Representatives of NASA materials science experiments supported the NASA exhibit at the Rernselaer Polytechnic Institute's Space Week activities, April 5 through 11, 1999. From left to right are: Angie Jackman, project manager at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center for dendritic growth experiments; Dr. Martin Glicksman of Rennselaer Polytechnic Instutute, Troy, NY, principal investigator on the Isothermal Dendritic Growth Experiment (IDGE) that flew three times on the Space Shuttle; and Dr. Matthew Koss of College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, MA, a co-investigator on the IDGE and now principal investigator on the Transient Dendritic Solidification Experiment being developed for the International Space Station (ISS). The image at far left is a dendrite grown in Glicksman's IDGE tests aboard the Shuttle. Glicksman is also principal investigator for the Evolution of Local Microstructures: Spatial Instabilities of Coarsening Clusters.

Matthew Koss (forground) and Martin Glicksman (rear), principal investigator and lead scientist (respectively), review plans for the next step in the Isothermal Dendritic Growth Experiment (IDGE) during the U.S. Microgravity Payload-4 (USMP-4) mission (STS-87, Nov. 19 - Dec. 5, 1997). Remote Operations Control Center (ROCC) like this one, at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in Troy, NY, will become more common during operations with the International Space Station. IDGE, flown on three Space Shuttle missions, is yielding new insights into virtually all industrially relavent metal and alloy forming operations. Photo credit: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI)