Concord University offers prestigious scholarship for students pursuing education in science
ATHENS, WV (WVNS) — Throughout the next three years, nineteen students at Concord University (CU) will be awarded prestigious scholarships.
According to a press release, the four-year scholarships for up to $60,000, equating to $15,000 per year, will be awarded to students seeking certain science degrees. Students receiving the scholarships will also get a computer and career-focused enrichment activities to bolster their academic and social growth through graduation. This is made possible through a $1 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to Concord University.
WVSOM gears up for their third annual C.A.S.E. camp
CU is looking for interested students to seek Bachelor of Science degrees in chemistry, computer science, computer information systems, and environmental geosciences at the institution.
The school's Science Engagement and Active Mentoring Program (SEAM) is focused on building fellowship among students and contributing to the national need for educated scientists and technicians by supporting high-achieving students with demonstrated financial need. The project is projected to last through 2030.
The SEAM program is will enhance students' STEM and professional identity and development through cohort building, career and entrepreneurial focused trips, mentoring by student peers and faculty members, and different workshops, the release stated. As a special feature, SEAM cohorts will have the chance to be involved in outreach and research at Concord's Materials and Rare Earth Element Analysis Center, as well as Virginia Tech's NSF-funded NanoEarth laboratory. The program aims to grow the STEM workforce within the region.
Hinton Area Foundation offers two new scholarships for 2025
CU is recruiting high school seniors for the incoming SEAM cohort. New first-time freshman, transfer students, and in-state and out-of-state residents are eligible to participate. Students that qualify for the program must be PELL grant eligible. The scholarships offered through SEAM cover tuition, room, and board.
For more information regarding the program, visit their website, or contact Dr. Joe Allen, Concord University Distinguished Professor of Geology/Chair, Department of Physical and Environmental Sciences at 304-384-5238 or by email.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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Yahoo
a day ago
- Yahoo
‘Flooding could end southern Appalachia': the scientists on an urgent mission to save lives
The abandoned homes and razed lots along the meandering Troublesome Creek in rural eastern Kentucky is a constant reminder of the 2022 catastrophic floods that killed dozens of people and displaced thousands more. Among the hardest hit was Fisty, a tiny community where eight homes, two shops and nine people including a woman who uses a wheelchair, her husband and two children, were swept away by the rising creek. Some residents dismissed cellphone alerts of potential flooding due to mistrust and warning fatigue, while for others it was already too late to escape. Landslides trapped the survivors and the deceased for several days. In response, geologists from the University of Kentucky secured a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and raced around collecting perishable data in hope of better understanding the worst flooding event to hit the region in a generation. On a recent morning in Fisty, Harold Baker sat smoking tobacco outside a new prefabricated home while his brother James worked on a car in a makeshift workshop. With no place else to go, the Baker family rebuilt the workshop on the same spot on Troublesome Creek with financial assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema). 'I feel depressed. Everyone else is gone now. The days are long. It feels very lonely when the storms come in,' said Baker, 55, whose four dogs drowned in 2022. With so few people left, the car repair business is way down, the road eerily quiet. Since the flood that took everything, Harold and James patrol the river every time it rains. The vigilance helped avert another catastrophe on Valentine's Day after another so-called generational storm. No one died, but the trauma, like the river, came roaring back. Related: How bad will flooding get by 2100? These AI images show US destinations underwater 'I thought we were going to lose everything again. It was scary,' said Baker. At this spot in July 2022, geologist Ryan Thigpen found flood debris on top of two-storey buildings – 118in (3 metres) off the ground. The water mark on Harold's new trailer shows the February flood hit 23in. Troublesome Creek is a 40-mile narrow tributary of the north fork of the Kentucky River, which, like many waterways across southern Appalachia, does not have a single gauge. Yet these rural mountain hollows are getting slammed over and over by catastrophic flooding – and landslides – as the climate crisis increases rainfall across the region and warmer waters in the Gulf of Mexico turbocharge storms. Two years after 45 people died in the 2022 floods, the scale of disaster grew with Hurricane Helene, which killed more than 230 people with almost half the deaths in Appalachia, after days of relentless rain turned calm streams into unstoppable torrents. Another 23 people died during the February 2025 rains, then 24 more in April during a four-day storm that climate scientists found was made significantly more likely and more severe by the warming planet. The extreme weather is making life unbearable and economically unviable for a chronically underserved region where coal was once king, and climate skepticism remains high. Yet little is known about flooding in the Appalachian region. It's why the geologists – also called earth scientists – got involved. 'This is where most people are going to die unless we create reliable warning systems and model future flood risks for mitigation and to help mountain communities plan for long-term resilience. Otherwise, these extreme flooding events could be the end of southern Appalachia,' said Thigpen. Amid accelerating climate breakdown, the urgency of the mission is clear. Yet this type of applied science could be derailed – or at least curtailed – by the unprecedented assault on science, scientists and federal agencies by Donald Trump and his billionaire donors. Danielle Baker, James's wife, had her bags packed a week in advance of the February flood and was glued to local television weather reports, which, like the geologists, rely on meteorological forecasting by the taxpayer-funded National Weather Service (NWS). She was 'scared to death' watching the creek rise so high again. But this time, the entire family, including 11 dogs and several cats, evacuated to the church on the hill, where they waited 26 hours for the water to subside. 'The people in this community are the best you could meet, but it's a ghost town now. I didn't want to rebuild so close to the creek, but we had nowhere else to go. Every time it rains, I can't sleep,' she said, wiping away tears with her shirt. Danielle was unaware of Trump's plans to dismantle Fema and slash funding from the NWS and NSF. 'A lot of people here would not know what to do without Fema's help. We need more information about the weather, better warnings, because the rains are getting worse,' she said. A day after the Guardian's visit in mid-May, an NWS office in eastern Kentucky scrambled to cover the overnight forecast as severe storms moved through the region, triggering multiple tornadoes that eventually killed 28 people. Hundreds of staff have left the NWS in recent months, through a combination of layoffs and buyouts at the behest of Trump mega-donor Elon Musk's so-called 'department of government efficiency' (Doge). It doesn't matter if people don't believe in climate change. It's going to wallop them anyway … This is a new world of extremes and cascading hazards Ryan Thigpen, geologist Yet statewide, two-thirds of Kentuckians voted for Trump last year, with his vote share closer to 80% in rural communities hit hard by extreme weather, where many still blame Barack Obama for coal mine closures. 'It doesn't matter if people don't believe in climate change. It's going to wallop them anyway. We need to think about watersheds differently. This is a new world of extremes and cascading hazards,' said Thigpen, the geologist. *** The rapidly changing climate is rendering the concept of once-in-a-generation floods, which is mostly based on research by hydrologists going back a hundred years or so, increasingly obsolete. Geologists, on the other hand, look back 10,000 years, which could help better understand flooding patterns when the planet was warmer. Thigpen is spearheading this close-knit group of earth scientists from the university's hazards team based in Lexington. On a recent field trip, nerdy jokes and constant teasing helped keep the mood light, but the scientists are clearly affected by the devastation they have witnessed since 2022. The team has so far documented more than 3,000 landslides triggered by that single extreme rain event, and are still counting. This work is part of a broader statewide push to increase climate resiliency and bolster economic growth using Kentucky-specific scientific research. Last year, the initiative got a major boost when the state secured $24m from the NSF for a five-year research project involving eight Kentucky institutions that has created dozens of science jobs and hundreds of new student opportunities. The grant helped pay for high-tech equipment – drones, radars, sensors and computers – the team needs to collect data and build models to improve hazard prediction and create real-time warning systems. After major storms, the team measures water levels and analyzes the sediment deposits left behind to calculate the scale and velocity of the flooding, which in turn helps calibrate the model. The models help better understand the impact of the topography and each community's built and natural environment – important for future mitigation. In these parts, coal was extracted using mountaintop mine removal, which drastically altered the landscape. Mining – and redirected waterways – can affect the height of a flood, according to a recent study by PhD student Meredith Swallom. A paleo-flood project is also under way, and another PhD student, Luciano Cardone, will soon begin digging into a section of the Kentucky riverbank to collect layers of sediment that holds physical clues on the date, size and velocity of ancient floods. Cardone, who found one local missionary's journal describing flooding in 1795, will provide a historical or geological perspective on catastrophic flooding in the region, which the team believe will help better predict future hazards under changing climatic conditions. All this data is analyzed at the new lab located in the Kentucky Geological Survey (KGS) department, where super-powerful computers are positioned around a ceiling-to-floor black board, with a groovy lamp and artwork to get the creative mathematical juices flowing. So far the team has developed one working flood risk model for a single section of the Kentucky River. This will serve as a template, as each watershed requires its own model so that the data is manageable, precise and useful. This sort of applied science has the capacity to directly improve the lives of local people, including many Trump voters, as well as benefiting other mountainous flood-prone areas across the US and globally. But a flood warning system can only work if there is reliable meteorological forecasting going forward. The floods have made this a ghost town. I doubt it will survive another one. If you mess with Mother Nature, you lose Thomas Hutton of Kentucky Reports suggest NWS weather balloons, which assess storm risk by measuring wind speed, humidity, temperature and other conditions that satellites may not detect, have been canceled in recent weeks from Nebraska to Florida due to staff shortages. At the busiest time for storm predictions, deadly heatwaves and wildfires, weather service staffing is down by more than 10% and, for the first time in almost half a century, some forecasting offices no longer have 24/7 cover. Trump's team is also threatening to slash $1.52bn from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa), the weather service's parent agency, which also monitors climate trends, manages coastal ecosystems and supports international shipping, among other things. 'To build an effective and trusted warning system, we need hyper-local data, including accurate weather forecasts and a more robust network of gauges,' said Summer Brown, a senior lecturer at the University of Kentucky's earth and environmental sciences department. 'The thought of weakening our basic weather data is mind-boggling.' It's impossible not to worry about the cuts, especially as the grand plan is to create a southern Appalachian flood and hazard centre to better understand and prepare the entire region's mountain communities for extreme weather and related hazards, including flash floods, landslides and tornadoes. For this, the team is currently awaiting a multimillion-dollar grant decision from the NSF, in what until recently was a merit-based, peer-reviewed process at the federal agency. The NSF director resigned in April after orders from the White House to accept a 55% cut to the $9bn budget and fire half of the 1,700-person staff. Then, in an unprecedented move, a member of the governing body stepped down, lambasting Musk's unqualified Doge team for interfering in grant decisions. The days are long. It feels very lonely when the storms come in Harold Baker of Kentucky The NSF is the principal federal investor in basic science and engineering, and the proposed cut will be devastating in the US and globally. 'Rivers are different all over Appalachia, and if our research continues, we can build accurate flood and landslide models that help communities plan for storms in a changing climate,' said Jason Dortch, who set up the flood lab. 'We've submitted lots of great grant proposals, and while that is out of our hands, we will continue to push forwarded however we can.' *** Fleming-Neon is a former mining community in Letcher county with roughly 500 residents – a decline of almost 40% in the past two decades. The town was gutted by the 2022 storm, and only two businesses, a car repair shop and a florist, reopened. The launderette, pharmacy, dentist, clothing store and thrift shop were all abandoned. Randall and Bonnie Kincer, a local couple who have been married for 53 years, run the flower shop from an old movie theater on Main Street, which doubles up as a dance studio for elementary school children. The place was rammed with 120in of muddy water in 2022. In February, it was 52in, and everything still reeks of mould. The couple have been convinced by disinformation spread by conspiracy theorists that the recent catastrophic floods across the region, as well as Helene, were caused by inadequate river dredging and cloud seeding. The town's sorry plight, according to the Kincers, is down to deliberate manipulation of the weather system paid for by mining companies to flood out the community in order to gain access to lithium. (There are no significant lithium deposits in the area.) Bonnie, 74, is on the brink of giving up on the dance classes that she has taught since sophomore year, but not on Trump. 'I have total confidence in President Trump. The [federal] cuts will be tough for a little while but there's a lot of waste, so it will level out,' said Bonnie, who is angry about not qualifying for Fema assistance. 'We used all our life savings fixing the studio. But I cannot shovel any more mud, not even for the kids. I am done. I have PTSD. We are scared to death,' she said, breaking down in tears several times. The fear is understandable. On the slope facing the studio, a tiered retainer wall has been anchored into the hill to stabilize the earth and prevent an avalanche from destroying the town below. And at the edge of town, next to the power station on an old mine site, is a towering pile of black sludgy earth littered with lumps of shiny coal – the remnants of a massive landslide that happened as residents cleaned up after the February storm. Thomas Hutton's house was swamped with muddy water after the landslide blocked the creek, forcing it to temporarily change course towards a residential street. 'The floods have made this a ghost town. I doubt it will survive another one. If you mess with Mother Nature, you lose,' said Hutton, 74, a retired miner. The geologists fly drones fitted with Lidar (light detection and ranging): a remote sensing technology that uses pulsed lasers to create high-resolution, 3D, color models of the Earth's surface, and can shoot through trees and human-made structures to detect and monitor changes in terrain including landslides. The affordability and precision of the China-made Lidar has been a 'game changer' for landslides, but prices have recently rocketed thanks to Trump's tariff war. Related: Trump cuts will lead to more deaths in disasters, expert warns: 'It is really scary' The Lidar picked up fairly recent deforestation above the Fleming-Neon power plant, which likely further destabilized the earth. The team agrees that the landslide could keep moving, but without good soil data it's impossible to know when. Last year's NSF grant funded new soil and moisture sensors, as well as mini weather stations, which the landslide team is in the process of installing on 14 steep slopes in eastern Kentucky – the first time this has been done – including one opposite Hutton's house. Back at the lab, the geologists will use the data the sensors send back every 15 minutes to create models – and eventually a website where residents and local emergency managers can see how the soil moisture is changing in real time. The goal is to warn communities when there is a high landslide risk based on the soil saturation – and rain forecast. 'We have taken so many resources from these slopes. We need to understand them better,' said Sarah Johnson, a landslide expert. 'We're not sitting in an ivory tower making money from research. The work we do is about making communities safer.'
Scientific American
3 days ago
- Scientific American
White House Budget Plan Would Devastate U.S. Space Science
Late last week the Trump Administration released its detailed budget request for fiscal year 2026 —a request that, if enacted, would be the equivalent of carpet-bombing the national scientific enterprise. 'This is a profound, generational threat to scientific leadership in the United States,' says Casey Dreier, chief of space policy at the Planetary Society, a science advocacy group. 'If implemented, it would fundamentally undermine and potentially devastate the most unique capabilities that the U.S. has built up over a half-century.' The Trump administration's proposal, which still needs to be approved by Congress, is sure to ignite fierce resistance from scientists and senators alike. Among other agencies, the budget deals staggering blows to NASA and the National Science Foundation (NSF), which together fund the majority of U.S. research in astronomy, astrophysics, planetary science, heliophysics and Earth science —all space-related sciences that have typically mustered hearty bipartisan support. On supporting science journalism If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today. The NSF supports ground-based astronomy, including such facilities as the Nobel Prize–winning gravitational-wave detectors of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), globe-spanning arrays of radio telescopes, and cutting-edge observatories that stretch from Hawaii to the South Pole. The agency faces a lethal 57 percent reduction to its $9-billion budget, with deep cuts to every program except those in President Trump's priority areas, which include artificial intelligence and quantum information science. NASA, which funds space-based observatories, faces a 25 percent reduction, dropping the agency's $24.9-billion budget to $18.8 billion. The proposal beefs up efforts to send humans to the moon and to Mars, but the agency's Science Mission Directorate —home to Mars rovers, the Voyager interstellar probes, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the Hubble Space Telescope, and much more —is looking at a nearly 50 percent reduction, with dozens of missions canceled, turned off or operating on a starvation diet. 'It's an end-game scenario for science at NASA,' says Joel Parriott, director of external affairs and public policy at the American Astronomical Society. 'It's not just the facilities. You're punching a generation-size hole, maybe a multigenerational hole, in the scientific and technical workforce. You don't just Cryovac these people and pull them out when the money comes back. People are going to move on.' Adding to the chaos, on Saturday President Trump announced that billionaire entrepreneur and private astronaut Jared Isaacman was no longer his pick for NASA administrator —just days before the Senate was set to confirm Isaacman's nomination. Initial reports —which have now been disputed —explained the president's decision as stemming from his discovery that Isaacman recently donated money to Democratic candidates. Regardless of the true reason, the decision leaves both NASA and the NSF, whose director abruptly resigned in April, with respective placeholder 'acting' leaders at the top. That leadership vacuum significantly weakens the agencies' ability to fight the proposed budget cuts and advocate for themselves. 'What's more inefficient than a rudderless agency without an empowered leadership?' Dreier asks. Actions versus Words During his second administration, President Trump has repeatedly celebrated U.S. leadership in space. When he nominated Isaacman last December, Trump noted 'NASA's mission of discovery and inspiration' and looked to a future of 'groundbreaking achievements in space science, technology and exploration.' More recently, while celebrating Hubble's 35th anniversary in April, Trump called the telescope 'a symbol of America's unmatched exploratory might' and declared that NASA would 'continue to lead the way in fueling the pursuit of space discovery and exploration.' The administration's budgetary actions speak louder than Trump's words, however. Instead of ushering in a new golden age of space exploration—or even setting up the U.S. to stay atop the podium—the president's budget 'narrows down what the cosmos is to moon and Mars and pretty much nothing else,' Dreier says. 'And the cosmos is a lot bigger, and there's a lot more to learn out there.' Dreier notes that when corrected for inflation, the overall NASA budget would be the lowest it's been since 1961. But in April of that year, the Soviet Union launched the first human into orbit, igniting a space race that swelled NASA's budget and led to the Apollo program putting American astronauts on the moon. Today China's rapid progress and enormous ambitions in space would make the moment ripe for a 21st-century version of this competition, with the U.S. generously funding its own efforts to maintain pole position. Instead the White House's budget would do the exact opposite. 'The seesaw is sort of unbalanced,' says Tony Beasley, director of the NSF-funded National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO). 'On the one side, we're saying, 'Well, China's kicking our ass, and we need to do something about that.' But then we're not going to give any money to anything that might actually do that.' How NASA will achieve a crewed return to the moon and send astronauts to Mars—goals that the agency now considers part of 'winning the second space race'—while also maintaining its leadership in science is unclear. 'This is Russ Vought's budget,' Dreier says, referring to the director of the White House's Office of Management and Budget (OMB), an unelected bureaucrat who has been notorious for his efforts to reshape the U.S. government by weaponizing federal funding. 'This isn't even Trump's budget. Trump's budget would be good for space. This one undermines the president's own claims and ambitions when it comes to space.' 'Low Expectations' at the High Frontier Rumors began swirling about the demise of NASA science in April, when a leaked OMB document described some of the proposed cuts and cancellations. Those included both the beleaguered, bloated Mars Sample Return (MSR) program and the on-time, on-budget Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, the next astrophysics flagship mission. The top-line numbers in the more fleshed-out proposal are consistent with that document, and MSR would still be canceled. But Roman would be granted a stay of execution: rather than being zeroed out, it would be put on life support. 'It's a reprieve from outright termination, but it's still a cut for functionally no reason,' Dreier says. 'In some ways, [the budget] is slightly better than I was expecting. But I had very low expectations.' In the proposal, many of the deepest cuts would be made to NASA science, which would sink from $7.3 billion to $3.9 billion. Earth science missions focused on carbon monitoring and climate change, as well as programs aimed at education and workforce diversity, would be effectively erased by the cuts. But a slew of high-profile planetary science projects would suffer, too, with cancellations proposed for two future Venus missions, the Juno mission that is currently surveilling Jupiter, the New Horizons mission that flew by Pluto and two Mars orbiters. (The Dragonfly mission to Saturn's moon Titan would survive, as would the flagship Europa Clipper spacecraft, which launched last October.) NASA's international partnerships in planetary science fare poorly, too, as the budget rescinds the agency's involvement with multiple European-led projects, including a Venus mission and Mars rover. The proposal is even worse for NASA astrophysics—the study of our cosmic home—which 'really takes it to the chin,' Dreier says, with a roughly $1-billion drop to just $523 million. In the president's proposal, only three big astrophysics missions would survive: the soon-to-launch Roman and the already-operational Hubble and JWST. The rest of NASA's active astrophysics missions, which include the Chandra X-ray Observatory, the Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope and the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), would be severely pared back or zeroed out. Additionally, the budget would nix NASA's contributions to large European missions, such as a future space-based gravitational-wave observatory. 'This is the most powerful fleet of missions in the history of the study of astrophysics from space,' says John O'Meara, chief scientist at the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii and co-chair of a recent senior review panel that evaluated NASA's astrophysics missions. The report found that each reviewed mission 'continues to be capable of producing important, impactful science.' This fleet, O'Meara adds, is more than the sum of its parts, with much of its power emerging from synergies among multiple telescopes that study the cosmos in many different types, or wavelengths, of light. By hollowing out NASA's science to ruthlessly focus on crewed missions, the White House budget might be charitably viewed as seeking to rekindle a heroic age of spaceflight—with China's burgeoning space program as the new archrival. But even for these supposedly high-priority initiatives, the proposed funding levels appear too anemic and meager to give the U.S. any competitive edge. For example, the budget directs about $1 billion to new technology investments to support crewed Mars missions while conservative estimates have projected that such voyages would cost hundreds of billions of dollars more. 'It cedes U.S. leadership in space science at a time when other nations, particularly China, are increasing their ambitions,' Dreier says. 'It completely flies in the face of the president's own stated goals for American leadership in space.' Undermining the Foundation The NSF's situation , which one senior space scientist predicted would be 'diabolical' when the NASA numbers leaked back in April, is also unsurprisingly dire. Unlike NASA, which is focused on space science and exploration, the NSF's programs span the sweep of scientific disciplines, meaning that even small, isolated cuts—let alone the enormous ones that the budget has proposed—can have shockingly large effects on certain research domains. 'Across the different parts of the NSF, the programs that are upvoted are the president's strategic initiatives, but then everything else gets hit,' Beasley says. Several large-scale NSF-funded projects would escape more or less intact. Among these are the panoramic Vera C. Rubin Observatory, scheduled to unveil its first science images later this month, and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) radio telescope. The budget also moves the Giant Magellan Telescope, which would boast starlight-gathering mirrors totaling more than 25 meters across, into a final design phase. All three of those facilities take advantage of Chile's pristine dark skies. Other large NSF-funded projects that would survive include the proposed Next Generation Very Large Array of radio telescopes in New Mexico and several facilities at the South Pole, such as the IceCube Neutrino Observatory. If this budget is enacted, however, NSF officials anticipate only funding a measly 7 percent of research proposals overall rather than 25 percent; the number of graduate research fellowships awarded would be cleaved in half, and postdoctoral fellowships in the physical sciences would drop to zero. NRAO's Green Bank Observatory — home to the largest steerable single-dish radio telescope on the planet — would likely shut down. So would other, smaller observatories in Arizona and Chile. The Thirty Meter Telescope, a humongous, perennially embattled project with no clear site selection, would be canceled. And the budget proposes closing one of the two gravitational-wave detectors used by the LIGO collaboration—whose observations of colliding black holes earned the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics—even though both detectors need to be online for LIGO's experiment to work. Even factoring in other operational detectors, such as Virgo in Europe and the Kamioka Gravitational Wave Detector (KAGRA) in Japan, shutting down half of LIGO would leave a gaping blind spot in humanity's gravitational-wave view of the heavens. 'The consequences of this budget are that key scientific priorities, on the ground and in space, will take at least a decade longer—or not be realized at all,' O'Meara says. 'The universe is telling its story at all wavelengths. It doesn't care what you build, but if you want to hear that story, you must build many things.' Dreier, Parriott and others are anticipating fierce battles on Capitol Hill. And already both Democratic and Republican legislators have issued statement signaling that they won't support the budget request as is. 'This sick joke of a budget is a nonstarter,' said Representative Zoe Lofgren of California, ranking member of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, in a recent statement. And in an earlier statement, Senator Susan Collins of Maine, chair of the powerful Senate Committee on Appropriations, cautioned that 'the President's Budget Request is simply one step in the annual budget process.' The Trump administration has 'thrown a huge punch here, and there will be a certain back-reaction, and we'll end up in the middle somewhere,' Beasley says. 'The mistake you can make right now is to assume that this represents finalized decisions and the future—because it doesn't.'
Associated Press
4 days ago
- Associated Press
Tuurny Announces Breakthrough in AI-Powered PCB Repair Automation, Backed by NASA-Funded Grant Through SATOP
06/04/2025, College Station, TX // KISS PR Brand Story PressWire // Tuurny, a robotics and AI company specializing in advanced automation systems for electronics repair, has announced the development of a groundbreaking AI assistant designed to detect and guide repairs for faults on printed circuit boards (PCBs). The innovation stems from a year-long collaboration with undergraduate and graduate engineering teams at Texas A&M University and has been made possible through a NASA-funded grant administered by the Space Alliance Technology Outreach Program (SATOP). Tuurny's proprietary platform combines computer vision and a custom large language model (LLM) to create a truly intelligent assistant—capable of analyzing standard photos and videos of PCBs to detect faults, assess repair viability, and deliver step-by-step guidance to technicians. The system continuously monitors progress through real-time visual feedback and allows for dynamic technician interaction, enabling both trainees and professionals to perform complex repairs with precision and confidence. 'With the support of local leaders like Jose Quintana from AdventGX, organizations such as the Greater Brazos Partnership, and technical advisors from engineering firms like TStar, we've been able to turn high-concept ideas into working solutions,' said Sina Ghashghaei, CEO of Tuurny. 'These partnerships have laid the foundation for building companies that not only push the frontier of innovation but also create local jobs in national security-critical industries.' Strategic Impact on Aerospace and Defense Tuurny's technology is particularly relevant to the aerospace and defense sectors, where legacy systems often rely on hard-to-source PCBs and where the cost of system downtime can be measured in strategic risk. By enabling rapid, AI-assisted diagnostics and repair—without the need for highly specialized human labor—Tuurny offers a scalable solution for maintaining, extending, and securing mission-critical infrastructure. The company's tools are also designed with onshoring in mind, reducing dependence on foreign repair supply chains and bolstering U.S. capabilities in microelectronics, avionics, and battlefield electronics. As the U.S. pushes for greater self-reliance in semiconductor and advanced manufacturing, Tuurny is building the support layer for a new generation of resilient, intelligent, and automated repair systems. Media Contact: Sina Ghashghaei CEO, Tuurny Robotics [email protected] [ ]
