A Nasa stint for 35 Emirati students

ABU DHABI — For the first time, thirty-five Emirati students from the UAE left on Saturday to participate in a week-long student focused space engineering training session at Houston Space School located at NASA Johnson Space Center. The high school students aged between 16 and 18 were selected from among 4 campuses of the UAE’s Institute of Applied Technology (IAT).

The student training is the first new program of the recently launched Emirati owned Space Ed-Ventures (SEV), a spin-off of the Arab Youth Venture Foundation. SEV will provide space academy experiences for youth at various private space camps and NASA centers through hands-on science, engineering and technology projects for secondary and high school students in the UAE and Saudi Arabia.

In a meeting with the students before their departure, Dr Abdullatif Al Shamsi, director general of IAT, urged them to take full advantage of the programme and their practical training to learn from Nasa’s sophisticated and specialised expertise in space and aviation.

“IAT is always looking at major industrial enterprises and specialised scientific countries that apply the latest technologies in order to ensure that our youth are trained in various disciplines that are required by the global labour market and according to the needs of the UAE,” he stated.

The Nasa programme offers comprehensive training ground for students who wished to further their studies in future at Al Ain International Academy of Aviation.

Hussain Al Ansari, vice president of development projects at the Arab Youth Venture Foundation and CEO of Space Ed-Ventures said 80 students applied for the programme, but 35 were shortlisted based on their English language skills and their interest in space engineering. – olivia@khalejtimes.com

• UAE