Mexican student goes to NASA

“I'm very happy because NASA has accepted me for a fourth-month internship. There were students from Lithuania, Romania, Japan, Germany, and Brazil,” says 20-year-old Rubén García Ruiz, a student of Information Technology Engineering at the Technological University of La Selva (UTS) in Ocosingo, entrance to the Lacandona Jungle in Mexico.

This young man, with the highest grades, is the first Chiapas student to be accepted in the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) for a fourth-month internship, together with nine students from other countries, including another Mexican from Tamaulipas, who has a doctorate.

Last Wednesday, Governor Manuel Velasco Coello visited the Technological University of La Selva and congratulated Rubén for his internship at NASA, which begins next month and concludes in December.

Rubén, who has completed 70% of his program credits, is excited to travel to the United States and celebrated the visit of the Governor to his University.

With only 20 years of age, this young man says his upcoming trip and internship at NASA “speak well of his university and his state, Chiapas,” considering the trip is “very important.”

In order to win this place, he had to compete with Ph.D. and Master students from around the world.

During his engineering studies, Ruben has won several Maths and Physics contests at a local, state and National level.

In order for Ruben and the UTS to be able to participate in the NASA exam, they needed to sign an agreement with the Mexican Space Agency (AEM) , which was executed five years ago.

Thanks to this document, Rubén will now study at the Ames Research Center in California, a NASA institution, and will form part of the team which will develop space technology programming for the project SPHERES/Astrobee Facility .

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