Meet: Farman Syed

What I do at NASA

Basically, what I do is the layout. I'm with the Stellar program, and we're making a teachers' guide that will be put out periodically, like a newsletter. For layout I work with PageMaker, Illustrator, PhotoShop and some other programs as well as the Internet. I take what we've written, what we've created, all the activities, articles and pictures, and I put it all together and make it look nice. Our mission statement was just expanded to include all of space life sciences, and it's great because you get to learn so much about them. In the newspaper every other day you read about another space shuttle that's gone up, and you have no idea what's going on - no one cares anymore. It's part of my job to make people interested, to tell them what's going on up there and show them why it's important. And in building interest in the general public, we're also building interest for ourselves. It's a win for both sides - you get to teach people stuff, and learn about it yourself.

How I got this job

I've always been interested in math and science. I've generally been better at the useless stuff like history and English, even though I'm more interested in math and science. I knew I wanted to get a job this summer that was science related. First I looked at SLAC (Stanford Linear Accelerator) as well as a few other places, and then I saw a posting on the Internet for this job. Here I could do multimedia, and since I've always been interested in computers I proceded along with that and ended up here.

Other things I find interesting

Outside of work, I like to run (when it's not too hot). I'm going to be a senior next year at Palo Alto High School where I run cross-country. I'm taking a lot of really hard classes in school, but I'm not a super-genius or anything. I also like to do mock-trial.