2019 update:John Yi ’03, Teacher Prep alumnus and NJ Millburn High School science teacher, led a group of students from his space exploration course to develop a NASA award winning app.
The group, Team Mercury, developed and submitted the app to NASA’s App Development Challenge, a pilot program that is part of the agency’s Next Generation STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) Initiative. The Team Mercury app visualized stimulated test data to support NASA’s Orion Ascent Abort-2 (AA-2) flight test, an important step in demonstrating the safety of the capsule NASA is developing to carry astronauts back to the moon.
The app was one of two Challenge winners . As competition winners, the students and John were invited to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center for an all-expenses-paid five day trip June 2019. During their visit to NASA’s facilities and labs, Team Mercury attended the Ascent Abort-2 flight test. They also ran their app with actual flight test data and had the opportunity to present their app to the AA-2 engineering team and NASA leadership.
Congratulations to Team Mercury, John Yi ‘03, and Millburn High School on their achievement!
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I majored in chemistry and was a part of Teacher Prep, graduating from Princeton in 2003. Upon completing my M.S. in chemistry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, I returned to Princeton for my student teaching in the fall of 2004. Since then I’ve been at Millburn High School in Millburn, NJ, where I teach (chemistry) and coach (cross country and track). I served as the science department chair for five years, but now I’m back in the classroom full-time. My most recent passion has been developing and teaching an interdisciplinary elective (“Space Exploration”) in which we examine how and why humans explore space.