Category: Research

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.

How do we build a more prosperous future for New Mexico that is driven by the tremendous potential of an innovation and high tech economy? How can we ensure that all of our students have the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education and training to participate in the workforce of the future? These were the central questions for the Diversity Innovation Working Group (DIWG) that convened in Albuquerque in August 2017.

This year was a year of firsts and lasts. Near the beginning of the year, we honored Dr. Michael Heagy and Dr. Jose Cerrato with our very first NM EPSCoR Mentoring Award.

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.