Juliana Vernon is a 21-year-old City College student whose handiwork has been
out of this world, literally.

The chemical engineering major spent both summers in her freshman and sophomore years working on experiments at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, that were later carried into space on two separate shuttle missions.

"I worked in the micro gravity center with protein crystallization and two of the experiments went on space shuttle flights, in the summer of 2000 and last summer," says Ms. Vernon, who begins her senior year in the fall. "On the second flight, I did the packaging and loading of the actual protein and solution that formed the crystals."

"The theory is that in micro gravity, there's no movement, no convection and
no sedimentation so that we can produce perfect crystals. And perfect crystals can lead to the manufacture of better medicines," she adds.
An Amoco Scholar in CCNY's School of Engineering since her freshman year, Ms. Vernon made such an impression on her first stint at the Marshall Space Flight Center in 2000 as a NASA/NACME intern that the NASA invited her back to continue her research in 2001.

The Bronx resident and graduate of Cardinal Spellman High School declined
another invitation to work at Marshall this summer in order to concentrate on her studies at CCNY where she is also a Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation (LSAMP) Scholar. The Alliance's goal is to substantially increase the number of underrepresented minority students who pursue and graduate with baccalaureate degrees in Science, Mathematics, Engineering, and Technology.

Under the mentorship of Dr. Mark Shattuck from the CCNY School of Engineering, Ms. Vernon joined other LSAMP Summer 2002 research participants in a poster session at CCNY recently. Her presentation was entitled, "Testing The Dense Law Equivalence For Shaken Granular Particles."
Her long-term goal is to earn a PhD in one of the sciences. "I also want to get a masters degree in business administration," she adds. "I feel that once you have a knowledge of business, it will help you succeed in the sciences."

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