Natalie Rogers Blog Posts
The five-year, $20 million grant will highlight statewide research collaboration among higher education institutions, national laboratories, and industry.
Two Energize New Mexico faculty members at the University of New Mexico, Dr. Marty Kirk and Dr. José Cerrato, recently received National Science Foundation Major Research Instrumentation (MRI) funding.
Bioalgal Team co-lead David Hanson (UNM) and Team member Jerilyn Timlin (SNL) recently received a grant from the Department of Energy (DOE) for a new initiative to advance fundamental bioenergy science. Their project, "Hyperspectral Light Sheet Raman Imaging of Leaf Metabolism," is lead by P.I. and UNM Physics professor Keith Lidke, and will build on research, infrastructure, and relationships established through the NM EPSCoR Energize New Mexico grant.
NM EPSCoR researchers Dr. Janie Chermak and Dr. Jennifer Thacher of UNM’s Department of Economics, assisted by PhD student Kara Walter, polled nearly 2,000 New Mexico residents on their opinions about energy sources, environmental policy, and the state’s energy future. The survey included questions about preferences regarding energy sources, such as renewable sources and extraction methods, as well as environmental and economic concerns.
We are proud to announce this year's recipients of the NM EPSCoR Mentoring Award: Catherine Brewer, Assistant Professor at New Mexico State University; Marty Kirk, Distinguished Professor at the University of New Mexico; and Juchao Yan, Professor at Eastern New Mexico University. Mentors are able to create a professional and social relationship with students that encourage them to take the next step in their careers through listening, advising, supporting, providing feedback, increasing students’ networks, and solving problems, to name a few roles and characteristics. Click to learn more about these outstanding mentors.
Chelsea Chee, our Diversity and Inclusion Coordinator, was honored last week by the National Alliance for Partnerships in Equity (NAPE)with their 2018 Rising Star Award. She traveled to Washington, D.C. to receive this honor. This prestigious award honors a person at the beginning of their career who has demonstrated exemplary leadership traits promoting access, equity, and diversity in education and/or the workforce.
New Mexico depends heavily on revenue generated by oil and gas extraction throughout the state, but significant environmental concerns remain about extraction and production, especially with regards to water use. Oil and gas production generates billions of gallons of what is referred to as "produced water", much of it with very high concentrations of dissolved solids, and much of it originates as fresh groundwater, a precious commodity in the desert southwest.
November 2017 was one of our busiest months of the whole year! At the start of the month we had our annual Research Symposium in partnership with the New Mexico Academy of Science, and at the end of the month we held our final RII-4 All Hands Meeting, as well as a State Committee meeting. See below for recaps on the NMAS Symposium and the All Hands Meeting.
Energize New Mexico PhD student Sumant Avasarala recently had his research for the Uranium Transport & Site Remediation team published in Environmental Science and Technology, an academic journal from the American Chemical Society. Sumant is working for his PhD under Dr. José Cerrato and Dr. Ricardo Gonzáles-Pinzón. The article, "Reactive Transport of U and V from Abandoned Uranium Mine Wastes," focuses on research pertaining to how uranium (U) and vanadium (V) interacts with the environment around the abandoned Blue Gap/Tachee Claim uranium mine on the Navajo Nation.
Two Uranium Transport & Site Remediation Team members—Bonnie Frey and Ginger McLemore—recently received prestigious awards for their hard work and achievements.
NSF recently announced 27 awards for their new program, Inclusion across the Nation of Communities of Learners of Underrepresented Discoverers in Engineering and Science (NSF INCLUDES), and one award will go to a team that includes our very own Associate Director Anne Jakle! INCLUDES is a fresh approach to broadening participation in the world of STEM.
Geothermal co-lead Laura Crossey recently traveled to Tibet as part of an international research team tasked with studying geothermal systems in the complex tectonic boundary region of Tibet. Her team is looking at the system that formed the Himalayan mountains—where the Indian Plate, moving north, collides with the Eurasian Plate—because scientists still don’t understand the geometry of how and where exactly the two plates meet.
Two New Mexico faculty have each recently received funding approval as Project Investigators on NSF grants. Kateryna Artyushkova at UNM received an EPSCoR Track 4 grant, and Energize New Mexico faculty hire Hatim Geli at NMSU received a INEFWS award.
NM EPSCoR research through the Osmotic Power Team is getting some much deserved attention in Socorro for their collaborative work with Masson Greenhouse, a large local greenhouse using geothermal energy. Team lead Frank Huang and his students have spend the last four years fabricating and testing membranes with the ability to clean brackish geothermal waters so it can be used to water the plants grown at the greenhouse. New Mexico Tech's newsroom published an article that was picked up by the local Socorro county newspaper, the El Defensor Chieftain.
Mark Person, co-lead of the Geothermal Team for Energize New Mexico, is currently working on a proposal that will fund research to find freshwater in the unlikeliest of places: trapped beneath the salty sea floor. Dr. Person's proposal focuses on drilling off the New England coast for a water sample to determine if there is a reservoir of freshwater hidden below the shelf of Martha's Vineyard.
New Mexico EPSCoR created a video about the STEM Advancement Program for the 2017 NSF STEM for All Video Showcase, and the video is now live! The STEM for All Video Showcase features 171 NSF and other federally-funded projects through three-minute videos of their innovative work to improve STEM and CS teaching and learning. This event showcases cutting-edge NSF-funded work as well as work funded by other federal agencies aimed at improving teaching and learning of STEM, and encourages communities to learn about and discuss each other's work.
Bioalgal Energy team member and UNM faculty Linnea Ista was recently featured on Innovation Central ABQ's "Craft Over Craft," a video series that pairs Albuquerque experts with local beer. Linnea talks about her research into algae and its possibilities. View the video below!
In preparation for the March for Science on Earth Day, April 22nd, Senator Martin Heinrich penned an essay touting his support of science and research in New Mexico. Earlier in the week, Senator Heinrich visited the University of New Mexico to visit with the Vice President for Research Gabriel Lopez as well as students and faculty to discuss the importance of federally funded research in STEM areas.
The November 2016 issue of the National Science Teacher's Association (NSTA) journal The Science Teacher features an article co-authored by Becky Bixby, one of our Bioalgal Energy component co-leads. Together with Molly Sultany, a high school science teacher in Portland, Oregon, Becky emphasizes the importance of including diatoms in lessons for students in biology, chemistry, and environmental science.
Creative Startups, the NM EPSCoR-sponsored accelerator for creative entrepreneurs, is making headlines again! This time, the program was featured in the Albuquerque Journal for its expansion overseas to Kuwait as the country's first business accelerator. This is the program's first expansion to the Middle East following a successful expansion from its humble beginnings in Albuquerque to North Carolina, Maryland, and Portugal last year.
Dr. David Hanson, Bioalgal Energy co-lead for Energize New Mexico recently received two grants that fund collaborative efforts in energy and biology. These two grants alone will bring $1.2 million over 3 years into Dave's lab specifically, and a total of $3 million into New Mexico. Both grants were facilitated by EPSCoR.
Dr. José Cerrato (pictured above, center-right, receiving his Faculty of Color Award), co-lead of the Uranium Transport and Site Remediation team and Assistant Professor at the University of New Mexico, has received numerous awards in the last year in recognition of his outstanding research and commitment to science.
If you are a research scientist or a graduate student, funding is probably often at the top of the list of your concerns. In the clean energy research sector, it's often difficult to find funding outside of government sources. But fear not! A new initiative promises to bring over $1 billion to clean energy projects. Microsoft Founder Bill Gates hopes to change that with his recently announced investor-led fund called Breakthrough Energy Ventures (BEV).
Our very own Diversity Coordinator, Chelsea Chee, was a guest on a recent episode of Native America Calling. She was joined by Sandra Begay and Sarah Echohawk to discuss STEM education, STEM careers, and the importance of the presence of Native students in STEM for the future. Keep reading to hear the show!
Hanqing Pan is a PhD student at New Mexico Tech under Solar Team co-lead Michael Heagy. She has done amazing research for the Solar Team and we are happy to support her in her future endeavors. Hanqing recently participated in a summer program at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), and sent us a report about her experience. Read it below!
NM EPSCoR is proud to announce a new video, created for the National Science Foundation Site Visit panelists, is now live and on YouTube. You can view it below, or visit our YouTube page.
According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis and United Nations, growth in the creative economy is outpacing growth in any other sector, globally. Artistic and cultural entrepreneurs are increasingly recognized as a key component to economic innovation, with education initiatives supporting “STEAM,” or STEM education with an added component of arts.
Last May, Geothermal Resources team co-lead Dr. Mark Person received the prestigious 2016 Distinguished Researcher Award from New Mexico Tech. The following is from the New Mexico Tech news release. Congratulations on this well-deserved award, Mark!
Last month, we announced (via email) that members and organizations of our Bioalgal Component team have been nominated for the "Who Makes A Difference" Algae Industry Magazine (AIM) 2015 International Readers Poll. According to the Magazine, the Poll's mission is to enable their readers to "recognize and reward innovation and excellence; convey who and what make a difference in the algae industry; celebrate innovative people, companies, laboratories, and technologies; and give AIM readers a go-to source for algae industry resources." The winners were announced on January 15th, and we're happy to say that our people and places took home awards in the categories for which they were nominated!
Dr. Richard T. Sayre is a senior research scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) and the New Mexico Consortium, and he is a member of our Bioalgal Team. Dr. Sayre’s current research interests include; characterization and engineering of primary processes in photosynthesis and carbon metabolism, algal and plant biotechnology, and nutritional biofortification of crop plants. In preparation for this year's legislative session, Dr. Sayre wrote an article called, "Science on the Hill: Driving toward an algae-powered future" for the Santa Fe New Mexican. In the article, Dr.
Thank you to everyone who attended the New Mexico Academy of Science Research Symposium on November 14th. It was a symposium for the record books: 58 posters, 30 presentations, and over 150 attendees. Dr. Vipin Gupta of Sandia National Laboratories kicked off our day with his keynote about the Power on Demand Research Challenge, and encouraged us to think differently about power consumption at all scales. After the luncheon and keynote came the first group of concurrent sessions, followed by the poster session and our final group of concurrent sessions.
Earlier this month, I attended an EPSCoR-funded Innovation Working Group (IWG), spearheaded by our very own Dr. Mike Heagy. IWGs provide a venue for researchers, educators, and nationally recognized experts to address grand challenges that require an interdisciplinary approach to transform science. You can learn more about them in the education section of our website.
At NM EPSCoR we were thrilled to hear the news that Dr. Laura Crossey was honored by the New Mexico Network for Women in Science & Engineering with the annual IMPACT! Award. Laura is the co-lead for our Geothermal component, but that's only the tip of the iceberg. She knows how to inspire non-traditional and underrepresented students to pursue STEM education and careers. From all of us here at NM EPSCoR, congrats to you, Laura! No one deserves recognition for their hard work more than you.
Four women either previously or currently involved in New Mexico EPSCoR projects were among 13 other women honored earlier this month as New Mexico Women of STEM. Diana Northrup taught the EPSCoR-funded Communicating Science class at UNM in Spring 2014; Lorie Liebrock was an exceptional participant in our previous grants; Phyllis Baca has worked with EPSCoR for several years and is involved in the current Energize New Mexico grant; and Jeri Timlin is a current team member of the Bioalgal Component.
In early June, Laurel Saito of the University of Nevada, Reno spearheaded the WC-WAVE Interdisciplinary Modeling Course in Boise, Idaho. Boise State University welcomed students from Idaho, Nevada, and New Mexico for the course that was funded by the WC-WAVE grant. Boise State has a full report of the course up on their website—the following is an excerpt from that report, written by Kathleen Tuck.
This blog is a long time coming, but as most of you know, the 2015 All Hands Meeting took place on April 17, 2015. We had a packed house at the New Mexico Tech Fidel Center, and the day was spent collaborating and networking. The morning sessions helped the group examine implicit biases, and the afternoon sessions combined two components together to discuss progress in the project thus far as well as ideas for the future. The luncheon keynote was presented by NSF EPSCoR Program Officer Audrey Levine.
NM EPSCoR Director Bill Michener has been away on sabbatical for several months in Australia, and we've been tracking the exploits of Bill and his wife Barbara on their blog barbara-bill.com. Bill returns to the office next week, and this opinionated camel doesn't seem too happy about it. Welcome back, Bill!
On March 6, 2015, I had the privilege of listening to Uranium component team member José Cerrato (UNM) deliver a graduate seminar on his research, "Reactivity of Metals from Abandoned Uranium Mine Wastes in the Southwestern United States". With a background in biogeochemistry, José knows the value of geology, nanoscience, and interdisciplinary study; even though he is in the department of Civil Engineering at UNM, his research brings several disciplines together.
Dr. Karl Karlstrom (Geothermal component) was recently named the University of New Mexico's 60th Annual Research Lecturer. As part of the Provot's Shared Knowledge Conference, Karl will present a lecture, “It’s about Time: Forty Years of Geologic Work in the Grand Canyon- Rocky Mountain Region,” on Thursday, April 23 in the UNM SUB Ballrooms at 6:15 PM. The Shared Knowledge Conference is a two-day event, beginning at 9:30 AM Thursday and ending at 4:00 PM Friday, April 24.
Virginia Thompson, PhD candidate in Biology at UNM and project participant in the NM EPSCoR RII3 project (Climate Change Impacts on New Mexico's Mountain Sources of Water), delivered the Department of Biology's March brown bag seminar on her research on submerged aquatic macrophytes (SAMs). Virginia's research over the last several years, including the research she did under the EPSCoR banner, has focused on the plants that live in the waters of the Valles Caldera National Park.
On March 8-10, Dr. Laura Crossey and Dr. Karl Karlstrom lead their geothermal class (provided by funding from NM EPSCoR) on a trip to White Rock Canyon in northern New Mexico. The class looked at the timing of recent volcanics, as well as the expressions of faults and fluid flow exposed in the canyon. Keep reading to see pictures from the trip!
As part of an initiative to shine a light on the benefits of community college education, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Representative Ben Ray Luján toured Santa Fe Community College and it's new Trades and Advanced Technology Center.
The 2014 New Mexico Journal of Science, published by the New Mexico Academy of Science, is now available for public viewing. This year's Journal is subtitled "Water, Energy, and the Environment," and includes abstracts from participants in the 2014 NMAS Research Symposium.
Congratulations to our very own Selena Connealy! Last month she was named the recipient of the New Mexico Science Teacher Association's (NMSTA) 2014 Service to Science Award! She recieved her award during the NMSTA general meeting at the Soar to Greater Heights NMSTA/NMCTM,EEANM conference in Albuquerque on November 15th at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science.
NM EPSCoR and the New Mexico Academy of Science welcomed over 130 faculty, students, researchers, educators and community members at the Hyatt Downtown Albuquerque on November 1st.
Creative-Startups, the nation's first accelerator for creative and cultural entrepreneurs, recently debuted their 2014 Cohort during Creative Startups Week, October 20-25. Each creative team faced colleagues, the media, and the public on Demo Night, held at ¡Explora! Science Center on Thursday, October 23rd; Teams showed videos and slideshows on their projects and what they hope to achieve with funding from investors.
New Mexico EPSCoR is proud to partner with smaller colleges around the state in order to provide research opportunities to students at non-research schools. Mesalands Community College in Tucumcari, NM is a new participant in the WC-WAVE Undergraduate Visualization and Modeling Network (UVMN) program.
Last week was a busy one for the Western Consortium for Watershed Analysis, Visualization, and Exploration (WC-WAVE)! Along with the Tri-State Western Consortium Meeting at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History, two different groups of WC-WAVE participants gathered in separate classrooms at the University of New Mexico for specialized training.
The first All Hands Meeting of the New Mexico EPSCoR Energize New Mexico project was a great success! Over 100 project participants and guests attended to listen to talks on diversity, collaboration, data management, and all 7 components of the Energize New Mexico project.
Santa Fe Community College (SFCC) has been awarded a $50,000, SEED Infrastructure Grant from the Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR), for commercial algae photo-bioreactor monitoring. It will fund the purchase of state-of-the-art sensors to monitor algae growth in photobioreactors (PBRs) that are up to 10,000 liters in volume.
National Geographic is featuring the first topic in a three-part series on consumable resources, The Great Energy Challenge, to engage the public about energy awareness and resources. The Great Energy Challenge convenes and engages influential citizens and key energy stakeholders in solutions-based thinking and dialogue about our shared energy future. Learn more after the jump!
How can a canyon be a Frankenstein Monster? A new theory claims that it is one large canyon formed by pieces of smaller, older canyons. A team of researchers, including three New Mexico EPSCoR participants, developed this new theory regarding the formation of the modern Grand Canyon. Their research states it was carved starting about 5-6 million years ago by the Colorado River through older "paleocanyons." Dr. Karl Karlstrom, Dr. Laura Crossey, and...
Ever wondered about the importance of plants that grow in river beds? A NM EPSCoR video can help! This video features research from our previous grant, "Climate Change Impacts on New Mexico Mountain Sources of Water." You can learn more about this grant on our archived website, archive.nmepscor.org.
The Journal for Contemporary Water Research and Education just released a special issue (Issue 152) dedicated to the Tri-State Interdisciplinary Modeling Class, part of the Western Consortium for Cyberinfrastructure Development grant. The journal includes articles and case studies by Sam Fernald (NMSU), José Rivera (UNM) and Carlos Ochoa (NMSU), all researchers under our previous New Mexico EPSCoR project. Sam Fernald is currently part of our Social & Natural Science Nexus component team.
New Mexico EPSCoR is proud to offer two programs in 2014 to encourage undergraduate students, especially those from underrepresented groups, to pursue education and careers in STEM fields. Both programs are now open for applications.
Geothermal Energy component co-lead Mark Person and his colleagues recently had their research review on groundwater reserves published in Nature. "Offshore fresh groundwater reserves as a global phenomenon," by Person (NMT), Vincent Post (Flinders University), Jacobus Groen (VU University Amsterdam), Henk Kooi (VU University Amsterdam), Shemin Ge (University of Colorado), and W. Mike Edmunds (University of Oxford), was published in Volume 504 of the magazine earlier this month and discusses the large amounts of groundwater found below continental shelves.
Phyllis Baca, New Mexico EPSCoR partner and component lead on both Workforce Development and Diversity, was recently honored with the Seventh Annual IMPACT! Award by the New Mexico Network for Women in Science and Engineering (NMNWSE) and the New Mexico Commissions on the Status of Women. The IMPACT!
New Mexico EPSCoR is announcing two brand new rounds of funding for Infrastructure Seed Awards and Diversity Innovation Work Groups (IWGs). As part of our 5-year Energize New Mexico grant, NM EPSCoR seeks to improve our understanding of how New Mexico can realize its energy development potential in a sustainable manner. Along with the six science components and cyberinfrastructure, NM EPSCoR is also committed to broadening participation in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM), diversifying STEM fields, and communicating research to the public.
Over 110 students, faculty, educators and administrators gathered over the weekend to celebrate science and research during the New Mexico Academy of Science (NMAS) and New Mexico EPSCoR Joint Annual Meeting & Symposium. The two organizations joined together to present findings on EPSCoR's current grant, Energize New Mexico, and the previous grant, Climate Change Impacts on New Mexico Mountain Sources of Water, as well as other topics including wildlife ecology.
Our friends and partners over at Nevada EPSCoR have finished and posted a video about the Western Consortium Track 2 accomplishments and impacts with regards to connectivity between research institutions in New Mexico, Idaho, and Nevada. The video features our very own Associate Director Mary Jo Daniel, as well as Alice Loy of the Global Center for Cultural Entrepreneurship. Check out the video below!
As politicians debate the significance of climate change evidence, the world and its habitats are changing. Several species face extinction by 2050 due to various consequences of human activities, and scientists have spent a great deal of time and research on finding and perfecting intervention techniques to prevent total extinction of some species. One of those techniques, "facilitated adaptation" was the focus of a commentary recently published in the science journal Nature.
The New Mexico Chemistry Symposium is an annual meeting of chemists at New Mexico Tech in Socorro, New Mexico. This year's theme is Energize New Mexico. The event includes talks by notable scientists around this theme, including the Keynote Address by Srikanath Nayaran of the University of Southern California: Opportunities and Challenges in Electrical Energy Storage for Renewables Integration.
The presence of uranium in groundwater is an issue of great public interest in New Mexico. For many areas in the northeast quadrant of the state, the uranium in underground aquifers has made it unusable for animals or humans. It’s not completely clear how much of the problem should be blamed on natural processes and how much has been caused by uranium mining through the later part of the 20th century.
The New Mexico Academy of Science (NMAS) and NM EPSCoR invite anyone to submit abstracts on Impacts of Climate Change on Water in New Mexico and Sustainable Energy Development in New Mexico for presentation at the 2013 Joint Annual Meeting of NMAS and EPSCoR in Albuquerque, NM, on November 9, 2013! The 2013 Joint Annual Meeting of NMAS and NM EPSCoR is an open forum for sharing the results of research and teaching on “Impacts of Climate Change on Water in New Mexico” and “Sustainable Energy Development in New Mexico”.
Dr. Peter Lammers, a project lead on the NM EPSCoR bioalgal energy component, and his team at New Mexico State University (NMSU) were recently awarded a $5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to continue research on algae-based fuel. The project, entitled "Realization of Algae Potential" or REAP, will last 2.5 years and will focus on improving the yields and stability of algal biomass and cultivation systems.
As many already know, it takes a lot of planning to achieve the NSF EPSCoR goal of improving the R&D competitiveness of researchers and institutions within EPSCoR jurisdictions, and NM EPSCoR is no exception. Team leaders, State Committee members, and NM EPSCoR staff and participants are gathering today and tomorrow at the UNM Science and Technology park for a 2-day Strategic Planning Retreat, facilitated by New Mexico First.
New Mexico EPSCoR is proud to support undergraduate research projects that can lead to prestigious research opportunities and the continuation of higher education. Juan Solis, a civil engineering graduate student at NMSU and a former NM EPSCoR research student, recently received the Graduate Research Fellowship from the National Science Foundation. As an undergraduate, Solis worked with NM EPSCoR researcher Salim Bawazir (NMSU) to build and install climate stations.
This morning, University of New Mexico President Bob Frank sent out his weekly newsletter to the UNM community. This week featured stories about innovation coming out of higher education institutions in order to drive the country forward, and how research universities like UNM play a role in the country's economic competitiveness. New Mexico EPSCoR was featured as one of the sources of UNM innovation.
A new $20 million Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) grant from the National Science Foundation will support key research into ways to make New Mexico an energy sufficient state. The research will focus on ways to improve efficiency of sustainable energy resource utilization and to minimize environmental impacts of uranium mining and oil and gas production.
As part of the new Track 1, RII-4 grant, New Mexico EPSCoR has fully redesigned the website with our participants and the public in mind. The redesign includes a new way to get NM EPSCoR-related news, events, and science stories out to the public - the Science and News Blog!