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Two CNS Alumni Find Each Other in Internships at NASA's Ames Research Center

March 30, 2026 Careers

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NASA’s Ames Research Center
NASA’s Ames Research Center

A very small number of people were given internships at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, CA this spring. However, two of these accomplished interns discovered that they were both College of Natural Sciences (CNS) alumni: Neal Lojek (BS '14), who studied biology, and Kacie Li (BS '23), who studied mathematics, statistics, and data science.

Neal Lojek and Kacie Li
CNS alumni Neal Lojek (left) and Kacie Li (right) pose in front of a NASA logo at the Ames Research Center.

Lojek is currently a PhD candidate and a NASA Space Technology Graduate Research Opportunities (NSTGRO) Fellow in biomedical engineering at UMass Lowell, working as a visiting technologist in the Ames Research Center's Space Biosciences Division. Neal's research focuses on developing tissue culture models for understanding the effects of space radiation on brain tissue function.

Li is a graduate AI and machine learning intern in the Ames Research Center's Aeronautics Division. Kacie's research is focused on developing machine learning tools for air traffic management, creating a large language model (LLM) pipeline to consolidate flight rules into a knowledge base that can be queryable by users.

With academics this impressive, you never know where fellow CNS alumni will show up!

Article posted in Careers for Prospective students , Public , and Current students

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