AI Adventures: My Journey from Code to Cosmos at NASA

It was the summer after my sophomore year at New York University College of Arts and Sciences. The year was 1997, and I was looking for something to do over the summer. But it had to be something good–something that would make me stand out later on when I started applying for medical school. Back then, my entire life revolved around my goal to get into a top medical school, so everything I did was geared toward achieving that goal.

A Tale of Two Passions

Academically, I was on the pre-med track, majoring in computer science. There were a few reasons for my somewhat unorthodox choice of major: first of all, I wanted to major in an area that I was already good at, so that I could save as much bandwidth as possible for the challenging pre-med work I needed to accomplish. Maintaining a straight 4.0 GPA was my top priority, so I needed to be smart about how I structured my studies.

Second, a major like computer science made a powerful backup plan, in case my dream of getting into medical school didn’t work out. The rise of computers and programming as a mainstream, necessary part of modern life was taking off, growing exponentially every year, so it just made sense to pursue that industry while getting through my undergraduate, knowing that the competition to get a spot at a top medical school would be incredibly fierce.

And, of course– there was the passion element. As much as I was passionate about becoming a doctor, I had really, truly loved all things tech-related since childhood. Programming wasn't just an interest–it was an obsession. So majoring in computer science was a way to feed that passion and dig even deeper into it.

Summer in Space

The summer before, I had taken physics at NYU in order to meet one of my pre-med requirements. But this time around, I wanted to do something that would combine my interests in biology and computers. Ideally, it would also be something fun! And if I could get paid for it, well, let’s just say that would help. I had been working as a TA to make extra money all year, and still barely made rent for my 400-square-foot studio on the top floor of a four-floor-walk-up in Stuyvesant Town. (As for groceries, it was Ess-a-Bagel morning, noon, and night– and while they are undoubtedly NYC’s best bagels, it was starting to get to me.)

So when I stopped to browse the bulletin board in the biochem department, I was absolutely floored to see that NASA was offering a paid summer internship, in conjunction with Florida A&M. The flyer pinned to the old-school cork board (yes, that’s what we had back then– even in the biochemistry department of a major university!) said that the internship was part of the Space Life Sciences Program in JFK Space Center in Florida (Now Summer Scholarship at the Space Life Science Lab).

It all sounded perfect to me– absolutely the ideal way to invest a summer. NASA has always been a fascinating, incredible institution in my eyes. I was definitely one of those kids who was obsessed with space exploration. Even the tragedy of the Challenger shuttle, which happened when I was in third grade, had not dimmed my respect and admiration for NASA and all that it stood for.

Basically, if I could land this internship, I’d get to spend the time in sunny Florida, working on a project that combined biology and tech in the most cutting-edge and insanely interesting way. It would be a hugely different and eye-catching addition to my medical school application. And to top it all off, the internship was a paid position.

So I rushed to speak with the head of the chemistry department. She was my mentor at the time, and gladly wrote me a glowing recommendation. Filling out the application was a lengthy, detailed process, and as I sent it out and waited, my excitement faded a bit. After all, I was just one of thousands of students across the US who wanted a spot in this program– and there were only about fifteen slots.

But sometimes, you get exactly what you hoped for. And in this case, that was what happened to me. A few months after applying, I was shocked and thrilled to find a huge welcome packet in the mail, informing me of my acceptance as an intern. My imagination went wild, and it was both exhilarating and torturous to wait for the internship to start. In my mind’s eye, it would be a sci-fi dream come true, meeting all kinds of crazy-smart people and getting to see–and use– the latest, most unbelievable technology in the world!

From New York Native to… Florida Man?

Before that summer, I had never been to Florida. And while summer in New York can get uncomfortably hot and humid, I was still totally unprepared for the blast of heat that assaulted me as soon as I got off the plane. Clearly, my black jeans, motorcycle boots, long sleeve black t-shirt, and leather motorcycle jacket were not going to work in this new environment! Unfortunately, I had only packed one pair of shorts and short-sleeved t-shirt for the entire three-month trip, so from the get-go, it looked like it was going to be a very long, hot summer. (Spoiler alert: it was.)

Aside from the heat, another element of life in Florida that surprised me was the sort of Middle America feel. In NYC, and even the suburbs of NYC, there was everything you could want or imagine within walking distance or a short trip by taxi, subway, or car, if you had one. But when we got to our hotel in Cocoa Beach, the only visible signs of life were the few iguanas hanging out by the small, boiling-hot pool, and a lone Denny’s across the highway.

I would later find out that crossing that highway could be a 20-minute ordeal! There was simply that much traffic zooming by at any given time, and no one seemed to worry too much about stopping for pedestrians!

New Places, New Faces

Once all of the interns got to the hotel, we had a brief orientation, and then settled into the rooms that the program coordinator had assigned to us. Each student had a roommate, and each room had two beds, one bathroom, a kitchenette, and one desk to share. It was a small step up from a motel room–about the same level as a freshman dorm room.

My roommate turned out to be a guy named Juan, arriving from a Texan suburb. On the first night, he whipped out a huge survival knife that was about 6 inches long, and I was in shock because he had that in his luggage. It also turned out that he had packed a few jars of peanut butter and jelly with him, and a few loaves of Wonder Bread, which had been my favorite food since I was a little kid. So, we got to know each other over some late night PB&J sandwiches, and in spite of our different backgrounds, we got along really well from the first day.

In fact, we found out that we actually had a lot in common, because both of us were the children of immigrants. His parents were immigrants from Mexico, and mine were immigrants from Iran, so we shared a number of life experiences that come along with that dynamic. During those conversations, I learned about Texano culture from him, and in return he told me that not only was I the first Iranian person he had ever heard of, I was also the first Jewish person he had ever met. So that was a double value, I guess!

The other students in the program were super diverse as well, from all kinds of socio-economic backgrounds, ethnic backgrounds, and no two of us were from the same school. There were even some students from Canada, rather than the US. Despite all of these differences, everyone became quick friends, worked together, and hung out together as a team.

Hanging Out with Other Students in the Program

That was the first time I had experienced that kind of unified teamwork. My pre-med experience up until then had been an isolating, super-competitive adventure. Other pre-med students were not typically helpful, interested in sharing, or motivated to help others succeed. Why? Because we were all in competition with each other to get into med school! So pre-med students were essentially disincentivized from being cooperative. So finding myself in this new, cooperative, team-oriented program was a great learning experience in and of itself, on top of what I was learning at NYU.

Life in the Space Program

Wakeup time to get to the JFK Space Center was a mind-numbing 5AM. Up until that point, I had designed my schedule to start much later. I usually woke up at around 9AM, and took classes later in the day. That way, I could study, go to class, study some more in the late afternoon, and then go out at night if I wanted to. The drastic shift to a super-early morning proved to be pretty rough for me, and there was no recovery time on the weekends, either. It was 5AM then, too, with outings and excursions planned!

I soon fell into a routine of eating a to-go breakfast from Denny’s just about every day, then working all day in the lab at the Space Center on my project, and finally coming home, stuffing my face with Domino’s pizza, and topping it off with a PB&J sando with Juan before passing out at 8:30pm. Some of the other students were saving their weekly food stipend, pocketing most of it and spending as little as possible on canned beans and other supermarket staples to get by, which was also interesting to see and something I hadn't really known how to do before.

Juan thought there must be something wrong with me–that I was sick or something–and couldn’t understand what was going on. I would tell him a story or two about going out in NYC, and then I would eat and go right to sleep until 5am the next morning! I just didn't have the energy to stay up any later than that.

In addition to working on our projects, we were able to experience some very cool, once-in-a-lifetime things, like watching a rocket launch, meeting with astronauts and space shuttle teams, spending a day at Mission Control, and actually sleeping under the shuttle.

Best of all, we literally witnessed history in the making, in real time, that summer. We interns were treated to a viewing party, with special 3D goggles, to watch the first Sojourner rover land on Mars. The excitement was palpable. Everyone was shocked and joyous at the same time, watching eagerly to see what the surface of Mars would look like, and what discoveries were about to be made. It was an astonishing and incredible time for human ingenuity and space exploration, and I was so lucky to be able to experience it in real time.

Photo of Robbin Chapman and I watching the Mars Sojourner Rover Landing

Me, Myself, and AI

As I had anticipated, everyone else in the internship program was focused on biology and life sciences, while I was the only one who had any background in computer science. It was helpful for me that the mentor assigned to me, Robbin Chapman, was a computer-science grad student from MIT. She is also an African-American woman, which was very unusual in the field of computer science at that time.

While other students were creating biology experiments in various fields, I chose to create an AI system, under Robbin’s guidance. At that time, AI was nothing like what generative AI and Bayesian AI are now. It was a field in its infancy, and it mostly consisted of expert systems that had to be hand-coded with rules.

Given the recent rover launch on Mars, I decided that we would work on creating an automated system that would help control issues with the indoor farms that would be required for long-duration shuttle flights to mars. Because Mars is about 6 months away from Earth (in terms of time distance), it would be impossible to take a payload of food that could last for that long and back. The only way to solve that problem would be to grow food in indoor, hydroponic farms, which would also recycle the shuttle's water.

The AI system I planned would take input from sensors (humidity, temperature, light, color, etc.) as well as from astronauts’ input, and then make recommendations on what steps the astronauts should take next, to solve any issues (or to prevent issues from happening).

NASA is famous for creating acronyms for all of their systems, so I felt like it was a “must” for me to come up with an acronym for my project. After some thought, I decided on S.P.E.C.I.E.S: Space Plant Experiment Crew Interactive Expert System. It was the best I could do at the time, without the help of ChatGPT!

The hardware I used was basically limited to what they had in the lab at that time. It sounds comical when I type it out now, but it consisted of a Macintosh IIcx with 8MB of RAM and an 80MB hard drive. The software I used was also very limited: Hypercard for the user interface, and Clips V6.0 for the rules-based expert system.

I spent the first part of the ten-week program creating the user interface, which was initially difficult for me because I had never used Hypercard before, and had to learn it from scratch.

But making the interface first helped me map out what functionality the system would have, and the scope of the entire project. I did that instead of writing a scope of work, because I had limited time and wanted to get as much of it done as possible in a short amount of time.

After the interface was done, I spent a long time first learning how CLIPs worked, and then tediously writing hundreds of rules (which were basically if-then statements). These rules were based on a combination of inputs received by the system, inputs from astronauts, and research I had done on how to handle those types of scenarios in botany.

After weeks of developing and inputting the rules, I spent a few days debugging the system, and then writing the entire report which was due at the end of the session. That report ended up being over a 100 pages, and following standard practice back then, including printouts of the actual code. It also included an abstract, introduction, background, installation and usage guide, and information about the Space Life Sciences Program itself.

Copy of my Report at the end of the Program

Sweet Success

After a whirlwind, grueling, mind-stretching, and ultimately very fun ten weeks, I was finally done, and super proud of the work I had accomplished. I was also eager to find out if the system I had developed would actually be used and tested on the manned mission to Mars that NASA was planning!

As it turned out, of course, that manned mission to Mars never ended up taking place, so SPECIES was not used or tested as I had hoped. However, my experience and knowledge gained during that internship was still extremely worthwhile. I learned how to build an AI system, which has proven invaluable to me, even now. As a VC, I mostly invest in Deep Tech and AI companies, and with my deep technical knowledge, I can properly assess companies that I want to potentially invest in.

It was also a springboard to a trip to DC the following year, to present my research at a conference. That was my first time having to do a presentation in front of an audience of over 100 people (including a panel of NASA scientists and experts), and my first time manning a booth at the actual conference. I was incredibly nervous, but I practiced for a week straight, and it went very well. I ended up feeling proud of myself, my research, and my presentation.

In addition, I learned a lot from the super smart students I met in Cocoa Beach, and I kept in touch with them all for a while. I even ran into some of them in NYC over the years. And it was my first time learning to collaborate with others doing research, so I gained some valuable skills in that area as well.

And lastly, I now have a super cool story to tell my friends and family– about how I was developing AI systems for NASA almost 20 years ago, when nobody else had even heard of them!