Event Category: Workforce Development

Resources for Dealing with the Impacts of COVID-19

Author
Brittney Van Der Werff

There are roughly 140 team members on this project and ~56% are students. Based on new team member form data, roughly 20% of our students are parents and 47% are first-generation college students. Faculty and postdocs are the second largest group, representing ~26% and technical/non-technical support staff come in third at 18% of the total. Many of these individuals are also parents or caregivers.

NM SMART Grid Center Student Research Spotlight

Presenters:
Jeewon Choi, PhD Candidate, Mechanical Engineering, University of New Mexico (Research Goal 1),
Jacob Marks, Masters Student, Computer Science, New Mexico Tech (Research Goal 2),
Adnan Bashir, PhD Candidate, Computer Science, University of New Mexico (Research Goal 3),
Shubhasmita Pati, PhD Candidate, Electrical & Computer Engineering, New Mexico State University (Research Goal 4)

January Diversity "How Tos"

Author
Sara Pichette

New Mexico EPSCoR is committed to the principles of diversity and inclusion. We strive to establish an environment that exemplifies and promotes diversity of all types (individual, institutional, geographic, and disciplinary).

At last year's annual All Hands Meeting for the NM SMART Grid Center, we charged our team members to come up with ideas of what they could do personally to engage a wide diversity of students at their institutions. Here are a few more ideas that continue the overarching themes of “Involve. Encourage. Engage.”

Welcome Frank Currie

Author
Brittney Van Der Werff

The NM SMART Grid Center is pleased to announce the most recent faculty hire for the project: Frank Currie, who is leading development of the Smart- and Micro-grid Training Center at Santa Fe Community College (SFCC). Within this role, Frank will spearhead development of the Distributed Energy Systems Program, an AAS and AS degree program specializing in smart grid and microgrid systems technician training.

“I am excited to build the program I wish had existed when I started school,” Frank said.

The Little Known Impacts of Valles Caldera: The Science

Author
Brittney Van Der Werff

In 2012, I was working as Education Coordinator for the Valles Caldera Trust, a small experimental federal agency charged with managing the 89,000-acre Valles Caldera National Preserve (VCNP) in the Jemez Mountains. New in my position, I had taken it upon myself to overhaul VCNP education efforts and establish a tiered education program offering place-based STEM field trips to local k-12 students.

2019 Externship Report Out

Author
Selena Connealy

Modeling and simulation tools are essential for researchers as they seek ways to integrate variable renewable sources of energy, like wind, into the electricity grid. Recently, NM SMART Grid Center graduate student, P. Christopher Scott, spent time as an extern at Idaho National Laboratory (INL) to learn about power system simulation. The INL Power Systems team, including Dr. Mayank Panwar, mentored Scott as he built computer models in Simulink, ran them on an Opal-RT real-time digital simulator, and modeled and simulated a power system in the IEEE 14-bus system.