Nagchaudhuri, A., & Mitra, M., & Persad, A. H., & Waguespack, Y., & Bowden, M. L., & Pinkett, G. L. (2025, June), Novel Mini-Grant Program to Broaden Participation of  Faculty and Students at an MSI with NASA’s  Artemis Mission  Paper presented at 2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition , Montreal, Quebec, Canada . https://peer.asee.org/57003

\bibitem{asee_peer_57003}
  Nagchaudhuri, A., \& Mitra, M., \& Persad, A. H., \& Waguespack, Y., \& Bowden, M. L., \& Pinkett, G. L. (2025, June), \emph{Novel Mini-Grant Program to Broaden Participation of  Faculty and Students at an MSI with NASA’s  Artemis Mission}
  Paper presented at 2025 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition , Montreal, Quebec, Canada .
  https://peer.asee.org/57003

Abhijit Nagchaudhuri, Madhumi Mitra Ph.D, Aaron H. Persad, Yan Waguespack, Mary L Bowden, and Gilbert Lee Pinkett.  "Novel Mini-Grant Program to Broaden Participation of  Faculty and Students at an MSI with NASA’s  Artemis Mission".  2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition , Montreal, Quebec, Canada , 2025, June.  ASEE Conferences, 2025.  https://peer.asee.org/57003 Internet.  20 Aug, 2025

\bibitem{asee_peer_57003}
  Abhijit Nagchaudhuri, Madhumi Mitra Ph.D, Aaron H. Persad, Yan Waguespack, Mary L Bowden, and Gilbert Lee Pinkett.
  "Novel Mini-Grant Program to Broaden Participation of  Faculty and Students at an MSI with NASA’s  Artemis Mission".
  \emph{2025 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition , Montreal, Quebec, Canada , 2025, June}.
  ASEE Conferences, 2025.
  https://peer.asee.org/57003 Internet.  20 Aug, 2025

@INPROCEEDINGS{asee_peer_57003
author = "Abhijit Nagchaudhuri, Madhumi Mitra Ph.D, Aaron H. Persad, Yan Waguespack, Mary L Bowden, and Gilbert Lee Pinkett"
title = "Novel Mini-Grant Program to Broaden Participation of  Faculty and Students at an MSI with NASA’s  Artemis Mission"
booktitle = "2025 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition "
year = "2025"
month = "June"
address = "Montreal, Quebec, Canada "
publisher = "ASEE Conferences"
note = {https://peer.asee.org/57003}
}

TY  - CPAPER
AB  - NASA-MSTAR program has selected the three-year proposal titled “DREAM: Developing Robotic Explorations with Agrobots and Moonbots” at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore(UMES) as one of the nine recipients of their PHASE-III awards in September 2023. The MSTAR is an amalgamation of two acronyms the ‘M’ stands for ‘Minority University Research and Education Program (MUREP) and the STAR can be expanded as ‘Space Technology Artemis Research’. The broad goals for the NASA Artemis mission include landing the first woman and first person of color on the Moon as well as establishing long-term human presence on the Moon. The overarching goals of the funded project at UMES include (i) engaging UMES and non-MSI partner students in experiential and research efforts involving lunar rovers for exploration and autonomous navigation, (ii)preliminary trials with growing plants using robotic platforms in lunar regolith in controlled indoor environments, and (iii) broadly engage the UMES campus community through curriculum integration and innovative projects aligned with the long term vision of the NASA Artemis project.

In alignment with the scope of the 3rd objective listed above the UMES project leaders have incorporated an innovative mini-grant program that solicits proposals that will address any aspect of  NASA’s Artemis project from UMES faculty and student teams from all disciplines in late fall. Two of these mini-proposals will be selected for funding to be implemented in the spring semester annually for the duration of the project (2023-2026). This paper will highlight the implementation, impact, student engagement, and achievements of the two mini-grants that were selected for the first year of the funding cycle.


AU  - Abhijit Nagchaudhuri
AU  - Madhumi Mitra Ph.D
AU  - Aaron H. Persad
AU  - Yan Waguespack
AU  - Mary L Bowden
AU  - Gilbert Lee Pinkett
CY  - Montreal, Quebec, Canada 
DA  - 2025/06/22
PB  - ASEE Conferences
TI  - Novel Mini-Grant Program to Broaden Participation of  Faculty and Students at an MSI with NASA’s  Artemis Mission
UR  - https://peer.asee.org/57003
ER  -