Event Category: Research

As politicians debate the significance of climate change evidence, the world and its habitats are changing. Several species face extinction by 2050 due to various consequences of human activities, and scientists have spent a great deal of time and research on finding and perfecting intervention techniques to prevent total extinction of some species. One of those techniques, "facilitated adaptation" was the focus of a commentary recently published in the science journal Nature.

The New Mexico Chemistry Symposium is an annual meeting of chemists at New Mexico Tech in Socorro, New Mexico. This year's theme is Energize New Mexico. The event includes talks by notable scientists around this theme, including the Keynote Address by Srikanath Nayaran of the University of Southern California: Opportunities and Challenges in Electrical Energy Storage for Renewables Integration.

The presence of uranium in groundwater is an issue of great public interest in New Mexico. For many areas in the northeast quadrant of the state, the uranium in underground aquifers has made it unusable for animals or humans. It’s not completely clear how much of the problem should be blamed on natural processes and how much has been caused by uranium mining through the later part of the 20th century.

The New Mexico Academy of Science (NMAS) and NM EPSCoR invite anyone to submit abstracts on Impacts of Climate Change on Water in New Mexico and Sustainable Energy Development in New Mexico for presentation at the 2013 Joint Annual Meeting of NMAS and EPSCoR in Albuquerque, NM, on November 9, 2013! The 2013 Joint Annual Meeting of NMAS and NM EPSCoR is an open forum for sharing the results of research and teaching on “Impacts of Climate Change on Water in New Mexico” and “Sustainable Energy Development in New Mexico”.

As many already know, it takes a lot of planning to achieve the NSF EPSCoR goal of improving the R&D competitiveness of researchers and institutions within EPSCoR jurisdictions, and NM EPSCoR is no exception. Team leaders, State Committee members, and NM EPSCoR staff and participants are gathering today and tomorrow at the UNM Science and Technology park for a 2-day Strategic Planning Retreat, facilitated by New Mexico First.

New Mexico EPSCoR is proud to support undergraduate research projects that can lead to prestigious research opportunities and the continuation of higher education. Juan Solis, a civil engineering graduate student at NMSU and a former NM EPSCoR research student, recently received the Graduate Research Fellowship from the National Science Foundation. As an undergraduate, Solis worked with NM EPSCoR researcher Salim Bawazir (NMSU) to build and install climate stations.

This morning, University of New Mexico President Bob Frank sent out his weekly newsletter to the UNM community. This week featured stories about innovation coming out of higher education institutions in order to drive the country forward, and how research universities like UNM play a role in the country's economic competitiveness. New Mexico EPSCoR was featured as one of the sources of UNM innovation.

A new $20 mil­lion Exper­i­men­tal Pro­gram to Stim­u­late Com­pet­i­tive Research (EPSCoR) grant from the National Sci­ence Foun­da­tion will sup­port key research into ways to make New Mex­ico an energy suf­fi­cient state. The research will focus on ways to improve effi­ciency of sus­tain­able energy resource uti­liza­tion and to min­i­mize envi­ron­men­tal impacts of ura­nium min­ing and oil and gas production.