Hypergravity proposals requested for Spin Your Thesis! 2016
ESA’s Education Office is once again offering university students the opportunity to perform gravity-related experiments in hypergravity, using the Large Diameter Centrifuge at ESTEC, Netherlands.
The seventh Spin Your Thesis! (SYT) campaign will take place in October - November 2016. Students from an ESA Member or Cooperating State are invited to submit their experiment proposals. Four teams of up to four bachelor, master or PhD students will be selected to conduct their experiment during the campaign.
SYT offers students the exclusive opportunity to conduct a series of hypergravity experiments in the Large Diameter Centrifuge (LDC). The LDC is part of the Life and Physical Sciences Instrumentation and Life Support Laboratory (LIS) at ESTEC Europe’s Space Research and Technology centre based in the Netherlands . The experiment payload is integrated into a gondola which is centrifuged, attaining hypergravity levels of up to 20 g. This gravity level can be achieved for periods lasting minutes, hours or even days.
The proposals received will be evaluated by an expert review board, which will select the winning teams. The teams selected to participate in SYT 2016 will be supported by ESA's Education Office and LIS-engineers and additionally will get the opportunity to be mentored by a member of the European Low Gravity Research Association (ELGRA).
The ESA Education Office will provide financial support to cover part of the campaign costs (travel and accommodation) and hardware for the experiment development.
An overview of the SYT programme can be found on the ESA Education website.
Instructions on how to apply are available here.
The submission deadline for SYT 2016 is November 15th 2015.
For further information please send an e-mail to: spinyourthesis @ esa.int
The value of Spin Your Thesis!
During the SYT programme, students not only have access to state-of-the-art research facilities, but also receive valuable feedback from ESA and ELGRA experts.
The programme enables participants to develop important practical skills through hands-on activities, as well as learning about project management, problem solving, development and testing of hardware / software.
As a direct consequence of the research they conducted during SYT campaigns, members of previous student teams have been able to present their results at international conferences and/or publish papers in leading scientific peer-reviewed journals.
SYT also provides opportunities to work in an international environment and network with other students. The experience gained is an important addition to students’ curriculum vitae and increases their chance of being selected for future professional opportunities.
Videos of some previous SYT campaigns can be found here.
How to apply
Details of the Spin Your Thesis! 2016 campaign programme can be found on the ESA Education website.
Instructions on how to apply are available here.
For further information, please e-mail: spinyourthesis @ esa.int.
Spin Your Thesis! 2015
The SYT 2015 campaign will take place September 7-18th, 2015 at ESTEC, Netherlands. Four teams from the United Kingdom, Italy, Greece and Romania were selected to participate. They will examine the use of ultrasonic vibration for extra-terrestrial drilling in granular material; the influence of hypergravity on a carnivorous plant; the effect of hypergravity on heat-resistance and motility of microbes; and the use of different medicine solutions in hypergravity conditions. You can read more about their experiments here.
* ESA Member States in 2015
Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom and Canada (Associate Member)
European Cooperating States
Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia and Slovenia
Cooperating States
Cyprus, Malta
