UT Tyler Houston Engineering Center Student Named NASA Scholar

November 13, 2024 | Hannah Buchanan

Tanjina Islam of Houston, a junior mechanical engineering major at The University of Texas at Tyler Houston Engineering Center, recently participated in the NASA Community College Aerospace Scholars program.

As a scholar, Islam collaborated on NASA’s NCAS Mission 1: Discover and Mission 2: Explore projects. Islam and the team worked to send a rover to the moon to develop a controlled environment to study the effects of radiation and partial gravity on microorganisms.

“Overall, it was a great experience,” said Islam, who will graduate next year with a UT Tyler bachelor’s degree. “I learned to work with a team to get a project done in a short amount of time and networked with a lot of NASA engineers and staff.”

As a highly competitive program, NCAS gives scholars the opportunity to interact and network with NASA engineers and scientists. NCAS can become a stepping-stone for a future career in STEM.

NASA’s Office of STEM Engagement oversees the program. For additional information, visit the NCAS website.

To support the local economy in the Greater Houston area, The University of Texas at Tyler trains the next generation of professionals and helps existing engineers advance their skills at the Houston Engineering Center. For more information, visit uttyler.edu.

With a mission to improve educational and health care outcomes for East Texas and beyond, UT Tyler offers more than 90 undergraduate and graduate programs to more than 10,000 students. Through its alignment with UT Tyler Health Science Center and UT Health East Texas, UT Tyler has unified these entities to serve Texas with quality education, cutting-edge research and excellent patient care. Classified by Carnegie as a doctoral research institution and by U.S. News & World Report as a national university, UT Tyler has campuses in Tyler, Longview, Palestine and Houston.