Columbia Space Initiative
The Columbia Space Initiative (CSI) is a student group dedicated to space projects on campus. CSI competes in NASA challenges, do outreach and provide members with networking in the space science field. It was founded in September 2015 (unsurprisingly) with the help of professor Mike Massimino. CSI has participates in three NASA challenges (Micro-g NExT, RASCAL and BIG), launched its own model rockets and balloons. CSI organizes many events across campus, including talks with former astronauts, NASA employees, and individuals involved in the space industry.
CSI is one of the biggest clubs at Columbia, with an over-1,000 person Slack workspace. Basically everyone on campus is either in CSI or has a friend in CSI. The reason for this is probably the fact that every SEAS freshman thinks they want to work at NASA and every physics major thinks they want to be an astrophysicist. To the dismay of the SEAS freshmen though, CSI is much more focused on science than on engineering, and CSI's engineering teams are fairly lackluster compared to teams at other schools.
