In a garden on Spelman College’s Atlanta campus, plants are keeping a record of the city’s air. When ground-level ozone rises, the leaves show it first: spots, discoloration, injury a trained eye can read. A new NASA grant of nearly $400,000 will pay Spelman students and faculty to read that record with satellite data, and to turn the work into a pipeline that carries Spelman women into Earth science careers.
Spelman announced the award on November 2, 2026. The project is a collaboration with NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, and Stony Brook University in New York. Its formal title states the assignment plainly: “Using TEMPO Satellite Data to Assess Ozone Injury to Plants in Atlanta, Georgia, while Building a Student Research Pipeline at Spelman College.”
A Garden, a Satellite, and a Question About Atlanta Air
TEMPO is NASA’s Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution instrument, which measures air pollution over North America from geostationary orbit. On the ground in Atlanta, the Spelman College Ozone Garden gives the satellite something to be checked against: living plants whose leaves register ozone exposure in visible injury.
Jessica Terrien, Ph.D., assistant professor of environmental and health sciences at Spelman, is the principal investigator. Guanyu Huang, Ph.D., an assistant professor at Stony Brook, is co-investigator. Together they will compare what TEMPO sees from orbit with what the garden shows on campus, building a picture of how ozone exposure relates to plant injury across Atlanta.
The question is practical. Ozone that injures plants is ozone people breathe, and a method that reads pollution in leaf damage gives neighborhoods a local, legible measure of air quality.
Two Years of Research Seats, Including a Summer at NASA Marshall
The grant runs on a two-year clock with named opportunities attached. “For the next two years there will be professional development opportunities open to any Spelman student interested in STEM and two application-based student research opportunities, one here at Spelman and one at the NASA Marshall Center in Alabama over the summer,” Dr. Terrien said.
That structure matters. Professional development is open to any Spelman student with STEM interest, while the two research seats, one on campus and one at a NASA center, are competitive. A student can enter through curiosity and leave with a summer at Marshall on her record.
A Graduate School Pipeline Built Into the Grant
The award is designed to outlast its own funding period. “This award is significant for Spelman College students, it will develop a STEM graduate school pipeline with Stony Brook University,” Dr. Terrien said. “This pipeline introduces students to career opportunities at NASA and research related to NASA TEMPO satellite data.”
Spelman will use the grant to grow its capacity in Earth science education and research, with internships, research positions, mentoring, and curriculum integration named in the announcement. The college describes the collaboration as a long-term framework for future NASA-related research and student development, not a one-off project.
For an HBCU, that framing is the story. Research grants at undergraduate institutions often buy equipment or a single study. This one buys relationships: with a NASA center, with a research university’s graduate programs, and with a federal dataset its students will learn to use firsthand.
The first leaves of the season will tell their part of the story in spots and streaks. The students learning to read them are the larger result.
The Social Register’s event directory tracks the season’s galas, benefits, and society evenings. Plan your next evening there.
