Space for Innovation
Through the Innovation Scholars Program, a team of St. Olaf students partnered with NASA to analyze new ways that space technology can be used on Earth. The program, which celebrates its 20th anniversary this year, has provided a powerful hands-on learning experience for scores of Oles — and helped many shape their careers.
The mention of NASA likely brings to mind images of rocket ships, astronauts, and deep space exploration like the recent Artemis II mission to the moon. But for a team of St. Olaf College students this year, the work was grounded much closer to home — in the classroom, evaluating the terrestrial applications of an extraterrestrial device.
Through the Innovation Scholars Program, St. Olaf students partnered with NASA over the month of January to explore how an early-stage nanosensor to detect toxic gases and UV radiation might be used beyond its original intent. Over the course of several weeks, the team analyzed the technology, researched potential applications, and developed recommendations for how it could be implemented in professional settings.
The team of St. Olaf students — Mariam Adamyan ’26, Kieran Haaland ’27, Cole Kehrberg ’26, and Aubrey Mattson ’26 — was advised by Darin Oenning ’96, an alumnus who has deep expertise in business development and product planning and also teaches in the college’s Biology Department .
“This project is unique in that it has a combination of technology and business — it kind of brings both together,” Oenning notes. “Every project in Innovation Scholars has a technology basis. Most of the students are trying to figure out what to do with the technology or a patent, and how to apply it to the real world. Perhaps most importantly, they’re working on a real project. They’re challenged with trying to present and offer something that’s going to be meaningful in the end for the customer or the client, in this case NASA, and for our students. The companies are always very interested in the outcome and the input from the students.”
After a rigorous application and acceptance process, the team received their assigned patents and were charged with understanding them by January Term. They then embarked on an intensive month of research and idea development, culminating in their final presentation to NASA and other Innovation Scholars students and partner organizations in February.
“We were all constantly learning from one another, collaborating closely, and recognizing each other’s strengths and weaknesses. It’s a great experience to meet people from different fields, come together around one project, feel really strong about the work you’re doing, and present it. You’re constantly learning from each other and figuring out how to bring those perspectives together into something cohesive.” — Aubrey Mattson ’26
“We began with a tech review to understand the patent claims from NASA, which detailed an early stage, sensitive, and durable diode sensor that could detect gaseous species and UV radiation,” Kehrberg explains.
“With an understanding of the technology, we were able to transition into broader market research. After looking into new and existing applications, we developed a screening method for our list of 46 potential applications, enabling us to determine which ideas to develop. We ended up selecting three recommendations to detail in our final deliverables, but the remaining 43 applications were included in the final report to NASA.”
Throughout the project, the students faced a number of challenges, including understanding the technology, handling a fast-paced work environment, connecting differing perspectives, and defining criteria for their technical applications.
“I’d say the biggest challenge was just the ambiguity,” Haaland says. “I’m someone who thrives in environments where I know exactly what I need to do and when I need to do it, and then I deliver on that. By contrast, this was a project where we didn’t know what we needed to do, we didn’t have a clear end goal, we didn’t even know what exactly we were starting with. Being able to take that through a whole project obviously has the difficulties of you questioning yourself, and whether you’re going down the wrong path. Ultimately, sticking to the strengths of the group and taking advantage of the value that each member can bring was the best approach. ”
For Mattson, that ambiguity became one of the most rewarding aspects of the experience.
“Our technology was pretty vague in terms of its potential uses,” she notes. “We had to really brainstorm and be creative with new ideas, finding places where the technology best fit. At the same time, that freedom — to explore and bring together different perspectives — was what I enjoyed most.”
For Adamyan, the opportunity carried additional weight.
“For me specifically, coming from a foreign country and being an international student in the U.S., it would be very hard to land a NASA internship, because they cannot even accept international students — I wouldn’t have even dreamt of it,” Adamyan says. “When I saw that the position was available and that they were accepting students from my country, I was extremely happy. I never ever expected to do anything of this sort, so it was very exciting.”
While the technical work is central, the program’s impact extends far beyond the project itself. For many students, it offers early exposure to the realities of collaborative, integrative work — where progress depends on navigating different perspectives, skill sets, and areas of expertise.
“It was a really cool interdisciplinary team effort, where we were all constantly learning from one another, collaborating closely, and recognizing each other’s strengths and weaknesses,” Mattson notes. “It’s a great experience to meet people from different fields, come together around one project, feel really strong about the work you’re doing, and present it. You’re constantly learning from each other and figuring out how to bring those perspectives together into something cohesive.”
That collaborative model reflects the world students will encounter in their professional lives beyond the Hill. Several St. Olaf alumni note that the experience they gained through the Innovation Scholars Program has served them well in their careers.
“This specific program was one of the most valuable experiences for the real-life application of projects and how people bring different perspectives, especially in healthcare,” says Abby Liberkowski ‘22, an intensive care unit registered nurse for Allina Hospital in Minneapolis. “Teamwork where everyone has a different role or niche, and how they all come together to work on something is very interesting to experience as a student, because you’re used to being in classes where everyone’s learning the exact same thing, and you all have the same major. It gave me a very real perspective on the real-life application of health care innovation.”
Leon Clark ‘12, now a dermatology division chief at Alameda Health System in Oakland, California, recalls a similar lesson.
“In our group, I stayed in my lane and really tried to understand the science behind the machine that we were studying, and I relied on my other group members to have a deep knowledge of the part that they were focused on,” he says. “When you’re in undergrad, you’re not really an expert in anything — you’re really listening and leaning on professors and experts to guide you. This experience, leaning on colleagues who are attaining very specific knowledge, we do this all the time in medicine. As a dermatologist, I’m asking colleagues in cardiology, GI, and hematology to help me with some cases — appreciating and respecting others’ expertise and guidance is a big experience that a lot of people don’t get early access to.”
For some students, the experience helps clarify future career paths. For others, it opens doors they hadn’t previously considered.
“It was a very positive experience and one that accelerated — if not started — my interest in consulting,” says Soren Schwendeman ‘20, now a project leader at Boston Consulting Group in Seattle, Washington. “I knew I was interested in health care as an industry, and I knew I was interested in business strategy, but I didn’t know what the careers at the intersection of those two things looked like — the Innovation Scholars Program showed it to me. Experiential learning programs are where you can get that real-world experience, employers can get a sense of the students and students the employers. The Innovation Scholars Program is one of the best examples at St. Olaf where they’re putting that in practice.”
For Haaland, the connection between the work and his long-term goals was immediate.
“The project was very much related to what I want to do in life — management consulting,” he says. “Seeing what that looks like day-to-day and diving into the specifics really heightened my love for this field. The program was a good opportunity to zero in on it and make the path feel more tangible.”
Two decades after its founding, the Innovation Scholars Program continues to offer students a rare bridge between classroom learning and real-world application. Whether working with healthcare systems, emerging technologies, or even NASA, participants are asked to do more than understand ideas — they are challenged to shape them.
While the technologies may vary from year to year, the core experience remains the same: navigating uncertainty, collaborating across disciplines, and turning possibility into something actionable. For this year’s team, that meant looking beyond the stars — and discovering what innovation can look like here on Earth.
The Impact of Innovation
For 20 years, St. Olaf has been a key player in the Innovation Scholars Program, which brings together undergraduate liberal arts students from 15 Minnesota private colleges and universities to conduct impactful interdisciplinary research. Spanning fields including healthcare, medicine, science, business, entrepreneurship, and economics, the program challenges student teams to evaluate innovative technologies from leading institutions — including Mayo Clinic, emerging biomedical and health care companies, and NASA — and research the technology in order to find spaces for it in the marketplace and determine the viability of its potential applications.
This year marks the 20th anniversary of the Innovation Scholars Program. St. Olaf alumnus John Meslow ‘60 designed the program and launched its inaugural internship in partnership with Mayo Clinic in 2006. In 2021, following COVID-19-related challenges, he expanded the enterprise to involve additional collaborators, including NASA and emerging biomedical and health care companies. Meslow wanted to provide students with the opportunity to learn at the intersection of medicine, science, and business by working on real-life biomedical projects and inventions. Over the course of nearly two decades before his passing in 2024, Meslow saw the Innovation Scholars Program do just that. More than 1,035 students — including 95 Oles — have benefited from the instructive and enriching experience the program provides, continuing a legacy rooted in experiential learning and cross-disciplinary collaboration.