Newport resident spends summer at NASA program

Newport Beach resident Lauren Childs is leading a team of fellow geography students at the NASA Stennis Space Center in Bay St. Louis, Miss., studying the effects of hurricanes on forests in Mississippi and Louisiana.

Childs is a graduate student at the University of New Orleans.

She and four other students on her team are participants in NASA’s DEVELOP program and are spending their summer vacation at the center.

With guidance from NASA advisors, the student-run DEVELOP program aids communities by initiating projects to help solve problems in the area.

Childs’ group is implementing a proposal they wrote that would use NASA satellite data to “find better ways to measure forest disturbances after hurricanes.”

— Sue Thoensen