NEWS

Often there are simply too many accomplishments to fit into our tiny kudos section. This month, we've compiled a list of kudos-worthy accomplishments by NM EPSCoR faculty that we missed the first go round. Have something we missed in our previous newsletters and below? Reach out to Brittney (bvdw@epscor.unm.edu) to have it included in the next newsletter kudos section.

SFCC

• Stephen Gomez (NM SMART Grid Center faculty) is co-PI on an NSF project titled, "Creating a Sustainable Educational Pipeline for the Controlled Environment Agriculture Workforce through a Remote Dual-Credit High School to College Model" which will train high school teachers from rural schools to provide dual-credit controlled environment agriculture courses to their students. Read the NSF award abstract about it...

NMT

• Kooktae Lee (NM SMART Grid Center Seed Awardee) was promoted to a tenured associate professor last month. He also received a prestigious NSF CAREER award in Summer 2022 for his project, "Optimal Transport-based Density-Aware Multi-Agent Exploration" which investigates the challenges of efficiently controlling a team of robots responsible for monitoring wildlife at Sevilleta National Wildlife Refuge. Read the NMT press release about it...   
   
• Caitano da Silva (NM EPSCoR Seed Award PI & Outstanding Mentor Awardee) was promoted to a tenured associate professor last month.
   
• Kevin Wedeward (NM SMART Grid Center faculty member) received $216K in late 2022 for an NSF Collaborative Research grant titled, "Intelligent Public Safety based on Integrated Communications Systems." The project aims to design a 3D network architecture which could lead to improved disaster relief operations.
   
• Nikolai Kalugin and Gayan Rubasinghege (both NM EPSCoR supported faculty hires) are on a NMT team recently awarded Major Research Instrumentation project funding ($397K) from NSF for the purchase of a high-resolution confocal Raman microscope capable of liquid and solid experiments. Read the NMT press release about it...
   
• Sihua Shao (NM SMART Grid Center supported faculty hire) will start a $175K NSF project this fall exploring a new cross-domain framework for integrated design of efficient and scalable optical wireless technology. Read the NSF award abstract about it...

NMSU

• Huiping Cao (NM SMART Grid Center faculty member) was the first person honored with the Hue and Pat McCoy Endowed Professorship last summer. She also was promoted to professor in August 2022. Read the news release about her endowed professorship...
   
• Jamal Mamkhezri (NM EPSCoR Seed Award PI and previous NM EPSCoR graduate student) will become an associate professor with early tenure in Fall 2023.
   
• Son Tran (NM SMART Grid Center faculty member) is co-PI on a grant from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission awarded in late 2022 which will explore the use of artificial intelligence in generating information nuclear power plant operators can use to inform maintenance and operational decisions. Read the NMSU press release about it...
   
• Jay Misra (NM SMART Grid Center faculty member & Outstanding Mentor Awardee) was promoted to a professor and is now associate dean for research at the NMSU College of Engineering.
   
• Fengyu Wang, Son Tran, and Huiping Cao (NM SMART Grid Center faculty members) are co-PIs on a IUCRC Planning Grant exploring the feasibility of a multi-site center of Aviation Big Data Analytics with a mission to "develop big data analytics solutions specially designed for the aviation industry to ensure the safety, security, and prosperity of the U.S. Aviation Ecosystem." Read the NSF award abstract about it...
   
• Donovan Bailey (NM EPSCoR supported faculty hire) is PI on an NSF Collaborative Research project with John Carroll University and Oberlin College titled, "Empowering future scientists within an international consortium focused on gypsum plant communities," supporting small student cohorts to conduct mentored research projects in Spain, the international hub of gypsum ecological and evolutionary research. Read the NSF award abstract about it...
   
• Di Shi (NM SMART Grid Center Seed Awardee) is the sole PI on a $200K NSF Engineering Research Initiation Grant aimed at creating a novel framework for addressing real-time operational issues faced by power distribution infrastructure and inverter-based resources. Read the NSF award abstract about it...
   
• Enrico Pontelli (NM SMART Grid Center faculty) is a co-PI on a $3M NSF Hispanic Serving Institution transformation project titled, "NMSU-MÁS (Mejorando las Aulas en STEM/Improving STEM Classrooms)," focused on enhancing retention and successful graduation of Hispanic, first-generation, and low-income STEM students at NMSU. Read the NMSU press release about it...
   
• Hatim Geli (NM EPSCoR supported faculty hire) and Enrico Pontelli, Huiping Cao, Son Tran (NM SMART Grid faculty members) are collaborating on a $2M award titled, "Artificial Intelligence for Arid Land Agriculture," focused on cultivating resources and fostering collaborations between computer science and agricultural science researchers and graduate students. Read the NMSU press release about it...
   
• Tanner Schaub (NM ESPCoR supported faculty hire) received a $600K NSF award to purchase a Field-Emission Scanning Microscope, which will capture images allowing researchers to develop novel materials for things like batteries, fuel cells, and even water purification membranes. Read the NSF award abstract about it...
   
• Olga Lavrova is collaborating with two other faculty members at NMSU on a $500K specialty crop block grant titled, "Protecting NM Chile and Tomato Crops from Disease while Generating. Electricity through Agrivoltaics." The three-year project will investigate if solar panel shading reduces the occurrence of Curly Top Virus infection in chile and tomato plants. Read the NM Department of Agriculture press release about it...

UNM

• Nathan Jackson (NM SMART Grid Center Seed Awardee) has received at least two different large awards since last summer and a promotion. His NSF CAREER award (A Universal Microsystem-based Vibration Energy Harvester) will focus on harnessing energy generated by equipment vibrations to power microsystems. He is sole PI on a DoD grant (Multifunctional High Performance Smart Thin Films for Microsystem Applications) tackling the creation of functional films for microsystem sensors in wearable military technology like e-skin. And last fall he began serving as associate director of the Manufacturing Engineering Program at UNM. Read the UNM press release about it...
   
• Patrick Bridges (NM SMART Grid Center faculty member) received $1.5M to create effective computational and data science training resources in New Mexico. The project will span from undergraduate to professional training programs and is expected to cultivate a well-trained computational and data science workforce in New Mexico. Read the UNM press release about it...
   
• Ganesh Balakrishnan (Director and PI of NM ESPCoR) is part of a team awarded $1M by the Department of Defense's EPSCoR program, DEPSCoR. The capacity-building project will support the hire of new faculty at UNM and develop a new quantum information science and engineering graduate degree. Read the UNM press release about it... 
   
• Ali Bidram, Janie Chermak, Manel Martínez-Ramón, and Michael Devetsikiotis (NM SMART Grid Center faculty) received $100K from NSF to purchase a network emulator. This co-simulation tool will allow the team to create cyber-attack detection and mitigation algorithms specifically for power grid applications. Read the NSF award abstract about it...

Kudos given in previous newsletters since last Summer:

Nov/Dec

• Jay Misra (PI), Joshua Reynolds, and David Breeker have been awarded a DOE EPSCoR grant for their proposal, "Building a federated learning framework for trustworthy and resilient energy internet of things (eIoT) infrastructure." The award brings together NMSU, Microgrid Systems Laboratory (MSL), and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory to explore the utility of Federated machine learning within smart grid data architectures and applications. Read more about it here...
   
• MSL, Rochester Institute of Technology, and Navajo Technical University have been awarded a grant from the Public Interest Technology University Network (PIT-UN) program to further the partners’ work with Native American communities in the tribal energy sovereignty area. Read more about it here...

February

• Dr. Juchao Yan (PI) from ENMU (NM EPSCoR alumni) alongside co-PIs Dr. Sandra Biedron from UNM and Dr. Marat Talipov from NMSU were awarded a $750k DOE EPSCoR grant for their proposal, "Use of Carbonyl as an Infrared Reporter for Probing the Nature of Charges in Donor-Acceptor Type Conjugated Molecules." The project aims to create new methods to address persistent problems thwarting the creation of better solar cells. Read the official ENMU press release here...
   
• Dr. Abdullah Mueen co-lead of the Decision Support team for the NM SMART Grid Center was awarded the ACM SIGKDD Test of Time Award, which recognizes papers published 10 years ago which have made a sustained and significant impact. Read more about this honor...

March

• Dr. Meeko Oishi (NM SMART Grid Center team member) will be leading a $1M project called, "Autonomous Systems that Accommodate Human Perception and Reasoning about Uncertainty" as an NSF BRITE Fellow. Read the official UNM press release here...
   
• Dr. Eirini Eleni Tsiropoulou (Seed Award PI) from UNM was awarded a $183K NSF Collaborative Research grant titled, "Intelligent Public Safety based on Integrated Communications Systems." The project aims to design a 3D network architecture which could lead to improved disaster relief operations. Read the official UNM press release here...
   
• Dr. Eva Chi (RII2 NM EPSCoR faculty hire) from UNM was awarded NSF funding for her grant titled, "Agency in Chemical Engineering Experiments" which will examine the role of personal agency among chemical engineering students when creating laboratory experiments for class. The project is a collaboration with Montana State University. Read the official press release here...

April

• Nathan Jackson (Seed Award Recipient) won the ASEE Gulf-Southwest Section's Young Faculty Award. Read press release here...
   
• Sihua Shao (NM SMART Grid Center team member) is working on a $4M project to make it safer and easier to rescue trapped miners. Read news article here... 
   
• Adrian Salustri (NM SMART Grid Center student) was confirmed as Student Regent on the NMT Board of Regents last month. Read news article here...
   
• Sherralyn Sneezer (Ph.D. student of project partner, MSL) was named RIT's 2023 Outstanding Graduate Woman. Read article here...
   
• Professor Laura Crossey (NM EPSCoR Alumni) is co-PI on a recently awarded NSF TODOS grant focused on empowering K-12 teachers to be leaders in equitable and inclusive teaching. Read article here...

May

• Juchao Yan (involved with NM EPSCoR since 2001) was honored by NMT in May for his excellence in research with the faculty excellence award. Read the press release here.