EL PASO, Texas (KTSM) — A high school student from El Paso ISD’s Young Women’s STEAM Academy (YWA) took part in a virtual internship with NASA over the summer.

The NASA STEM Enhancement in Earth Science (SEES) summer internship is sponsored by NASA and the University of Texas at Austin’s Center for Space Research.

Catherine Cardenas,18, was one of 95 students across the country that were selected out of a pool of 3,000 applicants for the internship. Cardenas and the other selected students worked with NASA scientists and engineers on a five-week research project.

Cardenas, a senior, said she was grouped with nine other students to study the Urban Heat Island effect.

She described it as a phenomenon that occurs when a city experiences hotter temperatures than its surrounding rural areas

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