EAGER: Advancing STEM Equity through Increased Access and Meaningful Engagement at the ZEUS Laser Facility

This award will increase access and engagement in STEM at the NSF ZEUS Laser User Facility at the University of Michigan. The ZEUS Education and Outreach team will partner with the University of Michigan Women in Science and Engineering (WISE) program and the Physics Lecture Demonstration Laboratory on this project. The team will design a hands-on learning space and interactive exhibits that will transform the visitor experience to ZEUS and create an inclusive and welcoming environment.

This will expand and enhance the accessibility of the NSF ZEUS facility and its research for visitors. The team will also design comprehensive and collaborative educational programming, including online tools, that will allow students and educators to access the science and capabilities of ZEUS. This will allow to engage a broader audience of learners, especially with individuals and groups where visiting the facility is a barrier to access.

Finally, the team will design assessment tools and evaluation metrics that focus on understanding the unique impacts of the programming for different learners and provide clear guidance on how to improve and expand programs going forward.

The NSF Zettawatt-Equivalent Ultrashort pulse laser System or ZEUS is a 3 Petawatt (3 x 1015 W) laser user facility at the University of Michigan funded by the US National Science Foundation. NSF ZEUS will be able to operate in multiple modes: a single 3 PW beamline, dual beam setup with 2.5 PW and 500 TW, or up to 300 TW at higher rep rate (5 Hz in “burst mode'”).

Additionally, there will be a long-pulse shock driver that can be used with one of the other beams. As a user facility, NSF ZEUS will have a broad impact on the plasma physics, high-field science, and high energy density physics communities. The ZEUS user community is primarily composed of scientists, postdoctoral fellows, graduate students, and an occasional undergraduate student in a supporting role.

The present award will enable the ZEUS Education and Outreach team to design a sustainable outreach and education program that allows for more meaningful engagement for undergraduate students and more opportunity to introduce students in middle school and high school to the science of the NSF ZEUS facility. This work will broaden the impact of the NSF ZEUS facility by engaging more, and more demographically diverse student population in STEM via making more people aware of the uniqueness of the facility, and by teach students and teachers about the amazing science that can be accessed with NSF ZEUS.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.