Ivan Altunin’s fascination with space started young. His parents both worked at NASA and it had long been a dream of Altunin’s to work there, too. He recently wrapped up his first tour with the NASA Pathways Internship, which took place during a historic time for NASA: the Artemis II mission took astronauts on a journey to explore the dark side of the Moon.

“From day one that I got here, I think our whole cohort knew how lucky we were,” Altunin M.S. ’25 (physics) said. “It was really neat to actually see those people, the people who wrote those procedures and trained those procedures and developed those procedures, actually implementing it. They just have dedicated so much of their lives to not just Artemis and Orion, but the whole space program as a whole.”

Altunin’s proximity to the project felt even more meaningful as he reflected on his path to the internship.

Altunin takes flight at the University

After attending UC Berkeley for his undergraduate degree, Altunin decided to pursue his master’s and doctoral degrees at the University of Nevada, Reno, due in part to his love for the region.

“Honestly, I don't think there's anything that can beat the Reno area,” Altunin said. “I'm a very outdoorsy person. Tahoe is very special to me. It's also a great place for me to pursue my hobbies.”

Altunin is a glider pilot, glider flight instructor and commercially rated powered glider pilot. He said Minden, Nevada is one of the best places in the world to fly gliders, and he spends a lot of time flying there and in Truckee.

“It’s kind of the perfect spot for me where it combines all my interests and my hobbies,” Altunin said.

Another reason Altunin decided to stick around for his Ph.D. was his experience studying with his advisor, Richard Plotkin.

“I have a wonderful advisor,” Altunin said. “He's just been very supportive throughout my whole education here, very flexible, which has been amazing for me as a grad student.”

"The places where we get to do science, and the people we get to do it with, are crucial parts of a scientist’s training."

Altunin studies how early galaxies evolve, the processes inside galaxies and how they influence the growth of the universe. He recently published an article as the first author in The Astrophysical Journal.

“There are still some unexplained questions on galaxy formation and what exactly is happening inside of them, and we're tackling some of those questions,” Altunin said.

“Ivan is developing really creative approaches for understanding why certain galaxies emit intense amounts of ultraviolet radiation,” Plotkin said. “The new knowledge that Ivan is gaining is going to help us understand how the very first galaxies formed and evolved just hundreds of million years after the Big Bang.”

Altunin’s graduate research has been supported by the Nevada NASA Space Grant Consortium. Altunin was a 2024 Nevada NASA Space Grant Graduate Fellow, which provided a one-year stipend while he worked on his research.

He said the experience writing a fellowship application and the opportunity to pursue and share his research were crucial professional development opportunities. At the consortium, Altunin learned about the work other University students were contributing.

“I remember attending some talks and being pleasantly surprised that there were people sending some new instruments to the International Space Station from the University of Nevada, Reno,” he recalled. “I got to meet all these other wonderful, amazing people from the state of Nevada working on projects sponsored by NASA with this program.”

A long path to Pathways

Shortly after completing his fellowship, Altunin got the results of his latest Pathways Internship application.

“I've been applying for NASA internships since I was in high school,” Altunin shared.

When Altunin found out his most recent application was successful, Plotkin was very supportive, despite the logistical challenges it posed in the lab group and department.

“When I brought up this opportunity to him, he said something along the lines of, ‘It would be foolish for me to hold you back and, if we're in the education business and I really care about students’ growth, it would be really foolish for me to tell you not to take advantage of this opportunity,’” Altunin recalled. “He really cares about his students.”

“The places where we get to do science, and the people we get to do it with, are crucial parts of a scientist’s training,” Plotkin said. “Very few of us take a linear or predictable career path, and it’s important to remain flexible, whether it be for opportunities like this internship, or to be able to adapt to other forces in one’s life that might create unexpected detours.”

During his first tour, Altunin was assigned to the Flight Dynamics Division in Mission Control where he worked on two projects. He supported development of an automated tool for flight planning tasks onboard the International Space Station and analyzed fuel consumption of a commercial vehicle when manually piloted.

Altunin said that students interested in applying to Pathways should know that when NASA announces the internship opening, it's only open for a couple of days because they get so many applications.

From the University to the stars

For Altunin, the practical, inspirational and exploratory nature of astronomy have all driven his interest in studying the field. NASA’s space missions have directly resulted in GPS navigation and Velcro, for example. Yet recently, the unifying nature of astronomy has also influenced his interest.

“As I've grown older, the thing that's attracted me the most about space and astronomy is how inspirational it is,” Altunin said. “You don't have to go very far to find quotes from Carl Sagan or even this last crew, Artemis II, has some amazing messages to take home. There’s a comfort there to seeing that there's more to this life than just planet Earth.”

As Altunin continues his research, he shared that, along with his family, the support he’s received from Plotkin and the entirety of the physics department and its administrative team has been paramount to his success thus far.

“I've been very, very happy with the education I've received at the University of Nevada, Reno,” Altunin said. “I've been amazed by the research that goes on and how rigorous the education quality is, and also the research.”

“I was delighted to learn that the University and the Graduate School had systems in place that made it pretty easy for Ivan to take this internship without disrupting his Ph.D., and I was especially grateful to our physics department’s Business Manager, Elliot Fazzio, who enthusiastically helped Ivan navigate through the system with ease,” Plotkin said. “To Ivan’s credit, he balanced demands from his internship and from his dissertation research beautifully during his first tour, which is what ultimately made this a success. Ivan’s now brought back to the University new expertise that has already benefited my research group. It’s been a win-win.”