Three App State students awarded NC Space Grants to conduct STEM research

BOONE — Three Appalachian State University students have received North Carolina Space Grants to conduct science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) research in the 2024–25 academic year.

North Carolina Space Grants are funded by NASA and have been administered by North Carolina State University since 1991. Awards benefit undergraduate students as they perform research on App State’s campuses, or at industrial sites or government facilities. The grants also provide students with opportunities to develop relationships with university mentors and NASA experts.

App State’s 2024–25 North Carolina Space Grant recipients:

Cooper Brown, a junior ecology, evolution and environmental biology major from Holly Springs, who is researching greenhouse gasses in Southern Appalachian ponds.Hailey Church, a senior cellular/molecular biology major from Boone, who is also researching greenhouse gasses in Southern Appalachian ponds.Cade Tischer, a senior applied physics major from Cary, who is researching measurements of humidity to predict aerosol liquid water content.

Each student will receive one year of funds to supplement and enhance their research, culminating in a final report and poster presentation to the North Carolina Space Symposium in spring 2025.

About the recipients

Cooper Brown, junior biology major

Brown’s research project is titled “Bubble, Bubble, Gas Leads to Trouble: Greenhouse Gasses in Southern Appalachian Ponds.”

“My research focuses on the factors that contribute to gas emissions from ponds in the Southern Appalachian region that have potential to contribute to the warming of the Earth’s climate,” said Brown. “Previous research has indicated that standing bodies of freshwater, such as ponds and swamps, release disproportionate amounts of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide — three potent greenhouse gasses that are known to contribute to climate change.”

Throughout the 2024–25 academic year, Brown will be taking seasonal samples from App State’s Duck Pond, which is human-made, as well as two naturally occurring ponds in the Pond Mountain Game Lands in Ashe County.

“Looking at the samples we collect from each pond should give us a better outlook on how these ponds vary from each other and how they change from season to season,” she said. “Analyzing the data should be able to tell me how each pond varies in its greenhouse gas production and what may change the amount of emissions that comes from each pond.”

Brown’s research advisors are Dr. Rachel Bleich and Dr. Suzanna Bräuer, assistant professor and professor, respectively, in App State’s Department of Biology, and Dr. Chequita Brooks, a former postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Biology.

Hailey Church, senior biology major

Church is working alongside Brown with her research project, which is titled “Small Cells in a Big Pond: How microbial community activity contributes to greenhouse gas release from Southern Appalachian Ponds.”

Similarly, the project aims to detect the presence of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide in the same three sample ponds.

“This research is important because it can give us a deeper understanding of small retention ponds, like App State’s Duck Pond, and how they can affect the local environment,” said Church.

Church added that her research also aims to observe how seasonal and climate changes can affect microbial communities and the greenhouse gas production fluctuations associated with them.

“While small ponds could be overlooked as a factor in the environment as a whole, they are just another puzzle piece in understanding Earth’s atmosphere,” she said.

Church has the same research advisors as Brown — Bleich, Bräuer and Brooks.

“I am so incredibly thankful to everyone who supports me at App State, including my mentors, advisors and professors,” said Church. “I am also very thankful to my family, whose ongoing support inspires me every day.”

Cade Tischer, senior applied physics major

Tischer’s research project is titled “Humidified Aerosol Light Scattering Measurements for Use as Input to Machine Learning Model to Predict Aerosol Liquid Water Content.” His research is being conducted at the Appalachian Atmospheric Interdisciplinary Research Program (AppalAIR) facilities on the Boone campus.

“I will focus on measuring the humidity dependence of aerosol light scattering,” said Tischer. “The data that is taken will be used by collaborators at Georgia Tech to train a machine learning model to predict aerosol liquid water content.”

Tischer’s research advisor is Dr. James Sherman, professor in App State’s Department of Physics and Astronomy. His findings will contribute to Sherman’s ongoing project titled “Applying Measurements, Models, and Machine Learning to Improve Parameterization of Aerosol Water Uptake and Cloud Condensation Nuclei in the Background Southeastern U.S.,” which is funded by a three-year, $473,741 grant from the National Science Foundation.

“The goal is to use the comprehensive aerosol data sets from the NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) and NASA sites at App State to train a machine learning model to predict water uptake by aerosols and their ability to serve as cloud condensation nuclei (CCN),” said Sherman. “These two parameters are critical to improving the representation of aerosol-cloud interactions in climate models.”

Sherman added that the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Assessment Report identified aerosol-cloud interactions as the largest forcing uncertainty in climate models.

“Cade’s work will involve measurements and analysis of aerosol scattering hygroscopic growth factor, which is an important measure of the ability of aerosols to grow under humid conditions,” he said. “This affects their ability to serve as CCN and to scatter sunlight.”