Ally Lewis blends science and art through NASA Psyche Inspired internship program

The NASA Psyche mission is a journey to a unique metal-rich asteroid orbiting the Sun between Mars and Jupiter. What makes the asteroid Psyche unique is that it appears to be the exposed nickel-iron core of an early planet, one of the building blocks of our solar system.

Stemming from this endeavor is Psyche Inspired, a program that brings undergraduate students from any discipline or major together to share the excitement, innovation, and scientific and engineering content of NASA’s Psyche mission with the public in new ways through artistic and creative works.

Ally Lewis, an undergraduate in the Department of Food, Agricultural and Biological Engineering at The Ohio State University, was one of 16 interns selected from around the United States to be a part of the "Tungsten Class," the program's seventh section of interns. 

During the program, the interns had weekly meetings with several NASA employees who work on the Psyche mission, including scientists and researchers working at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California. In addition to the meetings, the interns were assigned four individual projects throughout the year to raise excitement for the NASA Psyche mission both internally and with the general public. 

"Anything that we wanted to create, we would be able to create it," said Lewis. "I did like a range of things like procreate, or charcoal art, and a mixed media bulletin board just to name a few."

This program coincides with the national effort to include the arts within science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education. Both science and art are used to understand the world around us. 

"I've always been a really big believer that science and art should go hand in hand, so I think this kind of showed me how important that really is," said Lewis. "All these important scientists would come to our meetings and talk about how much they loved our work and how much it helps them, and that meant a lot to me."

Check out Ally's four pieces of media and their descriptions on NASA Psyche Inspired's program page. 

This summer, Ally will be working in California for a co-op with Cargill until the end of July, and hopes that she can continue to blend her interests in engineering and art in her future career. 

Learn more about the NASA Psyche Inspired program.