NEWS

I was fortunate to attend this year’s Society for the Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in Science (SACNAS) National Conference in Los Angeles, CA for the very first time. Yay me! Even cooler was being accompanied by three of NM EPSCoR's summer research students - Aysha McClory, Saul Ruiz, and Tim Torres.

[From L-R: Aysha McClory, Saul Ruiz, Chelsea Chee, and Timothy Torres]

I spent three days being the ultimate conference goer - attending workshops, meeting people, listening to Keynote speeches, visiting student research poster presenters, and running an exhibit booth. The exhibit booth was by far my favorite experience.

[From L-R: Laurie Bragg and Melanie Garate]

The booth was designed to bring together EPSCoR jurisdictions' Education, Outreach, and Diversity (EOD) components to display EPSCoR work to and recruit students/faculty from the SACNAS participants. The booth took a lot of preparation months in advance and hours of entertaining during the conference. Fortunately, I didn't do it alone!

[From L-R: Laurie Bragg, Aysha McClory, Chelsea Chee, Ellen Burns, and Naomi Nihipali]

The booth was planned by eight EPSCoR jurisdictions - AL, ID, ME, ND, NM, NV, RI, and UT. It was exhibited by me, Laurie Bragg of ME, Ellen Burns of UT, and five EPSCoR students from three states - Miguel Torrez of NV, Melanie Garate of RI, and the three NM students mentioned above. Thank you all, it wouldn't have been possible to have a successful booth without you!

At the end of it all, EPSCoR didn't go home empty handed. All five students did an awesome job of presenting their extraordinary research and three were awarded the SACNAS Student Research Poster Presentation awards. Congrats Melanie, Miguel, and Saul!

[Aysha McClory presenting her STEMAP research]

[Tim Torres presenting his STEMAP research titled Increasing Outdoor Productivity of Algae Cultures for Biotechnoloy Industry]

[Saul Ruiz presenting his STEMAP research titled Can the Addition of algae to a Shewanella Encapsulated Fuel Cell Improve Electrogenic Cultures?]

[From L-R: Saul Ruiz and Miguel Torrez with their award certificates]

And, that concludes my reflections of the SACNAS National Conference. I am definitely looking forward to next year and hope to be joined by other EPSCoRians.