2023 UNM Engineering magazine

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Engineering

2023

Message from the Dean W E L C OM E T O T H E 2 0 2 3

edition of UNM Engineering!

I am excited to be in my first full semester leading the School of Engineering (learn more about me on Page 2), and I am proud of all the amazing research, projects and people we have to showcase.

The last several months have been an exciting and educational whirlwind as I have been listening and learning about the The last several School, UNM and this months have great state of New Mexico.

I have had a chance to been an exciting talk with many of you and educational already, and I am amazed whirlwind as I have by the stories of how the been listening and School of Engineering is learning about the transforming lives. I am School, UNM and honored to be leading this this great state School in providing greater of New Mexico. educational access and opportunity. Those themes will be the backbone of our strategic planning process and in the selection of my leadership team (meet one of those new leaders, Eva Chi, on Page 17).

I am amazed by all that is going on in the School, such as the creation of the Center for Pedestrian and Bicyclist Safety, a University Transportation Center funded by the Department of Transportation and led by Nick Ferenchak in the Gerald May Department of Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering. This is an important topic, especially in Albuquerque, and we are looking forward to hearing more about the solutions the center will develop in the coming years. Read more on Page 7.

And speaking of that department, you may have noticed it now has a slightly different name. In May, we celebrated the renaming of UNM’s first endowed department to honor a UNM legend, Gerald May. Doug Campbell, a former student of May’s, was so inspired by his words of wisdom that when it came time for him to give back, he opted to honor Gerald May in this prominent and impactful way. Read more on Page 8.

And as always, the School has been extremely productive when it comes to research. In FY2023, we surpassed $44 million in research expenditures. There are too many projects to mention here, but a few highlights include our National Science Foundation CAREER Award winners from this year, Nathan Jackson and Milad Marvian (see Page 6), and the Southwest Environmental Finance Center receiving a $4 million grant as part of $10 million in EPA funding to provide water infrastructure technical assistance to small, disadvantaged communities (see Page 12). And in my field of educational research, a team from UNM is part of an NSF project to develop K-12 STEM teachers as leaders (read more on Page 13).

I hope you enjoy catching up with some of what we’ve been up to during the last year and perhaps even feel inspired to become more involved in what we do. I’m looking forward to partnering with our supporters in our mission to be the School of Engineering for New Mexico.

Donna Riley Jim and Ellen King Dean of Engineering and Computing

c o n t e n t s

A new era: Donna Riley takes the reins as dean of the School of Engineering 02

Marvian, Jackson receive NSF CAREER Awards 06

UNM home to Center for Pedestrian and Bicyclist Safety 07

UNM’s Civil Engineering Department named after Gerald May 08

On the cover Donna Riley, the new dean of the School of Engineering

UNM Engineering 2023, Volume 19 UNM Engineering is published annually by the University of New Mexico School of Engineering. Subscriptions are free; requests should be submitted to the address below.

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Transitions and Achievements

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Research Roundup

UNM leading $5 million, 5-year Rio Grande consortium project for regional workforce development 14

UNM researchers take a deep dive into our changing planet with SIMReef project 15

Full circle: MathWorks’ $2 million donation creates endowed chair for Department of Computer Science 16

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Five for Eva Chi

Transformations

A NEW ERA

DONNA RILEY TAKES THE REINS AS

DEAN OF THE SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING

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UNM Engineering 2023

Riley’s research Donna Riley, a recognized leader in engineering education and in bringing diverse views into the field of engineering, began April 1 as the Jim and Ellen King Dean of Engineering and Computing.

She is the 22nd — and first female — dean of the School of Engineering, which was founded in 1906. She also holds the rank of professor in the Gerald May Department of Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering at UNM. She joins UNM from Purdue University, where she was the Kamyar Haghighi Head and Professor in the School of Engineering Education since 2017. She previously was professor and interim head in the Department of Engineering Education at Virginia Tech, and from 2013–2015 served as program director for engineering education at the National Science Foundation (NSF).

Riley spent 13 years as a founding faculty member of the Picker Engineering Program at Smith College, the first engineering program at a U.S. women’s college. She is a fellow of the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) and recently was elected as vice president of scholarship for ASEE, a two-year term beginning at the 2023 ASEE Conference and Expo in Baltimore in June.

focuses on the field of engineering education, especially the integration of ethics, communication, social analysis, lifelong learning and how those skillsets help in the formation of engineering professionals.

Riley’s research focuses on the field of engineering education, especially the integration of ethics, communication, social analysis, lifelong learning and how those skillsets help in the formation of engineering professionals. She is the author of two books, Engineering and Social Justice and Engineering Thermodynamics and 21st Century Energy Problems.

She is the recipient of the 2016 Alfred N. Goldsmith Award from the IEEE Professional Communications Society, the 2012 Sterling Olmsted Award from ASEE, and the 2010 Educator of the Year award from Out to Innovate.

While she was at Smith, she received an NSF CAREER Award in 2005 for “Liberative Pedagogies

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Transformations

in Engineering Education.” The award is NSF’s most prestigious award in support of early career faculty who exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through outstanding research, excellent education, and the integration of education and research.

For early-career faculty, especially those with an eye toward advancing their research and academic administrative careers, the NSF CAREER Award is a highly sought-after credential, and Riley of course was interested in seeking the award. However, due to her initial scholarly interests in transdisciplinary approaches to environmental justice, she was discouraged to learn her topic fell in between two funding directorates at the National Science Foundation.

“I was told that I could never win a CAREER Award because my research didn’t fit into one of the predetermined categories. They told me not to apply.

I was crushed.”

She said, ‘You have to write about this.’ And so I did, and it became my NSF CAREER Award project,” Riley said. “It was a bit of an unusual experience that led me to win the award.”

But thanks to her connections with some mentors and professionals in the engineering education arena, she was encouraged to pursue an award after learning there was a new engineering education category.

Riley drew on innovative approaches to teaching engineering that she had been exploring in Smith’s new engineering program, drawing both inspiration and encouragement from author bell hooks, with whom she had a conversation during one of hooks’s visits to Smith. Riley said hooks’s book, Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom, had a profound impact on her, and she shared some of her ideas sparked by the book with the author.

Riley was born and raised in Los Angeles, and it was actually the city’s legendary smog that first piqued her interest in engineering and environmental concerns.

Her father was a first-generation college graduate, earning a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from what is now Missouri S&T and pursuing a career in the oil and gas industry.

When she told hooks her thoughts about what eventually became the subject of her CAREER Award — developing critical pedagogies for engineering classroom implementations — the trailblazing author and academic gave her the validation that helped her find success.

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Taking his advice, she also pursued chemical engineering, earning a bachelor’s degree from Princeton University. Having a passion for environmental science and the ways that engineering and policy intersect, she earned a Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University in engineering and public policy.

Always curious about fields outside engineering, Riley enjoyed taking various courses in social sciences and not only found the subject matter engaging, but also the teaching methods. She noticed a marked difference in the way a literature course that is focused on ideas and questions and discussion was presented

UNM Engineering 2023

We have to remind ourselves why we are here. We are here for the students, and for the people of New Mexico, to improve lives and further economic development

in comparison to a typical engineering course, which often is presented in a one-way lecture style.

“I kept thinking, ‘How do I teach more like they do in the social sciences?’ ” That is really what got me interested in the field of engineering education.”

DONNA RILEY

Two areas she wants to focus on are creating and growing partnerships for research, economic development, and education, and inclusive excellence, including how we can own the fact that we are both a Hispanic-Serving Institution and an R1 institution where impactful research is key.

While being a dean is a new role for Riley, she said she and her female assistant professor colleagues at Smith started preparing early, connecting with a network of female academics and deans of engineering who have served as mentors through the years.

She is also hiring two new positions: associate dean for faculty affairs and special assistant to the dean for educational initiatives.

Although as a female in engineering she is used to being one of the only women in a room (she was the only female department head in the College of Engineering at Purdue), coming in as the first woman dean of UNM Engineering will be a new milestone: “This will be the first time I’m a first.”

“UNM 2040 was one of things that excited me about UNM,” she said. “There is a clarity of purpose and vision, with a focus on how to use discovery, learning, and engagement to improve lives while also leveraging inclusive excellence.”

One of the things she liked about UNM was that the university is open to change and new ideas, and that is no different in the traditionally male field of engineering.

“Many of the university’s leaders are female — including some who are engineers — so I think UNM is ready for it,” she said. “It’s really exciting.”

Riley and her spouse are looking forward to enjoying some things she couldn’t experience in the Midwest: New Mexican culture and learning about xeriscaping.

She also enjoys hiking, running, art, food (“both cooking and eating”) and crafting, especially knitting.

As dean, she hit the ground running the first month, with a listening tour to gather information about the School of Engineering’s successes, opportunities, challenges and more. She is using that information and feedback to create a comprehensive plan that will guide her priorities for the School. During the fall, she is creating a steering committee for the School’s strategic plan (or “logic map”).

UNM’s 2040 goals will be front and center as well.

While she expects some new focuses, she said the vision of the School of Engineering will likely have a lot of familiar aspects to it.

“I believe in not fixing what isn’t broken,” she said. “I look forward to the challenge of bringing together different perspectives of various groups, both internal and external, to move us forward toward a common goal.”

A continued emphasis on building UNM and the School of Engineering as a leader will undoubtedly be a priority for Riley.

“We have to remind ourselves why we are here. We are here for the students, and for the people of New Mexico, to improve lives and further economic development,” she said. “We have got to have a betterprepared workforce. This has to be a collaborative effort, and with UNM as the state’s flagship institution, it is our role to take the lead.”

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MARVIAN, JACKSON RECEIVE NSF CAREER AWARDS Two researchers in the School of Engineering were awarded National Science Foundation CAREER Awards, which is NSF’s most prestigious award in support of early-career faculty.

Milad Marvian, an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and a member of the Center for Quantum Information and Control (CQuIC) at UNM, and Nathan Jackson, an assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, both received NSF CAREER Awards this year.

Marvian received an award for a five-year project titled “Design and Analysis of Low-Overhead Fault-Tolerant Quantum Circuits.” The project explores the minimum requirements for reliable quantum computation and also aims to develop low-overhead quantum error correction and fault-tolerant schemes.

“Quantum computing is fundamentally different from classical computing in that it utilizes quantum mechanical effects to perform computation,” he said.

He said the shift in the paradigm of computing provides quantum computers with the potential to offer a substantial advantage compared to classical computers for certain high-impact computational tasks.

“However, quantum systems are extremely susceptible to noise, which can substantially reduce their performance. Current methods to protect quantum information from the noise require a lot of overhead and the fundamental limits of the required resources are less understood,” he said.

Marvian said he and his team will develop mathematical models that will help them to determine these fundamental limits and also develop optimized constructions of quantum devices, protecting key fault-tolerant quantum operations. The project will help to lower the hardware requirements to build reliable quantum processors capable of accurate, large-scale quantum computation.

“My hope is at the end of this project, we will have a better understanding of limits of protecting quantum computers against noise, making them more efficient, affordable and ultimately result in reducing the barriers to building practical quantum processors,” he said.

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Milad Marvian

Nathan Jackson

Jackson’s award explores a new way in which to harvest energy needed for today’s technology.

Wireless sensor networks require constant energy, and although batteries provide that energy, they have a limited lifespan. Jackson is working on a new and improved way to harvest energy: using vibrations to harness power. The $500,000 project, “A Universal Microsystem-based Vibration Energy Harvester,” began June 1, 2023, and ends May 31, 2028.

The project involves the process of piezoelectric microsystem energy harvesting — converting mechanical stress (vibration) into electric energy and funneling that energy to power microscale devices and systems that would be able to function 24/7 and could be applied to most applications. This technology could allow devices and systems to be self-sustaining without the need to replace batteries, which are particularly useful in remote or hard-to-reach locations.

Although he said the technology of harvesting energy through piezoelectric microsystem energy has been around for over a decade, challenges in manufacturing and applying the devices in regard to power, frequency bandwidth and reliability have limited their potential use, and currently there are no commercial microsystem energy harvesting devices.

Jackson said the goal of this project is to create a more universal low-frequency microsystem vibration energy harvesting system that could power wireless sensor networks.

His project will focus on investigating solutions to three main challenges which have limited the use of microsystem energy harvesters: widening the frequency bandwidth, frequency tunability to provide consistent optimal power supply, and enhancing the power density through development of novel ternary piezoelectric thin-film material structures.

Jackson is also the director of the UNM Nanoscience and Microsystems Engineering program, which is an interdisciplinary graduate program based in the School of Engineering.

UNM Engineering 2023

UNM home to Center for Pedestrian and Bicyclist Safety A new center at The University of New Mexico will address a deadly problem in the U.S.: the thousands of people killed every year in pedestrian and bicyclist crashes, especially in New Mexico, which ranks at the top of the list.

The Center for Pedestrian and Bicyclist Safety is a Tier One University Transportation Center (UTC), funded by the U.S. Department of Transportation, and will receive $2 million a year for five years. The center will be led

by Nicholas Ferenchak, an assistant professor in the Department of Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering at UNM. “About 20 percent of the fatalities on the road are pedestrian or bicyclist fatalities, and New Mexico has had the highest pedestrian fatality rate for six years,” he said. “Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg set a goal of zero U.S. traffic fatalities, and while that is a lofty goal, we would like to reverse the national trend and come up with solutions to make our roadways safer by focusing on the most vulnerable road users: pedestrians and bicyclists.”

Ferenchak, who joined UNM in 2018, focuses on active transport and multimodal aspects of emerging transportation technologies through their impacts on health and safety. He leads UNM’s Transportation Virtual Reality Lab, which provides an immersive roadway environment that allows research into situations that would be unsafe to conduct in real life.

He said the new center will utilize existing VR technology in his lab and research that he and his research team have conducted the last several years, which has included looking at the impact that the Albuquerque Rapid Transit (ART) project had on pedestrian and driver safety along Central Avenue.

Despite the much-publicized disruption that the project had to motorists and businesses along the corridor, Ferenchak said that during the first year of the ART project, serious injuries and fatalities dropped 60%. It is findings like that that he hopes to expand on in the new center.

Nick Ferenchak (right) presents this spring to Sen. Martin Heinrich (left), Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Ben Ray Lujan at a meeting Albuquerque.

He said that Albuquerque and many cities in the western United States provide an ideal setting to study pedestrian and bicyclist safety. The mild weather and spacious roadways often mean that more people choose to walk or bike. But in New Mexico, factors such as poverty may mean that some residents cannot afford a vehicle so instead have no choice but to walk or bike, often on roadways that lack sidewalks or other safety features.

Ferenchak said the UNM team will include new Department of Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering faculty member Lisa Losada Rojas, along with a mix of other faculty and graduate and undergraduate student researchers.

Each UTC is a consortium of two- and four-year colleges and universities that come together to form a unique center of transportation excellence on a specific research topic. In addition to UNM at the lead, partner members of the center will be San Diego State University; University of California, Berkeley; University of Tennessee, Knoxville; and University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee.

Along with the civil engineering aspect that Ferenchak and his team will be looking at, other members of the multi-institutional team will focus on transportation planning, population demographics and socioeconomic factors, human behavior and possibly even partnerships with UNM Health Sciences to look at the kinds of injuries that doctors encounter from pedestrian traffic patients.

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(Clockwise from upper left): Gerald May; Donna Riley with President Stokes; Riley with Doug Campbell: May with wife Mary Joyce, and Campbell with wife Arishanda; former deans Arup Maji, May, Christos Christodoulou and Charles Fleddermann with Riley.

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UNM Engineering 2023

(Clockwise from left): Julie Coonrod, interim dean of Anderson School of Management, with alumnus Alandren Etlantus; a group from civil engineering enjoy the festivities; Doug Campbell in the spotlight.

UNM’S CIVIL ENGINEERING DEPARTMENT NAMED AFTER GERALD MAY

The University of New Mexico on May 10 held a ceremony to celebrate the official renaming of a department, which makes the School of Engineering home to the first and only endowed department at the university: The Gerald May Department of Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering.

Thanks to the generosity of donor and alumnus Doug Campbell, the department has been renamed the Gerald May Department of Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering. Campbell’s $5 million pledge was recently paid in full, which creates an endowment that will continue to generate funds that will benefit students in the department for decades to come.

May is a former professor, dean and UNM president who was a professor of Campbell’s and advised him to go to graduate school, which Campbell says was one of the most pivotal decisions of his life, one that set him on a track of success. Naming the department in his honor is a permanent way to honor May for the impact he had on Campbell and countless students over the years.

The event featured remarks from UNM President Garnett Stokes; Donna Riley, Jim and Ellen King Dean of Engineering and Computing; Mahmoud Taha, distinguished professor and outgoing chair of the Department of Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering; and Jeff Todd, president and CEO of the UNM Foundation.

Campbell, an Albuquerque native, earned both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in civil engineering from UNM. Campbell had a stint in an engineering job and even as a professional mountain biker, but found his greatest success in the business world, especially as CEO of Solid Power.

May joined the civil engineering faculty at UNM in 1967 and served as dean of the School of Engineering from 1980 – 86, then as 14th president of The University of New Mexico from 1986 – 90.

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Transformations

Transitions and Achievements

Susan Bogus Halter

Mark Gilmore

Andrew Schuler

Leadership Two faculty have been selected to lead their respective departments on an interim basis. Susan Bogus Halter is the interim chair of the Gerald May Department of Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering, and Mark Gilmore is the interim chair of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

Andrew Schuler, a professor in the Gerald May Department of Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering, has been selected as the director of the Center for Water and the Environment.

Krista Navarrette has been selected as manager of advising for the School of Engineering, overseeing all of the School’s student advisement efforts.

Eva Chi, a professor in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, has been selected as associate dean for faculty affairs.

Krista Navarrette

Liz Godwin

MECHANICAL ENGINEERING

Wenbin Wan, most recently an instructor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, joins the department as an assistant professor.

Ahmed Hasan is joining the department as a Lecturer III. Most recently, Hasan was an adjunct faculty member in the department.

Chi Wang, formerly a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, joins the department as an assistant professor.

Georgios Koutsakis is joining the department as an assistant professor in January. He joins UNM from a postdoctoral fellow position at Harvard University.

CHEMICAL AND BIOLOGICAL ENGINEERING

Sungjin Kim is joining the department as assistant professor. Kim most recently was a postdoctoral researcher at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

__________________________________________________________________________

New Faculty GERALD MAY DEPARTMENT OF CIVIL, CONSTRUCTION AND ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEERING

Allyson L. McGaughey is joining the department as an assistant professor. She joins UNM from a postdoctoral position at Princeton University.

Madura Pathirage is joining the department as an assistant professor. He is joining UNM after working as a postdoctoral scholar and instructor at Northwestern University.

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COMPUTER SCIENCE

Xin Chen, most recently an assistant professor of computer science at the University of Dayton, joins UNM as an assistant professor.

Afsah Anwar is joining the department as an assistant professor. Previously, Anwar was an assistant professor at Florida A&M University.

ELECTRICAL AND COMPUTER ENGINEERING

Liz Godwin, who first joined UNM as part of the Inclusive Excellence Postdoctoral and Visiting Scholars Program, is now an assistant professor in the department.

UNM Engineering 2023

Keeping up with the people in the School of Engineering

Lydia Tapia

Donna Riley

Christos Christodoulou

Achievements Lydia Tapia, chair and professor in the Department of Computer Science, has been elected to the Computing Research Association Board of Directors. Tapia was among five new members elected for the term that runs from July 1, 2023, to June 30, 2026.

Donna Riley, Jim and Ellen King Dean of Engineering and Computing, has been appointed to the advisory committee for the Directorate for Engineering at the National Science Foundation for a three-year term.

She also has been elected as the first vice president of scholarship for the American Society for Engineering Education for a two-year board position.

Christos Christodoulou, distinguished professor of electrical and computer engineering at UNM and director of COSMIAC, has been selected for the IEEE Chen-To Tai Distinguished Educator Award. The award is given annually to recognize outstanding career achievement by a distinguished educator in the field of antennas and propagation.

Abhaya Datye, distinguished professor in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, was an invited speaker at a symposium at the Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society, held in January 2023 in Berlin.

Gruia-Catalin Roman, a professor in the Department of Computer Science, received the Test of Time Award from the ACM Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems (SenSys), the flagship conference on research on sensor networks and sensor-enabled smart systems.

Gruia-Catalin Roman

Katelin Fisher

Aidira Macias Gonzalez, a visiting scholar in the Center for Biomedical Engineering at UNM, received a prize for outstanding poster presentation at the International Conference on Engineering Synthetic Cells in Organelles (SynCell2023). Coauthors on the poster were Ashley Tafoya, Matthew Lakin and Gabriel Lopez from UNM, and Jacqueline De Lora and Joachim Spatz from the Max Planck Institute for Medical Research.

Katelin Fisher, environmental laboratory manager in the Gerald May Department of Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering, received the Outstanding Research Staff Award from the UNM Office of the Vice President for Research. Fisher works with the Center for Water and the Environment.

Two nuclear engineering students from UNM received graduate fellowships as part of the U.S. Department of Energy’s University Nuclear Leadership Program.

Justin Hamil and Ethan Krammer are each receiving funds to help pay for graduate studies and research.

Krammer is pursuing his Ph.D. at UNM, and Hamil is pursuing a Ph.D. at the University of Michigan.

Students and faculty from the Department of Mechanical Engineering attended the ASEE GulfSouthwest Section conference, and several came away with awards. UNM Engineering winners were Nathan Jackson, associate professor of mechanical engineering, who won the ASEE Gulf-Southwest Section’s Outstanding Young Faculty Award; and Joseph Erwin, who won first place in the undergraduate student paper awards competition for “Elastic-Plastic Behavior of Threaded Fasteners Under Multi-Axial Loads,” which was co-authored by Tariq Khraishi and Laith Alqawasmi.

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Transformations

RESEARCH ROUNDUP Eric Lang, an assistant professor of nuclear engineering, is leading two U.S. Department of Energy Nuclear Energy University Program projects that will improve nuclear reactor performance and future development. The first project, called “Deciphering Irradiation Effects of YH through In-situ Evaluation and Micromechanics for Microreactor Applications,” is funded for $998,000 through the Advanced Reactor Development program.

Lang is collaborating with Los Alamos National Laboratory and the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. This project will investigate the use of yttrium hydride (YH) to slow down or moderate neutrons in microreactors. The second project is called “Establishment of Hot Cell Irradiated Materials Micro and Nano-Mechanical Testing at the University of New Mexico.” This $209,305 project, part of the DOE’s Scientific Infrastructure Support for Consolidated Innovative Nuclear Research General Scientific Infrastructure Support Program, involves procuring and installing equipment in the existing hot cell of the UNM nuclear reactor.

Sakineh Chabi, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering, is the recipient of a 2023 Air Force Office of Scientific Research Young Investigator Research Program award. She received the award for “Two-dimensional Silicon Carbide for Future Optoelectronics and Photonics.” The honorees receive three-year grants of up to $450,000.

Shuya Wei, an assistant professor in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, is the principal investigator on a project titled “Rational Design and Engineering of Composite Electrolytes for All-solid-state Li-S Batteries.” The $202,000 grant began Feb. 1, 2023, and concludes Jan. 31, 2025. The main objective of the project is to develop composite solid electrolytes to develop all-solid-state lithium-sulfur batteries with a high capacity and a long lifetime, which would provide guidance on ways in which to design batteries that overcome their current limitations.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency awarded a grant of $4 million to the Southwest Environmental Finance Center, part of the School of Engineering, which is the first part of a total of $10 million to be awarded over five years. The center, led

by Heather Himmelberger, will use the grant to help small, disadvantaged communities build capacity to develop, maintain and operate water infrastructure in Region 6, which includes New Mexico, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana and Texas, as well as 66 Tribal nations. The UNM center was among 29 EFCs around the country to receive funding recently as part of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which will help underserved communities that have historically struggled to access federal funding receive the support they need to gain resources for water infrastructure improvements.

Shuya Wei demonstrating some of her research at a K-12 outreach event.

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UNM Engineering 2023

Members of the NSF Teachers Organizing Diverse Opportunities Across a STEM Ecosystem on the UNM campus. From left, Tito Busani, Deena Gould, Shawn Secatero, Laura Crossey and Kun Huang.

Minghui Chen, an assistant professor in the Department of Nuclear Engineering, is the recipient of a research and development grant from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). The $500,000 project is titled “Molten Salt Spill Experiments for Validating NRC Tools in Support of Molten Salt Reactor Source Term and Accident Analyses.” The focus of the research is to develop a molten salt spill experimental database for validating NRC computational tools for fluoride salt-cooled high-temperature reactor/molten salt reactor mechanistic source term and accident analyses.

Nathan Jackson, an assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, is receiving Department of Defense funding to develop new functional thin films that could be utilized in microsystem sensors and actuator applications, including wearable technology, autonomous vehicles, robotics, energy harvesting, and biomedical sensing. He is the single principal investigator of “Multifunctional High Performance Smart Thin Films for Microsystem Applications,” an $800,000, fouryear project funded by the Army Research Office, a

directorate of the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Army Research Laboratory.

The project will investigate novel manufacturing methods to create both flexible polymer-based functional materials as well as novel polycrystalline films that are microfabrication compatible. Jackson will work on developing materials that could have long-term impacts on device performance.

A UNM team was awarded nearly $1.5 million from the National Science Foundation for the “Teachers Organizing Diverse Opportunities Across a STEM Ecosystem” project. The project’s intent is to recruit and develop K-12 science teachers as leaders. Deena Gould, assistant professor in the Department of Teacher Education and Educational Leadership & Policy, is leading co-principal investigators Tito Busani, assistant professor in the Department of Electrical and Computing Engineering; Laura Crossey, distinguished professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences; and Shawn Secatero, associate professor in the Department of Teacher Education and Educational Leadership & Policy.

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UNM leading $5 million, 5-year Rio Grande consortium project for regional workforce development Attracting more engineers, especially those from underrepresented groups, into graduate school and guiding them toward eventual employment with the national labs is the goal of a new consortium funded by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE).

The Minority Serving Institution Partnership Program (MSIPP) of the DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration recently awarded $5 million over five years to a consortium being led by School of Engineering faculty at UNM.

Members of the Minority Serving Institutions Partnership Program met in Albuquerque in May 2023, and members of the Grande CARES consortium presented some of their work.

Peter Vorobieff, a professor of mechanical engineering, is heading the Rio Grande Consortium for Advanced Research of Exascale Simulation (Grande CARES).

“Our goal is to train students locally who will form the basis of a strong workforce for the national labs” PETER VOROBIEFF

The team’s goal is to develop a sustainable workforce pathway for students interested in pursuing advanced modeling and simulation. This includes incentives for students to pursue graduate degrees at institutions in the Rio Grande region and eventually gain employment at a national laboratory.

The Grande CARES team includes New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, New Mexico State University, the University of Texas at El Paso (all Hispanic-Serving Institutions), Prairie View A&M University and Sandia National Laboratories. Svetlana Poroseva, professor of mechanical engineering, is also part of the UNM team.

Vorobieff said that the Grande CARES project is targeted toward attracting those who might not ordinarily seek out engineering as a degree path or a career, especially Hispanic students.

The ultimate aim of Grande CARES is to produce a sustainable pipeline of scientists and engineers through collaborations established with Sandia scientists and faculty from the partnering institutions.

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“Our goal is to train students locally who will form the basis of a strong workforce for the national labs,” he said.

He said all the institutions who are consortium members have similar student population demographics and struggle to attract graduate students who are diverse and live outside the state.

With this agreement, New Mexico students can attend graduate school at the participating Texas institutions and vice versa, and all the consortium members are in proximity to Sandia, which has expertise in modeling and simulation.

The consortium will address the pressing gap in discipline-specific education of students that prepares them for careers in large-scale computational simulations and modeling. The goal is to develop, validate and integrate cutting-edge computational tools for complex engineering challenges using high-performance computing, machine learning, data analytics/big data concepts, uncertainty quantification and various computational capabilities. These fields will experience growth in coming years, as big data needs will grow and engineers will strive to develop solutions for complex challenges such as climate change.

“It all naturally fits together,” he said. “We are geographically close and stand to gain the same advantages, in particular, to boost graduate student enrollment — especially students from outside the state — as well as diversify the workforce at the national laboratories and provide enough engineers in the coming decades to meet demand.”

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UNM RESEARCHERS TAKE A DEEP DIVE INTO OUR CHANGING PLANET WITH SIMREEF PROJECT University of New Mexico researchers in the Department of Computer Science recently undertook fieldwork in Curaçao to model some out-of-theordinary data points they could not access in landlocked New Mexico: coral reefs.

Matthew Fricke and Ph.D. student Julie Hayes scuba-dived in the ocean, exploring coral reefs and the impacts that climate change has had on ocean life, documenting the relationships between

Melanie Moses, professor of computer science, is a coprincipal investigator of a National Science Foundation project called “Emergence of function and dynamics from ecological interaction networks” being led by University of Colorado, Boulder. The $3 million project, which is a collaboration between multiple universities, is funded through Sept. 30, 2027.

The team’s goal? To create a software model called SIMReef that represents millions of fish foraging for algae on coral reefs. They are seeking to understand how fish, coral and algae interact in a changing ocean to predict how coral can best be protected in increasingly inhospitable conditions.

Moses, along with the UNM team of Matthew Fricke, a research assistant professor in computer science, and Julie Hayes, a Ph.D. student in computer science, traveled in May to the CARMABI marine biology research station, Curaçao. In the clear, blue waters there, they had the opportunity to dive in the ocean, exploring coral reefs and the impacts that climate change has had on ocean life, documenting the relationships between coral, algae, and the fish that live there with photos and video.

The world’s coral reefs are some of the most biologically rich ecologies on the planet, which cover only 1% of the ocean floor, but contain a quarter of all ocean life. But unfortunately, coral reefs and the animals that they house are being destroyed. From 2014 to 2017, 75% of coral reefs were impacted by global warming, the team said.

coral, algae, and the fish that live there with photos and video.

Moses said that when temperatures rise, corals expel the photosynthetic micro-organisms that produce their food, causing coral bleaching and eventually death.

“We are seeing coral die in real time in the extreme water temperatures off the coast of Florida this summer, reaching over 100 degrees Fahrenheit,” Moses said. “However, some healthy coral ecosystems remain, and our goal is to understand what helps them to survive.”

A most unusual collaboration of research specialties — marine biologists and computer scientists — are translating what they have observed in Curaçao to develop a computer model of coral, algae, and fish interactions to better understand how fish populations control algae and keep reefs healthy. This data, along with recordings from mounted underwater cameras, will be used to build the coral reef model called SIMReef.

SIMReef’s purpose is to simulate how coral reefs will respond under different fish behaviors and algae overgrowth scenarios. By predicting what could happen, the impact of human-caused environmental changes that are harming the ocean ecosystem could be better understood, ideally leading to specific interventions that can slow the destruction of coral reefs.

“Coral reefs are so important and support so much life, but they are dying, and we are trying to understand exactly what is going on and what can be done about it,” Fricke said.

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Transformations

FULL CIRCLE MathWorks’ $2 million donation creates endowed chair for Department of Computer Science The company that owns software that was developed on campus at UNM decades ago donated $2 million to create an endowed chair in the Department of Computer Science.

The gift from MathWorks establishes the Cleve Moler and MathWorks Chair of Mathematical and Engineering Software Endowed Fund, which will generate funds to hire a faculty member in computer science. The UNM Board of Regents in October 2022 voted to approve the named chair, which is one of only a handful in the School of Engineering.

Lydia Tapia, professor and chair of the Department of Computer Science, said that the endowed chair would significantly impact the department.

Cleve Moler (front right) with current chair Lydia Tapia joined former Department of Computer Science chairs (back row, left to right) Brian Smith, Bob Veroff, Ed Angel, Henry Shapiro and Deepak Kapur at the Jack Dongarra talk at UNM.

THIS HONORS THE LONG TRADITION BETWEEN

underrepresented groups to computer science, especially Native Americans and females.”

U N M A N D M AT H W O R K S ,

MATLAB is a programming and numeric computing platform that millions of engineers and scientists use to analyze OF THE COMPUTER data, develop algorithms, and create S C I E N C E P R O G R A M AT “Thanks to the generosity of models. Moler began developing OUR UNIVERSITY MathWorks, the Department of MATLAB while he was a math professor LY D I A TA P I A Computer Science will be able to at UNM in the late 1970s, so his students recruit a high-quality faculty member,” could easily access the LINPACK linear she said. “This honors the long algebra libraries without writing Fortran. tradition between UNM and MathWorks, recognizing He was a faculty member at UNM for 13 years and the birth of the computer science program at became department chair in 1980. our university.”

RECOGNIZING THE BIRTH

Tapia said that investing in the high-growth field of computer science is a strong strategic move that will help UNM and the state.

“Putting resources into a strong computer science department is vital for building connections between global companies like MathWorks, national labs, and other local research agencies through a focus on mathematical software,” she said. “This endowment will strengthen the state of New Mexico by growing UNM’s high graduation rate of computer science majors and will help us on our quest to recruit more 16

Moler said that he is proud that MathWorks is investing in the Department of Computer Science at UNM. “There are a lot of future topics and challenges for computer science, problems we don’t even know about yet,” he said. “It will be important to be adaptive to what is continuing to evolve, and it will be important to have a strong computer science department ready to work on solutions for these future topics. I’m hopeful that this endowment will help.”

The new faculty member is expected to be hired within the next year.

UNM Engineering 2023

FIVE FOR

Eva Chi

Eva Chi, a professor in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, is starting her 16th year as a faculty member at UNM, and she’s also beginning a new role — that of associate dean of faculty affairs in the School of Engineering. In this new position, she will work with Dean Donna Riley on matters pertaining to faculty, such as promotion and tenure policies, workload, recruitment, retention and in general making life better for faculty in the School. It is likely she will draw on all aspects of her background in her new role. Chi has an extensive research background in areas including protein misfolding and aggregation in neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s, molecular sensors, and functional biomaterials. She also has a passion for engineering education, serving as one of the researchers on the National Science Foundation’s FACETS: Formation of Accomplished Chemical Engineers for Transforming Society project that was tasked with revolutionizing how engineering is taught.

What made you want to take on this new leadership role?

Working on so many faculty search committees made me really inspired to hear about all their research. I want to see faculty be able to do all the things they want to. I want to create a place where they can thrive. Also, I’m very inspired by our new dean and am looking forward to working with her. The timing was right.

What do you hope to accomplish as associate dean for faculty affairs?

I would like to build an environment for faculty success, one in which they are doing their best work and feel valued. One goal is to bring transparency to faculty life.

I think a lot of faculty are not sure about the policies and procedures. I’d like to collect data on the workload and equity in the school, working with the chairs and department administrators. I see this position as being important to promotion and tenure, as well as how we recruit and retain faculty. I’m hoping it will provide more support to faculty.

How do you see your extensive background in research and teaching helping you in this new role?

My personal experience as a faculty member informs me about what makes a good place to work. I can appreciate all of the challenges and the enormous potential of our position. Our students are very special, and I want our faculty to be successful so that they can help students succeed.

What made you decide to be a faculty member instead of another career choice, like industry or a lab?

I had several internships at companies. From that, I knew I wanted to pursue academia. When I expressed doubts about how to do it and if I wanted to, my Ph.D. advisor told me two things about academia: ‘You’ll always be working with students whose mothers are proud of them,’ and ‘There are always problems to solve.’ Also, I like to be my own boss and have the freedom to pursue what I am passionate about, and academia allows me to do that.

What are you most proud of so far in your career?

All of the students I have taught. I love to run into them and talk to them about what they are doing. I’m glad to say they are all doing well.

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