I am a fourth-year Ph.D. student in the Department of Biosystems Engineering. In previous years, I attended the University of Arizona and received a BS in Chemistry in 1997 and an MS in Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering in 2004. During the last few years, I have been involved with the SBAR (Sustainable Bioeconomy for Arid Regions) Education and Outreach program at the University of Arizona. From 2017-2020, I assisted in organizing a biofuels camp and served a fellowship teaching middle school students the concepts of biofuels and farming as applied with the crops of guayule and guar. My Ph.D. research involves the irrigation management of guayule here in Arizona. In this capacity, I help apply the use of field sensors to monitor soil moisture content and water stress in the plants as well as apply an irrigation computer modeling approach called WINDS.

My NASA Education and Outreach project involves working with middle school-aged students from a local school in Tucson. There, I will be teaching them the concepts related to the Environmental Control and Life Support Systems (ECLSS) modules that are a part of the International Space Station (ISS). Much of the education efforts will be centered around science concepts that are a part of how the Life Support Systems operate in space. The education projects also take an approach of relating these science principles to real-world situations on Earth. For example, the science concepts of humidity control on the space station can also be applied towards preserving museum artifacts or preventing electrostatic discharge to electronic devices.

[Update] View Matthew's curriculum materials here: https://github.com/mkatterman/NASA-Life-Support-Systems-Lessons---Valen…