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Education

Teachers built radio telescopes—and a community

DSPIRA — Digital Signal Processing in Radio Astronomy — began as an NSF Research Experiences for Teachers site run by the lab with the WVU Center for Gravitational Waves and Cosmology and the 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 the momentum of DSPIRA's in-person summers, but the original RET award was seed funding—not an expiration date. The project continues through its educators, open curriculum, and telescope platform; the outreach component of NSF Award 2511256 is developing a more robust generation of DSPIRA-based outreach receivers through 2028.

Still active

The lessons and community are active

Teachers and lab contributors maintain 51 public lessons covering the astronomy, hardware, signal processing, and labs. The discussion forum and group meetings keep the collaboration open to educators, students, and independent telescope builders.

  • Horn Construction
  • Receiver Electronics
  • Software Setup
  • Observing
  • Digital Signal Processing
  • Astronomy
  • Community Labs
Open the lessons site
Current NSF work
2025–28Award 2511256 · DSPIRA-based outreach hardware
In-person cohorts
3Documented here from 2017–19
Teachers hosted
15+NSF reports more than 15, many returning
Lessons published
51Free, 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 three known in-person cohorts from 2017–19.

01 · 2017–2019

Three in-person cohorts

Teachers spent six weeks at WVU and Green Bank building instruments, observing the Milky Way, and carrying 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 consolidated lectures, labs, setup guides, and technical discussion into an online home.

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. The outreach component of NSF Award 2511256 now uses DSPIRA receivers as prototypes for a more robust lab for high-school teachers and students, while continuing education-oriented receiver development 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 doing engineering rather than reading about it, finishing at Green Bank with an instrument they had built themselves.

  1. Build the telescope

    Each teacher assembled a horn antenna and a low-noise amplifier from sheet metal and off-the-shelf parts, then tested it in the RF lab at WVU.

  2. Learn the tools

    GNU Radio, Python and software-defined radio — the same open-source stack the lab uses to commission real instruments, not a teaching substitute.

  3. Observe

    Six weeks ended at Green Bank, mapping neutral hydrogen in the Milky Way with the horn they had built, alongside the observatory's own telescopes.

  4. Take it back to class

    Each cohort wrote lessons and classroom exercises from what they had done, and continued the projects with their own students during the school year.

Who came

Three archived in-person cohorts

These rosters contain 15 teachers from 8 states filling 21 places—four returned for a second or third summer. NSF's final report counts more than 15 teachers across five summers, so this is not a complete census of the project's later participation.

2019

6 teachers
  • John Makous NCreturning
  • Howard Chun RIreturning
  • Tad Herman NYreturning
  • John Clarke FLreturning
  • Robert Baker CA
  • Michael Stover WV
2019 summer

2018

6 teachers
  • John Makous NCreturning
  • Howard Chun RIreturning
  • 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 & presented

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

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 as prototypes for a more robust lab for high-school teachers and students, while continuing education-oriented receiver development 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.