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Flying WV
West Virginia University Radio Astronomy Instrumentation Laboratory

Education

Explore radio astronomy with DSPIRA

Free activities for classrooms, students, and telescope builders. Choose a lesson, prepare a class, or start a telescope project.

Find a lesson Teach with DSPIRA Request a kit

The lessons remain active beyond the historical summer cohorts. Read the program history.

Resources for your project

Browse all 50 lessons, or get help with your next practical step.

Program history, cohorts, and funding

DSPIRA stands for Digital Signal Processing in Radio Astronomy. It began as an NSF Research Experiences for Teachers site run by the lab. Partners included the WVU Center for Gravitational Waves and Cosmology and Green Bank Observatory. Three documented in-person cohorts built working horn radio telescopes in 2017–19. Beginning in 2020, participants concentrated on making the curriculum and collaboration available online.

The pandemic interrupted DSPIRA's in-person summers. However, the original RET award provided seed funding, without defining the project's end. Educators, the open curriculum, and the telescope platform keep the project active. NSF Award 2511256 supports outreach receiver development through 2028. This work aims to make DSPIRA-based receivers more robust.

Current NSF work
2025–28 Award 2511256 · DSPIRA-based outreach hardware
In-person cohorts
3 Documented here from 2017–19
Teachers hosted
15+ NSF reports more than 15, many returning
Lessons published
50 Free, open, and maintained

Program timeline

The grant ended. The work changed shape.

The original proposal planned three summer cohorts. NSF Award 1611114 ran through 2021, and its final report describes teacher participation and program development across five summers. The detailed archive here covers the 3 known in-person cohorts from 2017–19.

01 · 2017–2019

Three in-person cohorts

Teachers spent six weeks building instruments and observing the Milky Way at WVU and Green Bank. They brought these projects back to their classrooms. These are the three cohorts documented in detail on this site.

02 · 2020–2021

The work moved online

The public lessons repository launched in July 2020. During the award's final two years, teachers and staff created an online home. It brought together lectures, labs, setup guides, and technical discussions.

03 · 2022–present

DSPIRA's next hardware chapter

The in-person summers did not return to their earlier cadence, but the educator network, lessons, and telescope platform continued. NSF Award 2511256 uses DSPIRA receivers to prototype a more robust lab for high school teachers and students. Its outreach work also develops educational receivers for STEM programs at WVU and Yale.

Current NSF Award 2511256 Original RET Award 1611114

The in-person program

Six weeks, one telescope each

Teachers spent the summer practicing engineering. They finished at Green Bank with instruments they had built themselves.

  1. 1

    Build the telescope

    Each teacher built a horn antenna and low-noise amplifier from sheet metal and readily available parts. They tested their instruments in WVU's RF lab.

  2. 2

    Learn the tools

    GNU Radio, Python, and software-defined radio form the open-source toolkit. The lab uses these same tools to commission research instruments.

  3. 3

    Observe

    The six weeks ended with neutral-hydrogen mapping at Green Bank. Teachers used their own horns alongside the observatory's telescopes.

  4. 4

    Take it back to class

    Each cohort turned its experience into lessons and classroom exercises. Teachers continued these projects with their students during the school year.

Who came

Archived in-person cohorts

These rosters contain 15 teachers from 8 states filling 21 places — 4 returned for a second or third summer. NSF's final report covers five summers and more teachers than these rosters list. These pages do not document every later participant.

2019

6 teachers

  • John Makous NC returning
  • Howard Chun RI returning
  • Tad Herman NY returning
  • John Clarke FL returning
  • Robert Baker CA
  • Michael Stover WV

2019 summer

2018

6 teachers

  • John Makous NC returning
  • Howard Chun RI returning
  • Alexis Emch WV
  • Daniel Bonnette WV
  • Tad Herman NY
  • John Clarke FL

Joined by two undergraduate researchers, from WVU and Toronto

2018 summer

2017

9 teachers

  • Jamie Avalos TX
  • Howard Chun RI
  • Denise Gipson WV
  • Eric Goff WV
  • Wendy Lee WV
  • John Makous NC
  • Adam Osborne WV
  • Shane Price WV
  • LaShonda Torbert MD

2017 summer

What came out of it

Published and presented

Teachers did not just attend. They published classroom research, co-authored the program's conference paper, and presented their work to other engineers.

Credits

Funding and continuity

Seed funding started the work. The community and hardware carried it forward.

Investigators
Natalia Schmid and Kevin Bandura
GBO coordinator
Richard Prestage
Partners
  • WVU Lane Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering
  • WVU Center for Gravitational Waves and Cosmology
  • Green Bank Observatory
Seed funding
NSF Award 1611114
RET Site in Engineering and Computer Science: Digital Signal Processing in Radio Astronomy
$577,815 · January 1, 2017–December 31, 2021
Current DSPIRA-based hardware
NSF Award 2511256 · 2025–2028

Its outreach component uses DSPIRA receivers to prototype a more robust lab for high school teachers and students.

It also develops educational receivers for STEM programs at WVU and Yale.

Related teacher workshop
NSF Award 2426044 funded the 2025 STARS workshop, extending DSPIRA to another group of educators.