mission Multiplier: Connecting Space and Ground
Nick Barbi sees STELLA as a powerful complement to NASA’s satellite missions, particularly Landsat. “It seems so out of reach with the Landsat data, other satellite data and the imagery,” Nick explained. “If you can say this is basically how it’s done. It’s just more sophisticated and a tad more expensive than what we’re trying to do. So the concept is very similar—that exactly is the point.”
This connection is crucial: STELLA uses the same spectroscopic principles as Landsat and other NASA Earth observation satellites, teaching the future workforce ground-based methods that complement and help them understand satellite observations. Students learn why ground truth matters, how spectral signatures identify vegetation, and how local measurements relate to global monitoring efforts.
“It elevated the importance of what we’re doing to say that NASA on a much larger scale is doing this, doing it at a much more scientific level, a worldwide level,” Nick noted. “It gave it a substantially stronger rationale and credibility in terms of what we’re trying to do.”
The program also introduced students to NASA’s NDVI (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index) the same metric NASA uses from satellites to assess plant health worldwide. By calculating NDVI from their own spectral measurements, students directly connect their work to NASA’s operational missions.
Nick pointed out the synergy: “We pointed out the similarity between what NASA’s doing with Landsat and what we’re trying to do.” The goal is to eventually integrate drone-based spectroscopy with ground measurements, creating a multi-scale approach that mirrors how NASA combines satellite data with field observations.
This makes STELLA a true mission multiplier, it doesn’t replace NASA’s capabilities but extends their reach into communities, classrooms, and the next generation of scientists who will use and advance those capabilities.
Workforce Development for a Earth Observation
But COASTWISE isn’t just about understanding NASA missions, it’s about preparing students for careers they might never have considered.
“I think STELLA Instruments are the greatest thing to happen—the most significant innovation to happen in STEM education since robotics,” Nick declared.
Nick pointed to a growing workforce need in the analytical instrumentation sector. “There are hundreds of thousands of instruments out there,” he explained. “Somebody’s got to run them with the technical and scientific bent and understanding.”
The answer, he explained, is “a different group of people than the engineers who build robots. This is many of the kids interested in geology and environmental chemistry, data processing. You know, math students—they may not be skilled in building robotics and electromechanical devices and so forth. Maybe scared of them.”
Tara Bergstrom Merino, who brings both a technology career background and robotics coaching experience to the conversation, emphasized the career exploration aspect: “How are you supposed to know that you want to be an architect? How are you supposed to know that you wanna do scientific data analysis if you’ve never actually been able to work alongside someone that does that with a real data set, normalize the data, put a model against it, understand the impact of that and have to do the hard work right? Not just the fun work.”
She continued: ” COASTWISE and STELLA provides them an opportunity to utilize a tool in a way that gives them information and experiences they wouldn’t have. I think then being able to work alongside real scientists and folks that built the instrument or people that use the instrument and hearing how they use it connects them to real world experiences and gives them an understanding of like how they could use what their careers could be like someday.”
Skills That Transfer Across NASA's Mission Spheres
The workforce development goes beyond just career awareness. Students gained concrete technical skills that transfer directly to careers across NASA’s Earth science, data science, and applied research spheres.
“COASTWISE allowed them to connect with a technology and a terminology that they never would have had,” Tara explained. “They got to program in a way that’s very different… They don’t do any programming over a data set to analyze data—that was something that they had never done before. A lot of them had never looked at data set that needed to be normalized before.”
She pointed out that even coming from robotics, “the amount of variables they were looking at was also much more complex than something that we would look at in robotics. I think the data component was something that is a new skill for them. I think just working with a spectrometer was definitely a new skill for them.”
These aren’t abstract educational objectives—these are the exact skills needed in environmental monitoring, agricultural technology, climate science, and countless other fields where Earth observation data drives decisions. Students who understand both satellite data and ground-based measurements become the professionals who can effectively use NASA’s Earth observation assets.
Learning from Failure, Contributing to Progress
One of the most powerful workforce development moments came when things went wrong. The new 3D-printed STELLA housings proved difficult to assemble. Rather than just finding a workaround, Nick turned it into a learning opportunity.
Two students, both freshmen at the time—prepared an engineering failure report and presented it via Zoom to Paul Mirel, STELLA’s creator and chief design engineer at NASA.
For Michael Merino, watching his classmates present technical problems to NASA engineers was transformative. “It was a very positive experience,” he recalled. “Paul was very accepting and obviously took notes of all of our feedback. And made sure to feel like our input was going to be used to better the product… We felt like we were now part of the progress that we were seeing in STELLA as well as getting a little bit of insight into what was going on behind the scenes.”
This wasn’t just a classroom exercise—it was real professional experience contributing to NASA’s outreach mission. As Tara noted: “That can be hard for a student, and even as an adult. So I think, you know, no matter what, those sort of opportunities are really educational and valuable to students. And then I think as engineers and as adults to hear from students is also allowing us to help them better their skill set.”
Multiplying NASA's Earth Science Impact
COASTWISE demonstrates how STELLA multiplies the impact of NASA’s Earth science missions across multiple dimensions:
- Earth Observation Education: Students learn the same spectroscopic principles NASA uses to monitor vegetation health, wetland conditions, and ecosystem changes from space. They understand Landsat not as an abstract concept but as a more sophisticated, high-quality version of what they’re doing themselves.
- Ground Truth and Validation Concepts: While COASTWISE measurements are educational rather than operational, students learn why ground truth matters and how it complements satellite observations. This understanding is crucial for the next generation who will use NASA data professionally.
- Community Engagement Multiplier: NASA’s Applied Sciences program emphasizes making Earth observation data useful to communities. STELLA-equipped students become ambassadors who can help their communities understand and use NASA’s Earth observation resources.
- STEM Workforce Pipeline: NASA faces workforce challenges across its Earth science portfolio. STELLA creates entry points for diverse talent in environmental monitoring, data analysis, and applied science—careers that directly support NASA’s mission.
- Mission Understanding and Advocacy: Students who understand how NASA monitors Earth become advocates for continued Earth observation. They can explain to their communities why missions like Landsat, PACE, and future systems matter.
- Complementary Data Networks: As STELLA use expands, networks of community-based observations complement satellite data by providing fine-scale, frequent measurements that satellites might miss—a true mission multiplier effect.
A Model for the Future
Nick Barbi envisions COASTWISE as the flagship of a larger program called IDEAS—Instruments for Discovery, Exploration and Assessments in Science. The model would use various STELLA instruments across different scientific domains, always focused on workforce development and complementing NASA’s missions.
“Robotics is aimed at future engineers and coders, while IDEAS is aimed at would-be geologists, biologists, environmentalists, chemists, astronomers,” Nick explained. It’s a different pipeline into STEM careers, one desperately needed as Earth observation becomes increasingly critical.
Tara sees the broader potential: “I think any large company should work on a model like this, right, where you’re engaging something that’s kind of cheap and accessible to as many people as possible. You can get students engaged. I have found that students, especially younger students, have such creative minds and they think so outside the box that you really want them to be engaged in projects like this.”
She added: “Students just kind of look at it however they want with their mind wide open. So I think engaging students in this and making it accessible to them with kind of a less expensive tool set can help maybe guide your overarching real modeling.”
The Bottom Line
STELLA isn’t separate from NASA’s Earth observation missions—it’s complementary to them. It’s a mission multiplier that extends Landsat’s impact from orbit to classroom, from data product to workforce development, from satellite observation to community understanding.
It teaches the scientific methods and technical skills that employers across the Earth science sector need. It helps communities connect local environmental concerns to the global perspective NASA provides from space. And it builds understanding of why NASA’s Earth observing missions matter.
As Michael Merino put it simply: “We felt like we were now part of the progress.”
That sense of connection—to NASA’s mission, to real science, to meaningful careers—is exactly what Earth observation needs as it faces the challenges of the coming decades. STELLA multiplies NASA’s mission impact by building the workforce that will carry that work forward, the communities that will use that data, and the next generation that will advance those capabilities.
Transcript
COASTWISE Interview Transcript
Participants:
- Michael P. Taylor – NASA GSFC, STELLA Team Lead
- Nick Barbi (Dr. Barbi) – Science and Technology Society, Program Director
- Tara Merino (Tara Bergstrom Merino) – Program Coordinator, Bank of America Technology
- Michael Melvin Merino – Student Participant (Senior)
00:00:08:13 – 00:00:16:12 Michael P. Taylor: Welcome. Nick. Can you introduce yourself and tell us about the Science and Technology Society and how CoastWise got started?
00:00:16:13 – 00:04:49:02 Nick Barbi: Okay, Mike, thank you very much for giving us the opportunity to talk about what we’re doing. My name is Nick Barbi. I was, at one time, a material science scientist. Then I got into making instruments because the first instrument I worked on was a scanning electron microscope and EDS x-ray detector, and we were one of the first to do that. So the story of my life was I became an instrument maker. So that’s one connection with STELLA that we have right off the bat.
I’m still involved in selling hyperspectral imaging cameras to museums. And it’s more or less a part time job, but we sell VNIR cameras, VSWIR cameras and SWIR cameras and extended SWIR cameras. So there’s a whole range, and they typically cost from 40,000 to 140,000. And which is another reason STELLA is so attractive at $200 a unit.
And so I’m still involved in that, but predominantly retired and started the Science and Technology Society about three years ago now, two and a half years and we’re initially it was to hold technology meetings and socializing with people that were in science for their careers or just interested in science, and then we just got organically interested in STEM education and actually is where we’ve been focusing most of our time these days.
And we, the first course, because of my experience, we chose to use the STELLA Q2 which is 18 channel VNIR spectrometer and you know, since I made spectrometers most of my life, various types and sold them, if I wasn’t making them and teaching people how to use them, it was a natural for me to want to do that.
One of the most important spectroscopy, one of the most important features of Sarasota and Manatee counties in southwest Florida, where we’re based is are the wetlands. And it’s an interface between the ocean and the land and a lot of neat environmental and ecosystem things happen in wetlands. So we thought we would use a spectrometer to see if we could differentiate one type of plant from another. And in so doing, learn about the importance of wetlands.
So there was an ulterior motive. Whenever you have an instrument, you need an application. And so we were sneaking in the interest and the exposure to the application, along with talking about spectroscopy, electromagnetic radiation, how to use a spectrometer, data collection, data processing, all that kind of thing. But at the same time, getting speakers to talk about our environment, the ecological system, the importance of wetlands, the damaging of wetlands that due to hurricanes and also development, hurricanes they seem to survive, you know, development they don’t, which is you know, somehow hurricanes because they’re natural do somehow work themselves out. Maybe later I’ll tell you a story about that. But so, we’re, we’re now focusing very much on STEM education for students and trying to do something exciting and different. And NASA with the family of STELLA Instruments has provided us that opportunity.
00:04:49:03 – 00:05:00:01 Michael P. Taylor: Awesome. Thank you very much. That was a heck of an introduction. So, and you answered actually answered probably like, 3 or 4 of the questions doing it.
00:05:00:02 – 00:05:12:02 Michael P. Taylor: So, short interview. Okay. All right. Exactly. So, Tara, again, thanks for joining us. And what is what’s your background and how did you get involved with this program?
00:05:12:03 – 00:09:02:08 Tara Merino: Sure. Thanks for having me. So, my name is Tara Bergstrom Merino. I officially work for Bank of America in Technology. I started in computer engineering, but I spent most of my career overseeing a suite of applications and change across those applications. About eight years ago, nine years ago, I became heavily involved in STEM with the youth in our community, mostly resulting, you know, as a result of my kids. They were very, especially Michael was very interested in STEM, and there was really not a lot in our community for him to kind of develop that interest.
We by chance kind of came into a program called FIRST, for Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology. We do not have any sort of presence of that organization in our community. But it was at that time the age group that my kids were in was Lego based. And so they really wanted to kind of pursue a team in there. So, Michael will share, but he, you know, I told him if you wanted to do that, you know, I would help. But, you know, I wanted him to kind of find a team. It could be about ten members. And so he aggressively went and sought out a bunch of students and came with 60 students. So we ended up having six teams because we didn’t want to turn anybody away.
And we did that for quite some time. But when we published that, it caught the interest of Lakewood Ranch proper. And so they’re the number one selling master plan community in the nation. And there’s, you know, a lot of organization that goes behind making sure that it continues to be the number one master plan community. And so they do a lot of activities and events there. So they were like, oh, what is your vision to bring STEM to the community for our youth? I was like, I don’t have a vision. But the whole we really want to bring STEM. There’s like this very significant demand in our community and we think, you know, it’s obviously an up and coming area.
So that ended up I started, you know, kind of like what Dr. Barbi’s doing, but more for youth. I started running meetings and presentations and connecting them with the experts. And I started running math 24 leagues. And we were running all sorts of like we were running the STEM tent at the farmer’s market, and we were doing all sorts of things, when Covid happened, a lot of that went away, just because everything was locked down and we weren’t able to go anywhere. But I remained very engaged in FIRST with Michael and Natalie’s team. We continued that, they continued even running activities over the Lakewood Ranch Facebook page. So like STEM activities, we’d get like every week, we give a STEM challenge out to the students to kind of keep them engaged and connected because that was, you know, an isolating time, I think, for our young folks.
So we did that. But when we came out of Covid, I knew I was going to be moving away from Lakewood Ranch, just because my kids were going to be going to a school that was about 45 minutes south of it. So I didn’t want to re-rigor all of that. When I moved down here though, I got connected with the Suncoast Science Center, the Fab Lab, which is about 15 minutes from my house. And that’s where I met Doctor Barbi. And I was like, oh, well, Doctor Barbi has a vision that was kind of like what Lakewood Ranch wanted to do. And so I said, you know, I’d love to support you in your vision instead of, you know, trying to restart that again. And that’s how we became connected. And then he’s, you know, brought a lot of great programs to the students and fully supportive and COASTWISE is definitely been a staple of that. And I think it’s taught the kids a lot. You know, I don’t think any of those kids even knew what spectrometers were before that. So I think, you know, it’s been an amazing opportunity. The kids have been involved in it for two years now. And I’m just, you know, I’m really just connecting Doctor Barbi with the students, and we have a great relationship doing that.
00:09:24:12 – 00:09:34:04 Michael P. Taylor: Excellent. Yeah. Michael, we’re glad to have you in the student perspective. What grade are you in and what made you want to do coastwise this summer?
00:09:34:05 – 00:09:59:05 Nick Barbi: And don’t say your mother made you do it.
00:09:34:05 – 00:09:59:05 Tara Merino: No.
00:09:34:05 – 00:11:17:06 Michael Melvin Merino: Yeah. So I’m in 12th grade right now, so I’m a senior. And two years ago when it was my mom that brought up the opportunity to do CoastWise, I was actually very intrigued in that. And I shared that with a bunch of other people that I knew. We were all in the same robotics team, so we share that common interest in trying to learn new things. So I originally approached it with like, the, oh, this is just going to be something new to learn, like something I can just add to my skill set. And then going to the meetings when we realized that this was actually something that was very important to the, I want to say the area like the environment, I guess, and helping the wetlands and, you know, understanding how they, their health, how they thrive, how to preserve them. And I got very invested in that. The more that I started going to these meetings. So, yeah, I mean, it’s, I think it was a great opportunity. I think it was definitely a very great chance to learn some new skills and learn a lot about the environment, how it works, how to measure certain things, how to predict the future of those environments, and to help preserve the Everglades for the future.
00:11:17:07 – 00:12:02:14 Nick Barbi: I do want to thank Tara and Michael. Our first group. You know, I contacted Tara, and I said, Tara, I don’t know how to get kids into this. And she said, don’t worry. The robotics team will be there for you. So our first group was almost completely the robotics team. So, I think not only Tara and Michael and Natalie and all the people, but just the spirit, the community spirit they have and the STEM, the love of STEM courses and efforts and experiences and so forth. So it was really critical to us. So I want to thank them for that.
00:12:03:01 – 00:12:11:10 Michael P. Taylor: Before the summer, have you ever heard of, you know, spectroscopy or worked with these particular types of scientific instruments?
00:12:11:11 – 00:12:55:02 Michael Melvin Merino: No. And that was our look at the camera. No. So before before I ever got involved in STELLA, I never heard of any of that terminology before in my entire life. And that’s, I think, part of the reason that me and all my other teammates were so intrigued, was because even though we are so invested in commonly used STEM instruments and, you know, looking at these innovative solutions quite often, that this was a brand new branch that we had never even seen before. So becoming involved in it was, you know, branching into new territory. And I think that’s what originally caught us all and got us engaged into STELLA.
00:12:55:03 – 00:13:02:07 Michael P. Taylor: What made this program appealing for your kids to participate in? So, you know, what excited you about the program?
00:13:02:09 – 00:14:36:12 Tara Merino: Oh, sorry. When the students were younger and they’re part of the Lego branch, that program included an innovation project. So every year they were asked to look at a challenge and find a real world solution for that challenge. And that was always like one of their favorite parts beyond just the robot part, really. The innovation project was one of their favorite parts. But for the league they’re at right now when they’re doing this level of robotics, there is no innovation project. There’s no real world kind of presentation or innovation kind of component. So when Doctor Barbi brought this to the community, it was like, hey, you know what? I have this CoastWise plan. We’re going to be using spectrometry. We’re going to be looking at the Everglades and the wetlands. And we want to understand if we can utilize this tool to actually do something in the real world. I knew that the kids would be interested in that. Right. It’s something that has an impact in the real world, right? That they get to work alongside experts, you know, getting to work alongside you and Dr. Barbi and people that have, you know, real knowledge I think is invaluable to students to get to kind of work alongside real engineers and real scientists, to kind of see their thought process, just learn from them, like how they grow, how they work through problems, I think is invaluable. And then, you know, also the impact of being able to have the potential of doing something that truly has an effect on the wetlands, I think is an incredible experience. Right. Like, who wouldn’t want a student to be part of it?
00:14:36:13 – 00:14:44:04 Michael P. Taylor: Did working with STELLA lead you and the students to discover various NASA data sources and stuff you didn’t know about before? And what did you find?
00:14:44:05 – 00:17:24:05 Tara Merino: Yes. Like, I think, mostly, you know, I’ll have to give credit to Craig Phillips, who really dove in to the NASA applications and pointed out to me and to others who were interested in this, that there’s some phenomenal data sources. We went up and visited a professor at USF, who has access to all the, you know, the direct satellite data and some high resolution satellite data. And Craig pointed out the benefits of space. You know, he, Craig was the type of scientist who, you know, who kept getting ahead of everybody. And instead of keeping pace, he was out at the next level already. Unfortunately, Craig and his wife moved back to Colorado. They’re not much. It’s hard to get them involved. Hopefully we’ll get them involved remotely as time goes on.
So one of the things that we tried to do was show how you could use Google Earth and get the aerial images and look at the changes to the vegetation over time, and pointed out the similarity with Landsat and the PACE which is the ocean satellite, essentially, is extremely interesting to us. The reason we couldn’t use more of the data itself is that it’s pretty complicated, very large to deal with and so forth. So for our first course, which was just four days long, we pointed out the similarity between what NASA’s done with Landsat and what we’re trying to do.
And this year, I think we’re actually going to achieve a drone flying possibly of STELLA itself, but certainly the nature that Bianca Cilento has done where in her case, I believe Mike, she had a spectroscopic drone and then sort of matched up the STELLA 18 channel information with the three channel spectroscopic drone so that they could say, this spectrum from the drone gives us this spectrum from STELLA. So now we can look in more detail and do false color imaging. And I think false color imaging is an interesting concept for young students as well.
00:17:24:08 – 00:18:24:03 Nick Barbi: So this year, we’re fortunate enough, if all goes well, to have a student who, for his science project, designed the control system for drone hardware and software. Have a student that might be able to, you know, help be a not only a student, but be an instructor in some sense. And then if we had our own control system, we have more options to modify it and link the flight of the drone with the collection of the spectrum and so forth. And the goal is to get more involved in and directly relating our work to NASA’s database and you guys. It just needs more than four days to really delve into that.
00:18:24:04 – 00:21:31:02 Michael P. Taylor: Yeah, yeah. So my question was did working with STELLA introduce you and the students to NASA’s broader work in Earth science beyond just rockets? And did it change how students viewed NASA’s work?
00:21:31:03 – 00:22:22:02 Tara Merino: Yeah. I think, you know, when I first brought this to the students that I spoke to, you know, the first year we predominantly did the robotics team, and then the second year we went to some school students as well that I know were engaged in STEM because we had a bit more time. The common answer back was, doesn’t NASA just do like rocket ships? Like what is this? And like, what do they do? And I think, you know, just learning that there’s so much more to what NASA does and that they actually work on instruments and that they’re doing educational things and they engage with the students and they’re doing research. I think was eye opening for the students. Right. But I agree with Dr. Barbi then that like then saying you’re going to get to work with a NASA instrument immediately was exciting to the students are like, oh, we’re going to work with something that NASA made, like, we’re working with something that’s, you know, really, really must be like forward looking.
00:22:22:03 – 00:23:10:12 Nick Barbi: And now they’re engaged like, oh, what else does NASA do, right? That kind of like created a spark to like is there other things that NASA works on and like what other kind of research programs do they do? You know, so I think that was kind of like a lynch pin for them to kind of start looking at that NASA does more than just rocket ships.
00:23:10:13 – 00:24:28:13 Tara Merino: You can get students engaged. I have found that students, especially younger students, have such creative minds. And they think so outside the box that you really want them to be engaged in projects like this, that they can really look at problems in ways that we haven’t been taught yet. Like this is the process you follow to look at a problem. Students just kind of look at it however they want with their mind wide open. So I think engaging students in this and making it accessible to them with kind of a less expensive toolset then can help, maybe guide, you know, your overarching real modeling and things because you really do never know what can come out of a student’s mindset.
I know for us, several years ago, we were looking at space travel and, you know, the challenges that exist in space travel. And our students came up with this whole suit that had like resistant bands to kind of keep muscles engaged so that they wouldn’t lose bone density and all of that. And I think maybe like five years later, that was like a real product. Like now people actually use that for physical therapy and things. So but it’s just you know, it was incredible that ten year olds came up with that concept, like right off the bat within a couple hours or like, oh, this is, you know, these are the challenges and like, this is what we could do. So I think, you know, having youth and students engaged in real world challenges like this, they can look at it in a different way. And they might come up with ideas that, you know, some of us that have been doing this for many years wouldn’t come up with.
00:24:44:09 – 00:26:14:12 Nick Barbi: I was going to say something, Mike, if I’m still allowed a minute. Now, we don’t want to hear from you. Yeah. So. No, your comment was about linking it to the NASA data inspired me a little bit because we are talking about doing a freshman in college level course that would actually be, you know, a semester, trimester, whatever works out to be. And in that course, that’s where we could really spend a lot more time on that kind of association. It makes it a much higher level course. And be it, you know, we got the time to do it. So I think that that’s a perfect sort of vertical addition. You know, we want to do things laterally in this course across the different instrumentation that you’re doing or different applications of the same instrument, but also vertically above the, you know, the science behind it and the use of the data further beyond it. So hopefully that’s something we’re working on now and may come to fruition in a year or two, not sure. But thank you.
00:26:14:13 – 00:27:27:03 Michael P. Taylor: Yeah, so Michael, can you talk about the experience of assembling the STELLA and what challenges you ran into?
00:27:27:04 – 00:30:12:09 Nick Barbi: So we, initially we ordered the parts to do a build class, meaning we bring in, you know, 15 kids and 15 instruments, and we go through building it all at once. But when you do that, you’ve got, you know, you’ve got to be somewhat of a control freak, right? Because everybody’s got to be on the same page, doing the same thing at the same time, and the parts have to be laid out. And in this case, it was me and one other instructor, and we just didn’t get the job done. Kind of a classic mistake and not fully doing the build prior to the teaching exercise. So you know it has the trappings of looking very easy and yet there’s some experience level things that you need to gain. The other thing that caused us a problem was just ordering parts and finding out that they weren’t available and the notice that we had given ourselves. And because of that, we had to modify a part. We essentially had to build a part that came as an integrated unit into from two pieces. And that piece ended up not being of the proper dimension for the slot and the housing. So that caused the case not to close properly. And we didn’t realize it until we spent hours on it. And so it was not, I think the conclusion was it would be nice to have a little more room in there for those wires and also some suggestions about the placement of the buttons and that kind of thing. But by and large, the problem that we experienced while building was mostly of our own doing. And now we have, you know, we have a couple of. I will show you right here. I just got delivered new Q2 units. But, yeah. So, you know, we even though we understand it was needed to be, you know, the design goal was to be small. We didn’t think it had to be quite as small as it was and that we could have used a little more leeway with the wires.
00:31:48:12 – 00:33:29:12 Nick Barbi: Although the problem was not itself the wires. The problem was in the oversized component that we had a rig up from because the part wasn’t available directly. So on time later, they all came in, but they didn’t come in on time. We then had the students do failure analysis and the whole thing. And a couple of students, including Tara’s daughter, Natalie, and Colton, who was the exceptional young man, the two of them together, really led the failure analysis and came up with some great suggestions, some of which were solving a problem that didn’t exist, as I said. But nevertheless, we didn’t know that at the time. But the exercise of going through that and then listening to Paul explain why things were done a certain way, why he didn’t think, you know, recommendations were necessary in some cases, but also why he thought they were very good recommendations in other cases. That was a great moment for us.
00:33:29:13 – 00:33:41:03 Michael P. Taylor: Yeah. In fact, he sent you all a failure analysis report. Yes. He did. Right. And so it was there for that.
00:33:41:04 – 00:35:47:03 Tara Merino: And I do recall him, like, you know, stopping the students and really having them explain what they meant and why and all that, that it was, yeah. Not only the students, but the instructors as well. And I think that’s also a very good experience for students, right? To be questioned and have to kind of give their logic and reasoning for what they thought or what they presented and areas of improvement that they see. And then how do you defend why they think a certain thing, or why they felt a certain way about something. So I think, you know, that can be hard for a student and even as an adult. So I think, you know, that no matter what those sort of opportunities are really educational and valuable to students. And then I think, you know, as engineers and as mentors to hear from students is also allowing us to help them better their skill set. So I think the students learned a lot. I hope, you know, I think Paul also hopefully took some takeaways from it. You know, I don’t think, you know, I know there were some things that were necessarily actually wrong or complicated with it or a challenge. And it was something else, like the chip we bought or something. But I think, you know, hopefully there was some other value in what they presented. But I think any time you’re having a student engage with a real professional and you’re connecting them, I think there’s a lot of growth. I think being able to struggle, and I agree with Doctor Barbi, sometimes the challenges or the problems or the struggles are much bigger learning opportunities than successes. So I think, you know, for them, you know, CoastWise and STELLA provides them an opportunity to utilize a tool in a way that gives them information and experiences they wouldn’t have.
00:36:11:10 – 00:36:51:07 Tara Merino: I think then being able to work alongside real scientists and folks that built the instrument, or people that use the instrument, and hearing how they use it, connects them to real world experiences and gives them an understanding of like how they could use, you know, what their careers could be like someday, and if that would be interesting to them. And I think overall, it gives them a breadth of exposure to things that they may never have known to consider in their careers. I feel like a lot of times students are like, okay, I want to be a lawyer or I want to be a doctor, or I want to be an engineer, because those are things that they see all the time in movies or they hear about.
00:36:51:08 – 00:39:29:07 Michael P. Taylor: What surprised you about the connections between this local project and NASA’s broader Earth science work?
00:39:29:08 – 00:42:30:14 Nick Barbi: I think that, you know, it elevated the importance of what we’re doing to say that NASA on a much larger scale is doing this, doing it at a much more scientific level, a worldwide level. And zillions of applications of it, depending upon which area of the world people are interested in. And so it gave it a substantially stronger rationale and credibility in terms of what we’re trying to do. I think one of the really interesting things was the NDVI, the normalized difference vegetative index. And this is a way to compare the vegetation from year to year or month to month or season to season. And the concept that this is done on NASA satellites, that this is common practice, I think is extremely interesting. And the fact that the waterkeeper is very interested in the changes of sea grass density, especially in the aftermath of all the, you know, the red tide and all the other things that have polluted the, the sea grass area. And so we can do a relatively small version, mini version of the same kind of thing. So yeah, I think all of this lent credibility from what we’re doing on a small scale to what the waterkeeper’s doing on a much larger regional scale and what NASA’s doing on a worldwide scale.
00:42:30:15 – 00:44:08:04 Michael P. Taylor: For Michael, could you walk us through what it was like collecting data from plants, from actual plants? And could you tell different plants apart from their light signatures? Did anything surprise you? And what were your takeaways from that?
00:44:08:05 – 00:46:29:03 Michael Melvin Merino: The data collection portion was actually very simple and very straightforward. We set up multiple plants outside, and we did a series of measurements on each plant. So it wasn’t just one measurement per plant. It was a couple. And then we imported that data into, I think it might have been Excel. And then we, you know, graphed it, organized it, looked at it, looked through trends. It definitely gave me a lot more insight into how data collection is actually done. Before then, I had really only collected data like with like single variable like experiments, not with something that had this many components to it that we had to account for, like the sunlight, which is one that I didn’t remember until you mentioned it. Like the position of the sunlight changes obviously over time. And like that, that’s not something that I’m used to accounting for. Like working with that many variables was definitely something that was new to me. And although it didn’t, like STELLA itself didn’t change the direction of mechanical engineering that I wanted to go into, it definitely gave me a lot more insight into like how the collection of data might actually happen in my field, rather than just like, you know, oh, we’re going to run this tiny little experiment. It might be like, okay, we’re going to run this experiment. Here’s all the variables we have to take into consideration. And I think using, you know, having gone through the STELLA program, although it was short, gave me a little more insight into how that process and data collection, collection and analysis might actually work.
00:46:29:04 – 00:48:53:00 Tara Merino: Yeah. I mean, I think that COASTWISE allowed them to connect with technology and terminology that they never would have had. Right, terms they never would have had. They got to program in a way that’s very different. Right? So, right now they only program for hardware, so they only do hardware programming. They don’t do any programming over a data set to like kind of analyze data that was something that they had never done before. A lot of them had never looked at a data set that needed to be normalized before. I think understanding kind of how they would have to present information and how they could utilize information and also like how data can be manipulated to kind of not maybe necessarily always give the truth was also something that was unique to them through CoastWise. So I think those were all very unique skills that they didn’t have exposure to before and without going through the CoastWise program with STELLA, they wouldn’t have had access to. Just to show, again, I wanted to mention the Fab Lab that was so generous and crucial to our pulling the first couple of years off. And then here is Natalie, Michael’s sister, and there’s Michael.
00:48:53:01 – 00:55:32:02 Nick Barbi: So I wanted to show some results of our spectra from the black mangrove, the red mangrove and the white mangrove. Now, these were all obviously saplings, but we knew exactly what they were, and we could get, you know, color wise, they’re all very similar. Here we can see the spectra that we were getting from these. And here’s the wavelength axis from 400 to 1000 nanometers, reflectance. And then these were the areas of some differentiation that I pointed out on the spectra that clearly allowed us to differentiate, you know, one spectrum from another. And there are plenty of regions that give us differentiation. And then here’s the color bar where the black is infrared and the rest is as shown here. So I think this seemed to be consistent. Consistency is always an issue. But I think it’s very interesting that the green color was very common.
And these were done one, two, three. So that was not a lot of there was no time difference. The sun was at the same angle. Essentially throughout the whole thing we used the white card and so there’s clearly differences between this, especially when you look at the infrared here, but also just in the colors. I mean, the spectrometer pointed out some very different levels of color amounts of blue and green and orange and so forth that it was hard to see by the eye. And then here we have seven plants that we looked at. And I’m going to jump to just looking at the five green plants. I took out, if you see here, I threw in a couple of ringers because I knew they were going to be quite different in the visible light spectrum because their color is different. And so these were the five green plants, and then these were the two that I threw in to make sure we got some differences.
And so the, if you go to the five plants, you can see that there’s, these are all normalized at an orange color. And so all these plants, all these spectra were made to be equal at 580 nanometers. And then you can see there’s ratio differences that can be, if consistent, can be used to distinguish one plant from another. Now, here’s a situation between two groups where we looked at the group called Viper and the group called Crocs. And we saw the green box here, which is below. And these spectra between the two groups were very similar. Remarkably so. Maybe, this one, they’re all three very, very good. So this is the bougainvillea, the jasmine and the Persian shield and so two different groups, two different spectrometers being used. And then the blue box up here was pretty good, pretty good match from one group to another. And then finally the Heliconia was really not so good of a match where we would have to do a lot more data collection. So, but of the group we looked at, we had some pretty good consistency. And this will end up being the true test as to how consistent we’ll be able to get. So is the deviation from time to time, group to group, in the system greater than the inherent deviation of the spectrum? If it is, then we’re in trouble. If not, then we’re in good shape. So this is part of the research aspect of what we’re trying to do.
00:55:32:03 – 00:56:29:10 Tara Merino: Yeah. I mean, I think if we’re going to expand it to more areas, there needs to be sort of like a curriculum guide. And I don’t know if that exists, but something that allows someone maybe that doesn’t have a Doctor Barbi, that’s utilized this sort of technology before that’s going to be able to explain it. Right. So if you’re going to want somebody else like a me to be able to run a course like this or like a fab lab to be able to run and utilize STELLA, there needs to be some sort of instruction set that says like, okay, you know, day one, this is what you want to do. Day two, this is what you want to do. Day three and maybe there’s multiple variations of that. And depending on the duration that you’re going to work with the technology with, so that would be like what I would suggest if we want to expand. Right. There just needs to be some sort of high level explanation and instruction so that you can make it accessible to people that don’t have a Dr. Barbi that has experience with instruments like this.
00:56:29:11 – 01:04:16:02 Michael P. Taylor: What do you want to tell parents or educators about programs like this?
01:04:16:03 – 01:10:35:05 Nick Barbi: And the way to do that is to make sure there are opportunities. And so we want to build the technical community, the technical strength of the community, make it a place where technical families and their companies can feel comfortable locating. Start ups can locate. One of the best things we can do in my position is to have opportunities for their kids and opportunities that can be modeled nationwide and worldwide. So if we can say that a program that is now worldwide began in Sarasota and Manatee counties in Florida, that would make people aware of the things that we’re doing. So that’s what it does for the area. It would do that, you know, we can’t, we’re not going to change much of the political spectrum or the funding spectrum or we’re not going to do much of that. But if we can make it a known place for starting really advanced STEM education programs for kids that get national and international recognition. To me, that is a phenomenal contribution.
01:05:47:15 – 01:05:53:15 Michael P. Taylor: Finally, any closing thoughts about where do you want to take this program and why people should support it?
01:05:54:03 – 01:08:46:15 Nick Barbi: You know, one of the things we’re doing next month is we’re having some kids that, you know, one of the, besides CoastWise, a very big program we do is send kids to Italy for three weeks at an AI session at, you know, Fondazione Bruno Kessler, which is in Trento, Italy. And they pay 100% of the fees once kids get to Italy. So what we do and what the parents do now is the parents have to have the money to send a kid. The airfare. And so we would like to open this up more for other kids that may not be able to buy the airfare, whose family may not be able to send them over, even though it doesn’t cost them anything when they get over there. Airfare is not cheap. So we are trying to say that we give a technical experience that kids can’t get anywhere else. It helps the career opportunities decision by opening up, you know, if kids have a bent toward science but never heard of instruments, never heard of spectroscopy, don’t know anything about data analysis. At grades, you know, at say rising freshman level where they’re just going from eighth grade to freshman. This is the time really to hit those kids with look at these opportunities.
So it will help the standard of living, as I say, draw more people into the community that have, that are tech aware people and are worried about their kids education. And then we have this international tie which is an experience that opens up all new kinds of opportunities for kids. They meet friends from not only Italy, but from, you know, there’s many countries represented in this program. So next year we’re going to be able to send 6 or 7 kids to this program. We’ve been upgraded because of the level of kids that we’ve been able to send. But we want to expand that international collaboration. And we want Italian kids to come here, and we want more of our kids to go to Italy and all of this, you know, builds the community, builds opportunities for kids, brings in families that are concerned about that. And so we can make kids aware of the environmental issues of the affected development.
01:08:46:16 – 01:10:35:05 Nick Barbi: So they can make their own decisions. And this is our CoastWise program about whether development is a good thing or whether it’s nonsense. They can look at images, they can compare images before and after. They can see mangroves decreasing in volume or changing in normalized difference vegetative index. And then we could expand this to water quality, agricultural analysis, sustainable farming, air quality to a lesser extent. We’re fortunate enough not to have severe air quality issues here because of the ocean and the breezes and all that kind of thing. So, but the things that care about the community, it teaches the kids not only science, but more about the environment in which they live and how what the real difference between an organically grown product and an organic soil versus non organic and help them understand the choices that they make throughout life. So, you know, the the launches are done and so forth can be, Jacksonville is pretty industrial area, but, you know, we’re noted for our beauty. And so environment becomes a big issue. But we want to also have tech companies, new companies, start ups or relocations of companies here. And we have to show them that there’s some amazing informal STEM education programs and maybe other education programs, not so necessarily STEM oriented, entrepreneurial things, which we’re looking into, an entrepreneurial fair, for example. And so this is to make the area a more prime location for the tech families and tech companies to locate.
01:10:35:06 – 01:12:15:00 Michael P. Taylor: Yeah. Thank you so much. You’ve been great. I’m really pleased and happy you guys were able to join us today. Thank you. Well, again you know any time we’re going to get to interact with, you know, real experts and hear feedback I’m going to sign my kids up for that. Yeah. Even after surgery. Yeah I didn’t get up there. Well, they’ll see it. And that was that was an emergency like we did. I didn’t know that that was going to happen until Monday, so I didn’t actually sign him up like knowing that that was going to be the case.
01:12:15:00 – 01:13:19:01 Tara Merino: Thank you so much, Mike, for all that you do and engaging with students in your time. I mean, it really has been an amazing opportunity. I look forward to seeing what comes out of it this summer. But, I know, you know, not just Michael, but all the students, they really, really enjoyed the summer. They really enjoyed being able to speak to you and to Paul. I know that as Doctor Barbi said, he didn’t really just say that. Like it really was the highlight. They all talked about it for weeks about how they got to talk to NASA. They thought it was the coolest thing. So, you know, I definitely, you know, I appreciate you guys taking the time, making it a memorable experience for them. You know, listening to them and taking their feedback, making them feel part of, you know, a process, making them feel part of a solution and part of, you know, impacting something that’s beyond themselves. I think that was a really inspiring moment for them. So, so thank you for that. And Dr. Barbi, you know, always, you know, thank you for making all the opportunities for our students and the community. You know, it’s awesome to work with you.
Nick Barbi: Yeah. Well thank you. And, great. Back at you, Tara. Thank you very much.
