The University of New Mexico

Category Archives: Research

Scott Burchiel Selected as UNM’s 58th Annual Research Lecturer

April 5, 2013 | By UCAM

Scott Burchiel

UNM Col­lege of Pharmacy’s Scott Burchiel has been selected as the 58th Annual Research Lec­turer. The Annual Research Lec­ture award is one of the high­est hon­ors that the Uni­ver­sity of New Mex­ico bestows on a fac­ulty mem­ber, and is selected by the UNM Research Pol­icy Com­mit­tee, and nom­i­nated by peers from across the United States and abroad.

The lec­ture, titled “Tox­i­coGe­nomic Bases for Human Sus­cep­ti­bil­ity to Envi­ron­men­tal Injury and Dis­ease,” will be pre­sented on Tues­day, April 16, at 6:30 p.m., in the Stu­dent Union Build­ing (SUB), Ball­room A&B, on the Uni­ver­sity of New Mex­ico main cam­pus. A recep­tion will be held prior to the lec­ture at 5:30 p.m. Fac­ulty, staff, stu­dents and the pub­lic are invited. There is no admis­sion charge.

“Humans are exposed to chem­i­cals in their envi­ron­ment via the food we eat, the air we breathe, the water we drink, and sub­stances that con­tact our skin,” Burchiel said. “While human aller­gies to drugs such as peni­cillin and foods such as eggs and peanuts are well known, there is less under­stand­ing of the dif­fer­ences in sus­cep­ti­bil­ity to envi­ron­men­tal pollutants.”

Burchiel, an expert in the inter­ac­tions between envi­ron­men­tal chem­i­cals and the immune sys­tem, will dis­cuss the dif­fer­ences in sen­si­tiv­ity of humans to var­i­ous drugs, chem­i­cals, and envi­ron­men­tal agents that pro­duce injury and dis­ease. Based on an under­stand­ing of the human genome, the fields of phar­ma­coge­nomics and tox­i­coge­nomics seek to iden­tify genetic sus­cep­ti­bil­i­ties that lead to adverse reac­tions. Whole genome sequenc­ing of indi­vid­u­als now per­mits the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of cer­tain drug and chem­i­cal sen­si­tiv­i­ties that may lead to the safer use of med­ica­tions as well as iden­tify per­sons who might be at increased risk for cer­tain envi­ron­men­tal diseases.

“It is hoped that a bet­ter under­stand­ing of mul­ti­ple gene and envi­ron­ment inter­ac­tions will lead to new pre­ven­tion and inter­ven­tion strate­gies that will play an impor­tant role in the emerg­ing field of per­sonal med­i­cine,” he explained.

Burchiel joined the Uni­ver­sity of New Mex­ico in 1977 as a National Can­cer Insti­tute NRSA Fel­low, and became a fac­ulty mem­ber in the Col­lege of Phar­macy in 1978. He has a highly dis­tin­guished career as a leader in edu­ca­tion, research, and admin­is­tra­tion at UNM.

Burchiel is the Nun­zio and Sherolyn DeSan­tis Endowed Chair of Phar­ma­coge­nomics and pro­fes­sor of Phar­ma­col­ogy and Tox­i­col­ogy in the Depart­ment of Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal Sci­ences. He serves as the asso­ciate dean for Research in the Col­lege of Phar­macy and has served as the Direc­tor of the UNM HSC Sig­na­ture Pro­gram in Envi­ron­men­tal Health Sci­ences and the direc­tor of the New Mex­ico Cen­ter for Envi­ron­men­tal Health Stud­ies for the UNM Health Sci­ences Cen­ter. He directs the New Mex­ico Cen­ter for Iso­topes in Med­i­cine (NMCIM) and has served as an asso­ciate vice pres­i­dent for Advanced Stud­ies (UNM Office of Research and Eco­nomic Devel­op­ment). He is a Fel­low of the Acad­emy of Tox­i­co­log­i­cal Sci­ences, an active NIH grant reviewer, and is the Editor-In-Chief of Tox­i­col­ogy and Applied Pharmacology.

Burchiel is an expert in immuno­tox­i­col­ogy and envi­ron­men­tal car­cino­gen­e­sis and has been con­tin­u­ally funded by the NIH for over 25 yrs. Burchiel’s lab­o­ra­tory is active in the use of tox­i­coge­nomics, phar­ma­coge­nomics, and the use of genomic and epige­nomic tools to ana­lyze mech­a­nisms of action of xeno­bi­otics. These stud­ies seek to iden­tify human sus­cep­ti­bil­ity fac­tors, such as poly­mor­phisms in recep­tor sig­nal­ing, metab­o­lism, and DNA repair genes.

Burchiel is an expert in immuno­tox­i­c­ity test­ing and his lab­o­ra­tory has been involved in the devel­op­ment of numer­ous new biotech­nol­ogy prod­ucts and has con­ducted numer­ous pre­clin­i­cal and clin­i­cal tri­als with phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal and biotech­nol­ogy com­pa­nies. He has served on an FDA Expert Work­ing Group in Vas­culi­tis and on numer­ous National Acad­emy and Insti­tute of Med­i­cine com­mit­tees. He cur­rently chairs the FDA’s National Cen­ter for Tox­i­co­logic Research (NCTR) Sci­ence Advi­sory Board.

To view the flyer, visit: 58th Annual Research Lec­turer.

The Uni­ver­sity of New Mex­ico con­grat­u­lates Scott Burchiel as UNM’s 58th Annual Research Lecturer.

Posted in Academics & Faculty, Research, University News | |

NOVA to feature ‘Meteor Strike;’ PBS show to talk with UNM researchers

March 25, 2013 | By Steve Carr

“Meteor Strike” par­tially filmed at UNM.

On the morn­ing of Feb. 15, 2013, a blind­ing flash of light streaked across the Russ­ian sky, fol­lowed by a shud­der­ing blast strong enough to dam­age build­ings and send more than 1,000 peo­ple to the hos­pi­tal. A 7,000-ton aster­oid had crashed into the Earth’s atmos­phere. Within days, NOVA crews joined impact sci­en­tists in Rus­sia as they hunted for clues about the meteor’s ori­gin and makeup.

This week on NOVA, “Meteor Strike,” a show that was partly filmed at UNM fea­tur­ing adjunct fac­ulty mem­ber and San­dia Labs employee Mark Boslough, and Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor Rhian Jones, Depart­ment of Earth and Plan­e­tary Sci­ences, will air on New Mex­ico PBS Wednes­day, March 27 at 8 p.m

Accord­ing to NASA, the Siber­ian meteor exploded with the power of 30 Hiroshima bombs and was the largest object to burst in the atmos­phere since the Tun­guska event of 1908, which was also in Siberia and left few eye­wit­nesses or clues. This time, the event was cap­tured by dig­i­tal dash­board cam­eras, now com­mon in Russ­ian autos and trucks. Within days, NOVA crews joined impact sci­en­tists in Rus­sia as they hunted for clues about the meteor’s ori­gin and makeup.

From their find­ings, it’s clear we came close to a far worse dis­as­ter, which NOVA sets in per­spec­tive by look­ing at greater explo­sions from the past, includ­ing Tun­guska and the aster­oid that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 mil­lion years ago. “Meteor Strike” asks: Is our solar sys­tem a deadly celes­tial shoot­ing gallery with Earth in the crosshairs? And what are the chances that another, more mas­sive aster­oid is head­ing straight for us?

For more infor­ma­tion, visit: Meteor Strike.

Posted in Events, Research | |

UNM College of Education hosts 16th Annual Graduate Student Colloquium on Tuesday, March 26

March 25, 2013 | By Steve Carr

On Tues­day, March 26, the UNM Col­lege of Edu­ca­tion hosts its 16th Annual Grad­u­ate Stu­dent Col­lo­quium, titled “Con­nect and Inspire,” from 11:30 a.m. through 8 p.m. in the Stu­dent Union Build­ing, Ball­room C.

The col­lo­quium, titled “Con­nect and Inspire,” fea­tures keynote speaker Judith Green, a well-known writer, scholar and researcher in the areas of teaching-learning rela­tion­ships, dis­ci­pli­nary knowl­edge as a social con­struc­tion, ethno­graphic research, and dis­course stud­ies of the pat­terns of every­day life in the classroom.

The COE Grad­u­ate Stu­dent col­lo­quium is a half day “mini con­fer­ence” where Col­lege of Edu­ca­tion grad­u­ate stu­dents present their research and pro­fes­sional prac­tice in a highly sup­port­ive environment.

For a com­plete sched­ule of events, visit: Con­nect and Inspire.

Atten­dance at this event is by reg­is­tra­tion only. To reg­is­ter, visit: 16th Annual Grad­u­ate Stu­dent Col­lo­quium reg­is­tra­tion.

Media Con­tact: Steve Carr (505) 277‑1821; e-mail: scarr@unm.edu.

Posted in Events, Research | |

McGuire Keynote Addresses Shift­ing the Class­room from Teacher Cen­tered to Learner Centered

March 14, 2013 | By Steve Carr

The 8th annual Suc­cess in the Class­room: Shar­ing Prac­tices that Work con­fer­ence was held recently fea­tur­ing a lun­cheon keynote address by Saun­dra McGuire, assis­tant vice chan­cel­lor for Learn­ing, Teach­ing and Reten­tion, and pro­fes­sor of Chem­istry at Louisiana State Uni­ver­sity. McGuire’s talk was titled “Shift­ing the Class­room from Teacher Cen­tered to Learner Cen­tered: It’s Eas­ier Than You May Think!”

McGuire also pre­sented a work­shop for fac­ulty and teach­ing assis­tants titled “Get Stu­dents to Focus on Learn­ing Instead of Grades: Metacog­ni­tion is the Key.”

The con­fer­ence, hosted by the Office of Sup­port for Effec­tive Teach­ing, with addi­tional spon­sor­ship sup­port from sev­eral UNM depart­ments and orga­ni­za­tions, pro­vided an oppor­tu­nity to broaden a teach­ing com­mons of UNM fac­ulty desir­ing to aid one another in devel­op­ing effec­tive learn­ing ped­a­go­gies and teach­ing prac­tices. Top­ics included tra­di­tional class­room and lab­o­ra­tory instruc­tion, to vir­tual learn­ing and assess­ment, to community-based ser­vice learn­ing and pro­grams that assist stu­dent learn­ing out­side of the classroom.

Sev­eral pre­sen­ta­tions high­lighted the approaches to col­lab­o­ra­tive learn­ing that have been imple­mented in UNM’s new learn­ing stu­dio class­room in Dane Smith Hall. Poster dis­plays exhib­ited course-reform projects in col­lege alge­bra and gen­eral chem­istry, and gen­eral physics sup­ported by the STEM Gate­way project, which is funded at UNM by the U.S. Depart­ment of Education.

Posted in Academics & Faculty, Research, University News | |

UNM, Rice Researchers Document the Velocity of Censorship

March 13, 2013 | By Karen Wentworth

Jed Cran­dall

Cen­sors at Sina Weibo, a Chi­nese web­site sim­i­lar to Twit­ter, work with amaz­ing speed and effi­ciency. That’s the con­clu­sion of research con­ducted by UNM Assis­tant Pro­fes­sor of Com­puter Sci­ence Jed Cran­dall and Rice Uni­ver­sity Pro­fes­sor of Com­puter Sci­ence and Elec­tri­cal Engi­neer­ing Dan Wal­lach in con­junc­tion with an inde­pen­dent researcher and an under­grad­u­ate researcher from Bow­doin College. 

The study is titled, “The Veloc­ity of Cen­sor­ship: High-Fidelity Detec­tion of Microblog Post Dele­tions,” and is under­go­ing peer-review.

“The point of our mea­sure­ment study of Weibo is to take a closer look at global online cen­sor­ship prac­tices,” Cran­dall said. “There has been con­sid­er­able debate in the U.S. recently about extend­ing copy­right law enforce­ment to include var­i­ous kinds of fil­ter­ing online. China already has laws in place for com­pa­nies within China to fil­ter online content.”

Weibo is one of the biggest social net­work com­pa­nies in China, and it faces the dual chal­lenge of keep­ing its users engaged (and thus, watch­ing adver­tise­ments and mak­ing money for Weibo) while keep­ing the con­tent it hosts com­pli­ant with local laws. If Weibo had insuf­fi­cient con­trols, the gov­ern­ment may take action against the com­pany. If their con­trols were too rigid, users might aban­don them for one of their com­peti­tors. Weibo’s suc­cess implies that it has found a happy medium, and the research team says that is what makes Weibo an inter­est­ing social media plat­form to study.

In Feb­ru­ary 2012 Weibo had more than 300 mil­lion users and about 100 mil­lion mes­sages that were sent daily.  Weibo, like Twit­ter lim­its mes­sage length to 140 characters. It also allows embed­ded pho­tos and videos and com­ment threads to be attached to posts.

In spite of the tremen­dous vol­ume, the com­pany can detect a cen­sor­ship event within one minute of post­ing. In their paper the researchers describe how they were able to track the cen­sors at work and hypoth­e­size sev­eral dif­fer­ent fil­ter­ing meth­ods that appear to com­prise Weibo’s defense-in-depth sys­tem of censorship.

“Weibo gives us a win­dow into the future for what Inter­net cen­sor­ship of social media around the world may look like,” Wal­lach said. “For­mer Supreme Court Jus­tice Louis Bran­deis cham­pi­oned trans­parency a cen­tury ago when he wrote, ‘sun­light is said to be the best dis­in­fec­tants.’ We hope that our research shines a light on how laws cre­ated by gov­ern­ments and imple­mented by the pri­vate sec­tor can affect free speech every­where, includ­ing here in the U.S.”

One of the most inter­est­ing ele­ments of the research is the find­ing about the speed at which the cen­sor­ship process actu­ally works.  Accord­ing to Cran­dall, “There have been some stud­ies on Weibo show­ing that posts are deleted after a day or two, but we see posts being deleted after five or ten min­utes. Basi­cally we showed that if you want to have a com­plete pic­ture of inter­net cen­sor­ship you have to have some­thing that can mea­sure very quickly on the order of min­utes, and you have to be able to mea­sure a wide vari­ety of things.”

About the Research
The research group first had to deter­mine how to approach the prob­lem, so they looked at the post­ings of indi­vid­u­als who had pre­vi­ously been cen­sored.  Over weeks, they were able to slowly expand their group, adding any user with more than five deleted posts and even­tu­ally find­ing more than 3,500 users to track for their sample.

Once they set­tled on a group to mon­i­tor, they decided to check their posts every minute to deter­mine how long it took cen­sors to remove a post.  Their web crawler searched for posts that appear, and then are sub­se­quently deleted.  Their data showed that five per­cent of the dele­tions hap­pened in the first eight min­utes and within 30 min­utes nearly 30 per­cent of the dele­tions were com­pleted.  More than 90 per­cent of the dele­tions occurred within one day after a post appeared.

This infor­ma­tion lead the team to think about what resources it would take to mon­i­tor that river of infor­ma­tion.  They cal­cu­lated it would take 4,200 work­ers read­ing 50 posts a minute in eight hour shifts to cen­sor using only human review of the posts.  That led them to the con­clu­sion that much of the fil­ter­ing must be auto­mated, through ini­tial flag­ging and ret­ro­spec­tive searches.  This con­clu­sion allowed them to set up six hypotheses.

  1.  There is a sur­veil­lance key­word list that trig­gers for posts to be look at by a mod­er­a­tor for pos­si­ble deletion.
  2. Weibo tar­gets spe­cific users, such as those who fre­quently post sen­si­tive comments.
  3. When a sen­si­tive post is found, a mod­er­a­tor will find all of its related reposts and delete them all at once.
  4. Weibo removes posts retroac­tively via key­word search, caus­ing spikes in the dele­tion rate of a par­tic­u­lar key­word within a short amount of time.
  5. The cen­sors work rel­a­tively inde­pen­dently, in a dis­trib­uted fash­ion.  Some of them may work in their spare time.
  6. Dele­tion speed is related to the topic. That is, par­tic­u­lar top­ics are tar­geted for dele­tion based on how sen­si­tive they are.

The research team notes there may be many mech­a­nisms beyond those they have hypoth­e­sized, which future work may reveal.  The team did not con­sider inter­ac­tions between social media and tra­di­tional media but sug­gest that would be an inter­est­ing topic for future research.

Media con­tacts: UNM Karen Went­worth (505) 277‑5627; email: kwent2@unm.edu
Rice Uni­ver­sity, Jade Boyd (713) 348‑6778; email: jadeboyd@rice.edu
David Ruth (713) 348‑6327; email: david@rice.edu

Posted in Academics & Faculty, Research, University News | |

Call for Participation: The UNM Research Exposition

February 28, 2013 | By Steve Carr

The UNM Office of the Vice Pres­i­dent for Research and Eco­nomic Devel­op­ment invites under­grad­u­ate, grad­u­ate, fac­ulty and research staff col­leagues to show­case their research efforts at the statewide UNM Research Expo­si­tion on April 16, in the UNM SUB Ball­room. The Research Expo will be the first day of the annual three-day Grad­u­ate Resource Cen­ter (GRC) New Mex­ico Shared Knowl­edge Conference.

Each poster sub­mis­sion should be approx­i­mately one meter square (40” x 40”) or smaller. To sub­mit an abstract, visit: Poster Pre­sen­ta­tion. The Research Expo Steer­ing Com­mit­tee will use your abstract to place your poster with posters of sim­i­lar top­ics. Posters will be on dis­play all day April 16 and will be judged and prizes, includ­ing a mon­e­tary prize, will be awarded.

GRC and the UNM Office of the Vice Pres­i­dent for Research and Eco­nomic Devel­op­ment will co-sponsor this event that brings together researchers from many dis­ci­plines and many insti­tu­tions across the state. The goal of the day will be to demon­strate research in New Mex­ico, to ini­ti­ate new col­lab­o­ra­tive and inter­dis­ci­pli­nary research projects, and to pro­vide research jobs, fund­ing and men­tor­ship oppor­tu­ni­ties for all of our students.

For more infor­ma­tion and or ques­tions about the Research Expo­si­tion or prepa­ra­tion of your poster, call (505) 277‑6128 or email to vpr@unm.edu. To reg­is­ter for the full three-days, visit: 2013 New Mex­ico Shared Knowl­edge Con­fer­ence.

Posted in Campus Community, Research, University News | |

Huning Family Supports Parkinson’s Disease Research at UNM

February 22, 2013 | By Karen Wentworth

Louis Hun­ing

Eva Chi, assis­tant pro­fes­sor of Chem­i­cal and Nuclear Engi­neer­ing, has devoted her career to study­ing the pro­teins that cause neu­rode­gen­er­a­tive dis­or­ders such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s dis­ease. Now, thanks to the gen­eros­ity of a promi­nent local fam­ily, her lab is closer to dis­cov­er­ing a cure for these diseases.

Parkinson’s dis­ease is caused by the buildup of pro­tein within brain cells, caus­ing tremors, loss of bal­ance and dif­fi­culty mov­ing. For the Hun­ing fam­ily of Los Lunas, the fight against this dis­ease is per­sonal; it has affected the entire fam­ily. Fam­ily mem­bers have pledged $50,000 per year for the next three years to sup­port Chi’s research on these proteins.

Louis Hun­ing, a for­mer mayor of Los Lunas, is among the fam­ily mem­bers who have been affected by this dis­ease. He says the fight for a cure is a gift for future generations.

“We’re just about to where there will be a cure for Parkinson’s,” Hun­ing said. “It would be a shame to not find that link in solv­ing this prob­lem because of money.”

“Our fam­ily has suf­fered through two gen­er­a­tions of early onset Parkinson’s dis­ease,” said Mar­garet Bell, a local real­tor and Hun­ing fam­ily mem­ber. “Our goal with this research is the devel­op­ment of a diag­nos­tic test that will allow for pre­ven­tion so that the next gen­er­a­tion of our fam­ily and other fam­i­lies will not be affected by this ter­ri­ble disease.”

Part of Chi’s research is focused on iden­ti­fy­ing the pro­teins that cause Parkinson’s dis­ease and design­ing a method to detect their toxicity.

“This knowl­edge will not only help us to bet­ter under­stand how pro­tein aggre­gates kill brain cells, but will also be used to screen for poten­tial drug com­pounds that can inhibit tox­i­c­ity,” Chi said.

Ini­ti­at­ing a new research project is often the tallest hur­dle for a new inves­ti­ga­tor. The Catch-22 in sci­en­tific research is that inves­ti­ga­tors must show good results in pre­lim­i­nary data to get fund­ing for their research. Yet, it takes seed fund­ing to con­duct the ini­tial research to pro­duce that pre­lim­i­nary data.

Thanks to the Hun­ings’ gen­eros­ity, Chi has cleared that first hur­dle. She has added a post­doc­toral researcher to her staff and has ramped up the ini­tial phase of research.

Once those pre­lim­i­nary results are in hand, Chi will be able to apply for fund­ing from fed­eral agen­cies such as the National Insti­tutes of Health and the National Sci­ence Foun­da­tion. Both agen­cies require sub­stan­tial pre­lim­i­nary data of pro­posed research.

Posted in Campus Community, Research, University News | |

UNM’s Information Assurance Program Receives $1.67 Million NSF Grant

February 14, 2013 | By Steve Carr

The Uni­ver­sity of New Mex­ico has received a five-year, $1.67 mil­lion grant from the National Sci­ence Foun­da­tion to pro­vide 18 schol­ar­ships for Master’s degree study in Infor­ma­tion Assur­ance (IA) and cyber-security at the Ander­son School of Man­age­ment. The project, titled “UNM Infor­ma­tion Assur­ance Schol­ar­ship for Ser­vice (SFS) Pro­gram,” is under the direc­tion of ASM Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor and Prin­ci­pal Inves­ti­ga­tor Stephen Burd, and co-PI’s Alex Seazzu, direc­tor, UNM Cen­ter for Infor­ma­tion Assur­ance Research and Edu­ca­tion (CIARE), Jed Cran­dall, asso­ciate pro­fes­sor, Com­puter Sci­ence, and Elec­tri­cal Com­puter Engi­neer­ing Asso­ciate Provost and Chair Gre­gory Heileman.

“Infor­ma­tion assur­ance includes tech­ni­cal aspects of com­puter and net­work secu­rity but extends them to include related areas such as data pro­tec­tion, pri­vacy, eco­nom­ics, fraud, audit­ing and effec­tive pro­tec­tion within the con­text of human behav­ior and mod­ern orga­ni­za­tions,” said Burd. “UNM’s infor­ma­tion assur­ance pro­gram pro­vides stu­dents with a mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary approach to infor­ma­tion assur­ance that lever­ages strong fac­ulty resources, research, and edu­ca­tional pro­grams in mul­ti­ple UNM departments.”

“The pro­gram will pro­duce grad­u­ates who can suc­cess­fully apply IA con­cepts and tech­nol­ogy to directly address tech­ni­cal, behav­ioral, orga­ni­za­tional and eco­nomic fac­tors that can often limit IA effec­tive­ness,” Seazzu said.

The UNM SFS pro­gram will pre­pare infor­ma­tion assur­ance pro­fes­sion­als for ser­vice in fed­eral, state, local and tribal gov­ern­men­tal agen­cies. Stu­dents must com­plete a sum­mer intern­ship and work for a gov­ern­men­tal agency after grad­u­a­tion. The UNM SFS pro­gram will enhance exist­ing degree pro­grams by expand­ing rela­tion­ships with fed­eral employ­ers, diver­si­fy­ing the type and increas­ing the scope of recruit­ment activ­i­ties, expand­ing cur­ricu­lum, and increas­ing the num­ber and vari­ety of internships.

The project defines ambi­tious tar­get enroll­ments includ­ing 40 per­cent minor­ity and 40 per­cent female.

“Since 2007, our goal was to pro­vide as many oppor­tu­ni­ties for our stu­dents as pos­si­ble,” said Seazzu. “This is another one of those oppor­tu­ni­ties. The demand for IA pro­fes­sion­als keeps increas­ing with more and more infor­ma­tion resources need­ing pro­tec­tion. Nowa­days, sys­tems are every­where and there is a greater aware­ness involv­ing safe­guard­ing the nation at dif­fer­ent lev­els. This is a great oppor­tu­nity for our stu­dents. UNM’s sta­tus as a His­panic Serv­ing Insti­tu­tion, and its sig­nif­i­cant enroll­ment of women and Native Amer­i­cans, will assist the expan­sion of the nation’s cyber-security work­force with a diverse mix of pro­gram graduates.”

The pro­gram incor­po­rates tech­ni­cal resources from New Mexico’s national lab­o­ra­to­ries, the FBI’s New Mex­ico Regional Com­puter Foren­sics Lab (NM RCFL), and UNM fac­ulty and cur­ricu­lum in com­puter sci­ence, engi­neer­ing, and man­age­ment. The program’s empha­sis on expe­ri­en­tial learn­ing (e.g., national cyber-competitions, course­ware devel­op­ment, fraud pre­ven­tion audits, K-12 out­reach and com­mu­nity cyber-security assess­ments) inte­grates edu­ca­tion and research while pro­mot­ing ongo­ing dis­cov­ery into the learn­ing process.

“I think stu­dent sup­port is vital to the suc­cess of any pro­gram, espe­cially those that require extra train­ing like cyber-security,” said Doug Brown, dean, Ander­son School of Man­age­ment.
“Our national secu­rity is heav­ily com­mit­ted against cyber attacks,” Brown said. “It’s clearly one of the next fields of bat­tle and we bet­ter be good at it.”

The UNM SFS pro­gram will recruit schol­ar­ship recip­i­ents from under­grad­u­ate pro­grams in com­puter sci­ence, engi­neer­ing, infor­ma­tion sys­tems, and account­ing in New Mex­ico and nearby states.

Infor­ma­tion about the appli­ca­tion process will be posted as soon as pos­si­ble. A pro­jected start date for the new schol­ar­ship recip­i­ents is ten­ta­tively sched­uled for Spring 2014.

For more infor­ma­tion about UNM’s Infor­ma­tion Assur­ance pro­gram, visit: Infor­ma­tion Assur­ance.

Posted in Research, University News | |

UNM Historian Helps Develop App on Murals in San Francisco

February 13, 2013 | By Carolyn Gonzales

Jason Scott Smith

Jason Scott Smith, Uni­ver­sity of New Mex­ico asso­ciate pro­fes­sor of his­tory, has been work­ing with a team of schol­ars to develop a mobile app, “Let’s Get Lost: New Deal Murals of San Fran­cisco.” “The app is now out of beta test­ing and is avail­able for iPhone, iPad and Android devices.

Smith said, “The first ‘tour’ brings to life the his­tory and mean­ing of the city’s most intrigu­ing murals from the Depres­sion era with archival film footage, pho­tographs, inter­views with the artists, music, fun chal­lenges and more.”

Fea­tures include:
• An in-depth look at Coit Tower, Rin­con Annex and the Pan Amer­i­can Unity mural at City Col­lege of San Fran­cisco
• Inter­ac­tive hunts, using a cam­era phone, that chal­lenge indi­vid­u­als to find hid­den mean­ings and cen­sored images in the murals
• Videos with his­tor­i­cal back­ground as well as videos specif­i­cally focused on the three fea­tured sites
• “Guided Look­ing” audio with nar­ra­tion, expert com­men­tary, inter­views, music and sound effects that offer insights into and mean­ing behind spe­cific images
• Slideshows about the mural­ists, orig­i­nal artist’s sketches that were pre­vi­ously cen­sored and news­pa­per arti­cles from the period

Instruc­tions to down­load the app are at: Let’s Get Lost.

“Indi­vid­u­als should be able to nav­i­gate the app with­out dif­fi­culty,” he said, adding that apps such like this that make use of cutting-edge tech­nol­ogy, require mon­i­tor­ing and eval­u­at­ing on its usabil­ity. The team team will con­tinue to mon­i­tor and eval­u­ate its usabil­ity in the weeks to come.

“The app is meant to be used on site at the murals, so that users will be look­ing at the murals as they hear audio selec­tions and that visual media, such as videos, slideshows and stills, sup­ple­ment rather than replace the expe­ri­ence of view­ing the murals first­hand,” he said, adding, “It has been incred­i­bly reward­ing and intel­lec­tu­ally enrich­ing to work on a project with such a tal­ented group of colleagues.”

The team includes design­ers and researchers from Ari­zona State Uni­ver­sity, Mount Holyoke, Uni­ver­sity of South­ern Cal­i­for­nia, Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia, Berke­ley and San Fran­cisco State.

Media Con­tact: Car­olyn Gon­za­les (505) 277‑5920; email: cgonzal@unm.edu

Posted in Academics & Faculty, Research, University News | |

New Mexico Shared Knowledge Conference Call for Submissions

February 12, 2013 | By Karen Wentworth
2012 New Mexico Shared Knowledge Conference

2012 New Mex­ico Shared Knowl­edge Conference

Do you want to share your pas­sion and your research?  Are you search­ing for oth­ers who are inter­ested in the same ideas? Do you need prac­tice pre­sent­ing or need feed­back on your ideas?

The Grad­u­ate Resource Cen­ter (GRC) is seek­ing sub­mis­sions for the 2013 New Mex­ico Shared Knowl­edge Con­fer­ence on April 16–18.  The goal of the New Mex­ico Shared Knowl­edge Con­fer­ence is to con­nect the wider New Mex­ico com­mu­nity to aca­d­e­mic projects occur­ring on New Mex­ico campuses.

The GRC is seek­ing pro­pos­als in the areas of ecol­ogy and land­scape, edu­ca­tion and train­ing, health and well being, human rights and immi­gra­tion, poverty and econ­omy, and sci­ence and tech­nol­ogy.  Inter­ested pre­sen­ters can sub­mit pro­pos­als of dif­fer­ent for­mats including:

  • Recitals and cre­ative performances
  • Films
  • Art/models/posters
  • Work­shops
  • Round­table discussions
  • Paper pre­sen­ta­tions

Ryan Brown, a master’s stu­dent who is help­ing to orga­nize the con­fer­ence says they are seek­ing as many for­mats as pos­si­ble that deal with New Mex­ico top­ics.   “There is a lot of work being done across the state that isn’t noticed or rec­og­nized by the gen­eral com­mu­nity,” he says.  “We want every­one, across all dis­ci­plines, to have an oppor­tu­nity to share their work in the way that makes the most sense to them.”

Details about sub­mit­ting pro­pos­als can be found here.  Pro­pos­als for work­shop top­ics and film sub­mis­sions are due March 1, 2013.  Pro­pos­als for cre­ative per­for­mances and pro­pos­als for posters, art and mod­els are all due Feb. 22. That is also the dead­line for pro­pos­als for indi­vid­ual and panel presentations.

Brown says the con­fer­ence, which will be held over three days in the Stu­dent Union Build­ing is a good place for peo­ple who have com­mon inter­ests to get together and shares those inter­ests.  Con­fer­ence orga­niz­ers are hop­ing as many stu­dents and fac­ulty as pos­si­ble will par­tic­i­pate in the con­fer­ence.  Any­one with ques­tions can call the GRC at (505) 277‑1407 or email unmgrc@unm.edu

Posted in Events, Research | |