Category: Sustainability

DataONE welcomes the NM EPSCoR as the 28th Member Node to join the federation. NM EPSCoR and DataONE have a long history of collaboration. The development of a Tier 4 Member Node at EPSCoR enhances the partnership by providing another replication target for other Member Nodes in the federation and increasing visibility of NM EPSCoR’s holdings to a broader audience.

Virginia Thompson, PhD candidate in Biology at UNM and project participant in the NM EPSCoR RII3 project (Climate Change Impacts on New Mexico’s Mountain Sources of Water), delivered the Department of Biology’s March brown bag seminar on her research on submerged aquatic macrophytes (SAMs). Virginia’s research over the last several years, including the research she did under the EPSCoR banner, has focused on the plants that live in the waters of the Valles Caldera National Park.

As part of an initiative to shine a light on the benefits of community college education, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Representative Ben Ray Luján toured Santa Fe Community College and it’s new Trades and Advanced Technology Center.

NM EPSCoR and the New Mexico Academy of Science welcomed over 130 faculty, students, researchers, educators and community members at the Hyatt Downtown Albuquerque on November 1st.

Energy is everywhere! Science teachers and their students wrestle with energy concepts at nearly every grade level. The Framework for K-12 Science Education (NRC, 2012) provide a foundation for K-12 teaching and learning about energy as a crosscutting concept across the disciplines. The New Mexico Informal Science Education Network (NM ISE Net) educators used the Framework for the first Energize New Mexico Teacher Institute, held in Albuquerque on June 9-13, 2014.

Santa Fe Community College (SFCC) has been awarded a $50,000, SEED Infrastructure Grant from the Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR), for commercial algae photo-bioreactor monitoring. It will fund the purchase of state-of-the-art sensors to monitor algae growth in photobioreactors (PBRs) that are up to 10,000 liters in volume.

New Mexico EPSCoR is announcing two brand new rounds of funding for Infrastructure Seed Awards and Diversity Innovation Work Groups (IWGs). As part of our 5-year Energize New Mexico grant, NM EPSCoR seeks to improve our understanding of how New Mexico can realize its energy development potential in a sustainable manner. Along with the six science components and cyberinfrastructure, NM EPSCoR is also committed to broadening participation in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM), diversifying STEM fields, and communicating research to the public.

Over 110 students, faculty, educators and administrators gathered over the weekend to celebrate science and research during the New Mexico Academy of Science (NMAS) and New Mexico EPSCoR Joint Annual Meeting & Symposium. The two organizations joined together to present findings on EPSCoR’s current grant, Energize New Mexico, and the previous grant, Climate Change Impacts on New Mexico Mountain Sources of Water, as well as other topics including wildlife ecology.

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.

Dr. Peter Lammers, a project lead on the NM EPSCoR bioalgal energy component, and his team at New Mexico State University (NMSU) were recently awarded a $5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to continue research on algae-based fuel. The project, entitled “Realization of Algae Potential” or REAP, will last 2.5 years and will focus on improving the yields and stability of algal biomass and cultivation systems.