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.