When UNM ADVANCE announced their Women in STEM awards on June 17th, the NM EPSCoR team was elated to learn that three of the eight women have NM EPSCoR ties.

In 2005, Heather Canavan was hired as an Assistant Professor by the University of New Mexico’s (UNM) Department of Chemical and Nuclear Engineering with support from NM EPSCoR through RII2 NM NEW – an award focused on developing nanoscience and hydrology capacity within the state. For Heather, EPSCoR functioned much like a wood brace does for a newly planted tree sapling.

In summer 2018, the National Science Foundation (NSF) called upon the scientific community, nonprofits, industry members, and general public to participate in the NSF 2026 Idea Machine competition, a contest designed to help set the U.S. agenda for fundamental research in science and engineering.

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.”

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.

What do you get when you combine 19 education institutions, nearly 50 posters, and 150 attendees? The 2019 New Mexico Research Symposium hosted in collaboration with the New Mexico Academy of Science (NMAS)!

UNM Electrical and Computer Engineering Associate Professor Meeko Oishi has had a busy year. In March she was chosen to participate in the highly-selective Defense Study Science Group sponsored by DARPA. Her collaborative work on light therapy and circadian rhythms is rocking the world of health sciences.

In 2014, NM EPSCoR supported the hire of Assistant Professors Dr. José Cerrato and Dr. Ricardo González-Pinzón at the UNM Department of Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering with funds from the $20 million Energize New Mexico National Science Foundation (NSF) EPSCoR grant.

In August, Dr. Trilce Estrada, an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at UNM and a faculty member of the NM SMART Grid Center Decision-Support research team was awarded the 2019 ACM SIGHPC Emerging Woman Leader in Technical Computing award.

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).