Last year, NASA funded about $28 million in grants to support research and educational programs in North Carolina. Next year, Dr. Chris Brown hopes it will be even more.

Brown is director of space programs at the Kenan Institute for Engineering, Technology & Science at North Carolina State University. He has organized an unprecedented coalition of researchers and educators from across the state to meet with seven senior representatives from NASA on Wednesday, April 24, in hopes of convincing the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to increase its level of support for research and educational programs in North Carolina.

The meeting will take place from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. in the auditorium of the Engineering Graduate Research Center on NC State's Centennial Campus. Media coverage is welcomed. A NASA representative will be available for interviews at 3:15 p.m.; local scientists will be available for interviews at 4 p.m.

Institutions participating in the historic initiative include NC State; UNC-CH; Duke University; the Research Triangle Institute; N.C. A&T State University; MCNC; and the Office of the President of UNC.

"We are banding together to present the case for North Carolina," Brown said. "Working together, we can go after a bigger piece of the pie, rather than each of us competing for smaller individual slices. NASA has played a significant role in research and education throughout our state. We would like to continue, and expand, this partnership."

Of the $28 million NASA awarded to programs in N.C. last year, about $13 million of it went to industry researchers; $5 million went to nonprofit organizations; and $10 million went to universities, including about $7 million to research and educational programs in the University of North Carolina system. NASA-supported programs at NC State include the plant gravitational genomics research group in the botany department, a project in the physics department that studies X-ray emissions and the dynamics of supernovae remnants, and many others.

The daylong meeting is sponsored by the North Carolina Space Initiative, a Kenan Institute program.

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