Category: Sustainability

All of our lives have changed in response to the latest pandemic. With respect to EPSCoR, most of us are working from home and are learning how to social-distance, video-conference with colleagues, and use Slack and other tools to maintain some semblance of normality in our workday. Upcoming EPSCoR meetings such as the All Hands Meeting, NSF Reverse Site Visit and, most likely, the New Mexico EPSCoR State Committee Meeting will become virtual—i.e., Zoom conference calls. In short, our way of life has changed, seemingly overnight and we do not yet see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Presenter: Kevin Tomsovic, Director of CURENT, CTI Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science at the University of Tennessee

Clean and sustainable energy was a hot topic at the 2019 New Mexico Legislative Session. At least four bills and two memorials that passed are relevant to the NM SMART Grid Center research and associated education and workforce development components.

Eshani Hettiarachchi, New Mexico Tech graduate student and Uranium component team member for the Energize New Mexico grant, recently published her research on uranium-contaminated dust and its health implications in the American Chemical Society (ACS) journal, Environmental Science & Technology Letters.

Four research scientists, all of whom have been part of New Mexico EPSCoR projects in the past, penned an open letter to the next governor of New Mexico. Laura Crossey, Dan Cadol, Sam Fernald, and Cliff Dahm wrote about the importance of higher education research for the NM Political Report. The letter was published before the 2018 Midterm Elections on November 2nd.

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.

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 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.

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!

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.