NEWS

Hanqing Pan is a PhD student at New Mexico Tech under Solar Team co-lead Michael Heagy. Hanqing recently participated in a summer program at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), and sent us a report about her experience. She has done amazing research for the Solar Team and we are happy to support her in her future endeavors. Thanks, Hanqing!

This past April I participated in the Science of Signatures (SoS) program at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). The goal of this 3-week program was to “develop innovative solution strategies for problems that support the forward deployment theme of the Science of Signatures Pillar, and building skills needed for successful research program development”. The Science of Signatures is one of the four pillars of science at LANL, which is dedicated to solving problems in global security, nuclear defense, energy, and health.

The group consisted of post-doctoral researchers and Ph.D. students. Each day, two lectures were provided – one technical lecture and one professional development lecture. Professional development lectures ranged from proposal writing to the tenure process. Besides attending the lectures, the main objective of the program was to generate novel research solutions to a research problem under the guidance of LANL mentors. We worked in teams of three to create a multidisciplinary proposal, which resulted in a final presentation to our mentors and program managers for critique and feedback.

I benefited immensely from this program by learning about professional development and meeting with LANL staff members. Being a part of NM EPSCoR and working on research involving solar energy aligned well with LANL’s missions, this puts my foot in the door for an EPSCoR-funded externship with LANL in the future.