The 2020 JSIP planning started in January 2020. The purpose of the JSIP is to provide UCLA undergraduate students an opportunity to conduct cutting-edge research under the joint mentorship of JPL scientists/engineers and UCLA faculty/researchers, and strengthen the collaborations between JPL and UCLA. The internship normally runs for 10 weeks. To be eligible for the program, the students need to be a continuing student and eligible for fall quarter registration at UCLA with at least three quarters completed at UCLA and a minimum cumulative GPA of 2.5/4.0. The program AOs were posted at JIFRESSE website and UCLA Undergraduate Research Portal, accessible to all UCLA students.

In the summer of 2020, six UCLA students have been awarded the internship for their outstanding academic performance and passion for science and engineering. All interns worked remotely due to the pandemic. The six projects were:

    Project 1: Tracking Atmospheric River and Hurricane Storm Water

          Intern: Mackenzie Anderson

          Mentors: Dr. Donald F. Argus (JPL) / Prof. Dennis Lettenmaier (UCLA)

    Project 2: Explore Earth Observation From Lunar Vantage Point

          Intern: Mark Nasielski

          Mentors: Dr. Jonathan Jiang (JPL) / Prof. David Paige (UCLA)

    Project 3: Impact of Droughts on Carbon and Water Cycling Across Tropical Forests

          Intern: Griffin Carter

          Mentors: Dr. Sassan Saatchi (JPL), Dr. Marcos Longo (JPL) / Prof. Rong Fu (UCLA)

     Project 4: Understanding the Optical Properties of Coarse Desert Dust

          Intern: Alana Dodero

          Mentors: Dr. Olga Kalashnikova (JPL) / Prof. Jasper Kok (UCLA)

    Project 5: Understanding the Atmospheric Response to Arctic Amplification

          Intern: Noah Alviz

          Mentors: Dr. Hui Su (JPL) / Prof. Gang Chen (UCLA)

    Project 6: Vegetation Structure and Biomass Retrieval Using Data Fusion

          Intern: Corisa Wong

          Mentors: Dr. Liang Xu (JPL) / Dr. Luciana Alves (UCLA)

To facilitate the intern-mentor interactions, JIFRESSE organized the following activities during the program:

• Program kick-off meeting on July 8, 2020 on Zoom
• Bi-weekly project updates on July 17, July 31, August 21, September 4 on Zoom
• Mid-term progress review on August 7, 2020 on Zoom
• Final project presentation on September 18, 2020 on Zoom
• Final written reports collected by September 18, 2020.

The program was successfully completed on September 18, 2020, with written report submitted by each of the JSIP interns.