Erini Lambrides

I have devoted significant efforts towards the creation and leading of a variety of mentorship, outreach, equity, and inclusion initiatives. Upon entering NASA-Goddard as an NPP Fellow, I founded NASA-PEER — the first post-baccalaureate constellation mentorship and professional development program at NASA.

NASA-PEER provides targeted programming regarding the graduate school and job application processes, professional enrichment activities, and skill development workshops. Additionally, we seek to help post-bacs increase feelings of identity and belonging within NASA Goddard and the scientific workforce by providing opportunities for community building and visibility.

Why should we support post-bacs? As an increasing number of students are applying for graduate school each year without a step-wise increase in the number of available seats for admission, more and more students, particularly those with marginalized identities, are being left behind. Thus, there has been a dramatic rise of interest in taking post-bachelor research internships or related employment to determine their next steps and/or increasing their chances of admissions into a graduate program. In addition to connecting prospective early career NASA-researchers with NASA science opportunities, along with an amazing team at NASA-Goddard, I have developed and led workshops such as Anatomy of a Research Statement,CV-a-thon, and Perfecting your Science Pitch. These programmatics serve to close the resource gap for those who were not given the scientific research opportunities and/or career mentorship that is increasingly required to gain admission into astronomy/physics graduate programs.