Dr. Shakila Merchant is the Founding Director of The City University of New York Remote Sensing Earth System Institute (CUNY CREST) High School Initiative in Remote Sensing of the Earth Systems Engineering and Sciences program. In its 10th year, under the exceptional leadership of Dr. Merchant, HIRES has supported more than 200 high school students from within the 5 boroughs of New York City public schools. Dr. Merchant firmly believes that early education is essential for cultivating confident and resilient future Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics (STEM) professionals. She is passionate about education, training, and research. Through her extensive knowledge of research, project management, planning, K-12 education, and assessment, she has built a thriving community of STEM professionals, faculty, students, alumni to successfully run this advanced seven- week college readiness program every year.

Dr. Merchant has partnered with the City College of New York administration to create opportunities for HIRES students, allowing them to earn three college credits, access to state-of-the-art facilities such as labs and computer rooms for advanced experiential research, and gain technical skills in GIS, Remote Sensing, Earth System Sciences, Python, and Mathematica. She cultivates a wholesome college like experience for students as they conduct research under renowned CCNY faculty and alongside skilled graduate/undergraduate mentors. She also works closely with CUNY faculty to design research projects tailored to each HIRES student’s goals and skillset. Thus, she ensures that students get a meaningful and personalized learning experience.

Dr. Merchant, as an active member of the NYC Science Research and Mentoring Consortium, has cultivated as robust network of professionals who help enrich the HIRES experience. Through partnering with Irondale- one of the longest standing ensemble theatres in America, HIRES instills students with important skills such as public speaking and science communication skills. Besides building a structured research program, Dr. Merchant believes in instilling soft skills and knowledge within each intern to help them bridge into STEM careers and be college ready in the Earth and geosciences. She maintains strong communication with each student in the program to monitor their progress, interests, and challenges to ensure they receive support needed to success. For many of our interns, HIRES provides several transformative firsts- having a mentor, learning to utilize software, conducting research and at world-class labs, presenting research to a large audience, participating in public speaking workshops, and attending professional development workshops.

Dr. Merchant’s dedication to creating impactful learning experience has led to HIRES results and model being featured in presentations and talks at prestigious conferences and panel discussions such as the American Meteorological Society Conference, National Science Foundation GEO Research Experience for Undergraduates Network Conference, etc.