Southern Miss hosting Mars simulation workshop for high school students | Schools

Students from three Gulf Coast area high schools will have a unique opportunity to brainstorm experimental ideas as part of a Mars simulation workshop conducted by Dr. Scott Milroy, assistant professor of marine science at The University of Southern Mississippi.

The workshop is set for Dec. 10 at the Fleming Educational Center Auditorium on the Southern Miss Gulf Park campus in Long Beach. Approximately 95 students from Bay High School and St. Stanislaus High School in Mississippi will join a group from Baker & Davidson High School in Mobile, Ala., for the workshop which will focus on the concept of growing cyanobacteria under extreme planetary conditions similar to the surface of Mars.

Former Southern Miss professor and current University of South Alabama Professor Julie Cwikla, along with science writer Tara Skelton, are working with Milroy on a NASA-funded research project that includes an attempt to grow a form of blue-green algae – known as cyanobacteria – in incubation chambers at the Marine Science Lab at the Southern Miss Gulf Park campus in Long Beach, Miss. The hope is to mimic conditions that exist on Mars.

For more on this article, click HERE to go to the USM website.