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Science fair winner aims for the sky

Young student showing science fair project to judge (Download Image)

Shuaib Amiri of Livermore’s Christensen Middle School won second place for his project CloudSat at the 2008 Tri-Valley Science and Engineering Fair

How many students get to use a satellite in their science projects? Shuaib Amiri, an eighth-grade student at Livermore’s Christensen Middle School, did just that for his winning entry "CloudSat" that won a second place award in this year’s Tri-Valley Science and Engineering Fair sponsored by LLNL in March.

With the help of his science teacher Regina Brinker, Amiri became interested in the NASA satellite program that provides observations to help understand clouds and their influence on weather and climate. For his science fair project, he used CloudSat to observe and analyze smoke clouds from the wildfires that plagued California last fall.

"It was cool working with a satellite," Amiri said. "I take pictures of clouds and then analyze the differences from the radar images to my photos."

Colorado State University is one of the partners of CloudSat, providing scientific guidance and support to the mission. Brinker is part of the Cloud Education Network (CEN) sponsored by CSU. Amiri is featured on the Colorado State University (CSU) CloudSat education and outreach Web page.

May 2, 2008