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Chase Student To Research Baby Stars at Caltech

Catria Gadwah-Meaden, a freshman at Chase Collegiate School, will be spending her summer in California researching stars - and not the Hollywood kind. Gadwah-Meaden will be part of a prestigious team of teachers and students who will be doing astronomical research using archival data at California Institute of Technology (Caltech). The program, called NASA IPAC Teacher Archive Research Program (NITARP), will investigate data from the Hershel space telescope in order to provide a further understanding of baby stars.

"It is going to be a once in a lifetime educational experience to work with a group of scientists and further investigate baby stars," says the Meriden native. "It will provide me with memories to last a lifetime and will give me a priceless educational opportunity." Professors and teachers from the across the country apply, and, if chosen, then select two or three students to form a group that will work together to investigate concepts and diagnostic tools in order to gain an understanding of the formation, birth, and evolution of the stars. Gadwah-Meaden was selected by her neighbor, Carol Ivers, an astronomy professor at Central Connecticut State University. "She applied to the program and, once accepted into scientist Babar Ali's group, asked me to join her subgroup," explains Gadwah-Meaden. Next January, all participating groups will go to Washington D.C. to present their work.

 "This may be a potential career path for me," says Gadwah-Meaden. "I have never studied astronomy before and I am very excited to explore a new area of science. So far the program has been very intriguing and I am interested to see where it takes me."

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