Category: Research

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.

Our Diversity Coordinator, Chelsea Chee, reports on the SACNAS National Conference. Chelsea attended with three NM EPSCoR STEMAP students, and helped organize and run an Education, Outreach, and Diversity exhibit booth with several EPSCoR jurisdictions.

UNM Assistant Professor of Civil Engineering Ricardo González-Pinzón is conducting research on rainfall-runoff processes and water quality modeling using parsimonious models. González-Pinzón was recently awarded a faculty water research grant by the New Mexico Water Resources Research Institute (WRRI) to implement a hydrological modeling framework that allows estimates of water budgets from stream flow data.

During the month of July 2014, the NM EPSCoR Uranium Transport and Site Remediation component team mentored three minority undergraduate students at UNM by providing hands on experience on a geochemical extraction experiment of mine waste to understand desorption chemical concentrations and kinetics.

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.

STEMAP ended last week in celebration of 11 undergraduate students’ summer research with 50+ people at the Sevilleta National Wildlife Refuge. Students spent eight weeks working with NM EPSCOR researchers at UNM, NMT, and NMSU to gain valuable, in-the-field research experience their current colleges do not provide. It all culminated in a morning full of presentations to fellow researchers, faculty, NM EPSCoR staff, friends, and family.

Fifteen students and five faculty researchers from New Mexico Tech, New Mexico Highlands University, and Eastern New Mexico University congregated at the New Mexico Tech Environmental Engineering Laboratory, June 9 – 11 to learn the basics of membrane fabrication and characterization. The first in a series of technical workshops, this three-day intensive workshop was designed to establish and nurture a vibrant research infrastructure in New Mexico for osmotic power development.

And they’re off! Eleven bright-eyed undergraduates from seven New Mexico Primarily Undergraduate Institutions (PUIs) reported to New Mexico Tech (NMT) on Sunday, June 2 to begin their participation in STEMAP. STEMAP, which stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math Advancement Program, gives undergraduates from non-research universities the opportunity to work in the labs of NM EPSCoR researchers. The nine-week commitment involves a week of training at NMT and eight weeks of research followed by a final conference at which the students present their research experience.

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.