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Category Archives: University News

Lobo Athletics Joins Summer Reading Challenge

May 23, 2013 | By Steve Carr

Both Uni­ver­sity of New Mex­ico bas­ket­ball coaches and other mem­bers of the Ath­let­ics’ staff joined New Mex­ico Gov­er­nor Susana Mar­tinez to launch her Sum­mer Read­ing Chal­lenge ini­tia­tive. Four sum­mer read­ing chal­lenges were launched for New Mex­ico children.

The pro­grams are spon­sored by a vari­ety of statewide com­mu­nity part­ners, includ­ing UNM, and offer an array of excit­ing prizes for par­tic­i­pat­ing stu­dents and winners.

Posted in University News | |

NerdWallet Names Albuquerque a Good City for Veterans, UNM Contributes

May 23, 2013 | By Carolyn Gonzales

Nerd­Wal­let, an online ser­vice that pro­vides infor­ma­tion about per­sonal finances, travel and higher edu­ca­tion, recently fea­tured a list of the best met­ro­pol­i­tan areas for vet­er­ans. Albu­querque was fea­tured among the medium sized cities. The Uni­ver­sity of New Mex­ico was men­tioned because of its Vet­er­ans Resource Cen­ter, which is staffed by vet­er­ans to help other vet­er­ans who are think­ing about return­ing to school or are in school.

Among rea­sons Albu­querque was included is because it is home to the Kirt­land Air Force Base, its great job mar­ket and the low­est unem­ploy­ment on NerdWallet’s list, at just 7.4 per­cent, and lower for vet­er­ans, at 5.2 percent.

Nerd­Wal­let reports, “While vet­er­ans only make up 12.1 per­cent of the city pop­u­la­tion, they make up 16.9 per­cent of the busi­nesses in Albu­querque.” They also noted the VA Health Care System.

“And with its great weather, its no won­der vet­er­ans flock to Albu­querque to set­tle after their mil­i­tary career,” they reported.

Nerd­Wal­let cal­cu­lated the best met­ros for vet­er­ans by answer­ing the fol­low­ing questions:

1. Are there oppor­tu­ni­ties for vet­er­ans? We looked the over­all unem­ploy­ment of rate of the metro areas as well as the ratio of unem­ployed vets com­pared to the rest of the pop­u­la­tion to see if job prospects were good.

2. Is there peer sup­port? We ana­lyzed vet­er­ans as a per­cent­age of the pop­u­la­tion to see if there was social sup­port for vet­er­ans. We also looked at the per­cent­age of veteran-owned busi­nesses, both com­pletely and partially-owned, to see if there were oppor­tu­ni­ties to work with other veterans.

3. Is the econ­omy doing well? We looked at the per­cent­age of job growth from Feb­ru­ary 2012 to Feb­ru­ary 2013 to see if there was job growth. We also looked at the afford­abil­ity of the city as indi­cated by the median house­hold spend­ing per month.

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

Posted in University News | |

Dyer Named Executive Director of UNM Gallup

May 22, 2013 | By Carolyn Gonzales

Christo­pher Dyer

Uni­ver­sity of New Mex­ico Pres­i­dent Robert Frank announced the appoint­ment of Christo­pher Dyer as exec­u­tive direc­tor of UNM Gallup. He assumes the posi­tion effec­tive July 1.

Dyer said, “I am greatly hon­ored for the oppor­tu­nity to pro­vide lead­er­ship to the UNM Gallup cam­pus. I believe there is sig­nif­i­cant untapped poten­tial to con­tribute to the edu­ca­tional well-being of our stu­dents and to play an impor­tant role in the eco­nomic life of the cul­tures and com­mu­ni­ties of west­ern New Mexico.”

Dyer cur­rently serves as dean of aca­d­e­mic affairs and is a tenured pro­fes­sor of anthro­pol­ogy at Mis­souri State Uni­ver­sity — West Plains. He received both his master’s and Ph.D. in anthro­pol­ogy from Ari­zona State Uni­ver­sity. He is a native of the south­west and a vet­eran of cross-cultural pro­gram­ming, assess­ment and eco­nomic devel­op­ment. His field research and com­mu­nity ser­vice includes work with Native Amer­i­cans in Alaska and with His­pan­ics in North Car­olina and Texas.

He has made sig­nif­i­cant accom­plish­ments at MSU — West Plains, includ­ing pro­mot­ing an empo­rium math pro­gram, which resulted in an increase in intro­duc­tory math course com­ple­tions from 34 per­cent to 67 per­cent in the first year of the program.

Dyer has more than 10 years of expe­ri­ence as an aca­d­e­mic admin­is­tra­tor and dean, hav­ing served at Our Lady of the Lake Uni­ver­sity, Mount Olive Col­lege and the School for Field Studies.

Dyer has received research sup­port from the National Sci­ence Foun­da­tion and the John D. and Cather­ine T. MacArthur Foun­da­tion. He has made sig­nif­i­cant accom­plish­ments at MSU-West Plains, includ­ing pro­mot­ing an empo­rium math pro­gram, which resulted in intro­duc­tory math course com­ple­tions from 34 to 67 per­cent in the first year of the program.

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

Posted in Administration, Branch Campuses, University News | |

Researchers Find Massive Impacts Dispersed Chlorine, Helped Make Earth Habitable

May 21, 2013 | By Steve Carr

“Had the mas­sive col­li­sions not occurred, it would not be unrea­son­able to say there would not be life on Earth,” UNM Regents’
Pro­fes­sor Zach Sharp.

Life as we know it may not have existed if the Earth wasn’t repeat­edly bom­barded by mas­sive plan­e­tary bod­ies more than 4 bil­lion years ago accord­ing to new research con­ducted by sci­en­tists at the Uni­ver­sity of New Mex­ico and NASA John­son Space Cen­ter. The results of the mas­sive col­li­sions indi­cate that much of Earth’s sup­ply of chlo­rine was blown away cre­at­ing a hab­it­able envi­ron­ment suit­able for the exis­tence of com­plex forms of life – includ­ing humans.

In a paper titled, “The chlo­rine abun­dance of Earth: Impli­ca­tions for a hab­it­able planet,” pub­lished recently in an issue of Earth and Plan­e­tary Sci­ence Let­ters, UNM Regents’ Pro­fes­sor Zach Sharp, UNM Depart­ment of Earth and Plan­e­tary Sci­ences, and David Draper of the NASA John­son Space Cen­ter in Hous­ton, Texas (for­merly of UNM’s Insti­tute of Mete­orit­ics), research sug­gests the removal of the chlo­rine through these col­li­sions helped pro­vide Earth the means nec­es­sary for its own evolution.

Based on the com­po­si­tion of age-old mete­orites, Earth should have 10 times more chlo­rine than what researchers see. The pos­si­ble expla­na­tions for the miss­ing chlo­rine included unrec­og­nized seques­tra­tion in the core, a higher neb­u­lar volatil­ity than nor­mally pre­sumed or a pref­er­en­tial loss of heavy halo­gens dur­ing plan­e­tary accre­tion. On Earth, heavy halo­gens includ­ing chlo­rine and bromine are depleted by an order of mag­ni­tude more than would be pre­dicted on the basis of their volatility.

Draper and Sharp ruled out the pos­si­bil­ity of the chlo­rine hid­ing out in the core after sim­u­lat­ing the con­di­tions of the core with par­ti­tion­ing exper­i­ments between molten metal and sil­i­cate to esti­mate the con­tri­bu­tion from the core and eval­u­ate dif­fer­ent hypothe­ses for the deple­tion of Earth’s halogens.

“We con­ducted high pres­sure exper­i­ments and mim­ic­ked the exchange,” Sharp said. “We had high temps and pres­sures 80,000 times higher than Earth’s atmos­pheric pres­sure, added extra chlo­rine, and all of it went into the sil­i­cate. We saw that there was a chlo­rine deficit of a fac­tor of 10. So we thought ‘what’s going on?’ We had our data and our results, but now we have to fig­ure out what’s hap­pen­ing here.”

The researchers then came to the con­clu­sion that huge, plan­e­tary bod­ies slam­ming into the Earth more than 4 bil­lion years ago blew away the chlo­rine at the sur­face, and thus, mak­ing Earth much more hab­it­able for com­plex liv­ing organ­isms. Con­versely, Mars, which has twice as much chlo­rine as Earth does, suf­fered fewer larger impacts due to its smaller size.

Sharp also said there was a paper that sug­gested that just before Cam­brian explo­sion for life, salin­ity of oceans were higher by a fac­tor of two. About half of chlo­rine is in the crust and the rest is in the ocean and in mas­sive salt deposits, like in Carls­bad, N.M.

Almost half of chlo­rine and bromine is in the ocean. A sim­i­lar con­cen­tra­tion should be seen for iodine, but it is sequestered by marine algae, keep­ing con­cen­tra­tions low.

“It’s unique because they (chlo­rine and bromine) do not go into any min­er­als or met­als. Instead, they are con­cen­trated in the oceans at lev­els far beyond those for any other ele­ment,” Sharp said.

“With these high impact col­li­sions some of the mate­r­ial at the sur­face was lost,” Sharp added. “Had the high impact col­li­sions not occurred, the chlo­rine con­tent would be so high; about 10 times as much as we have now. With 30 per­cent salin­ity, it would be the same as the Dead Sea. It would really be a nasty envi­ron­ment. Sure, it is pos­si­ble organ­isms might have adapted to that type of envi­ron­ment, but we would have never had life like we do now. If we did, it prob­a­bly would have been limited.”

With such a high salin­ity over water, there would be a much lower con­cen­tra­tion of oxy­gen and there wouldn’t have been as much pre­cip­i­ta­tion or rain­fall, and runoff and nutri­ent return to the oceans would be low. It would not be a very favor­able planet for life. With the mas­sive removal of salt from ocean, salin­ity is far lower and the sol­u­bil­ity of oxy­gen is far higher than it oth­er­wise would be. As a result, organ­isms were able to evolve into more larger, com­plex forms of life.

“Had the mas­sive col­li­sions not occurred, it would not be unrea­son­able to say there would not be life on Earth,” Sharp said. “The nec­es­sary con­di­tions to have life on Earth were not present. It sounds pro­found but in any kind of solar sys­tem equiv­a­lent, these col­li­sions are one of those for­tu­itous things that must occur to make the planet hab­it­able for life.”

Media con­tact: Steve Carr (505) 277‑1821; email: scarr@unm.edu

Posted in University News | |

UNM Graduate Starts a New Chapter and a New Business

May 21, 2013 | By Karen Wentworth

Neema Pick­ett

Neema Pick­ett isn’t your aver­age under­grad­u­ate student. Even though she has lived most of her life in New Mex­ico her col­lege career began in China. She moved to China with her hus­band, an Intel employee, to explore new opportunities. It was a tricky move. 

Pick­ett owned a hair, nail and skin treat­ment busi­ness near old town in Albu­querque and decided to keep it open while she was liv­ing in China. She man­aged, by using Von­age to talk con­stantly with her employ­ees, run­ning reg­u­lar staff meet­ings via Skype, and trav­el­ing back to Albu­querque twice a year to train new employees.

While in China she began attend­ing classes, work­ing to get her core cur­ricu­lum com­plete as quickly as pos­si­ble.  When she came back to New Mex­ico in 2008, she began to work on her major in psy­chol­ogy.  “I’ve done every­thing back­ward,” she said.  “I had my daugh­ter when I was very young. I started a business. Then I went to school.”

She con­tin­ues to run the salon, which paid tuition as she attended UNM.  Work­ing with cus­tomers at the salon also gave her a rea­son to study psy­chol­ogy.  “The prob­lem I’ve seen from behind the chair is that peo­ple don’t have per­mis­sion to be them­selves.  And I think, wow, am I the only per­son they could have told this to or is there some­thing sacred and cer­e­mo­nial about wash­ing hair and have some­one touch­ing your head in this inti­mate way that opens the door to shar­ing your life?”

Talk­ing to her clients she found her­self fre­quently refer­ring them to local psy­chol­o­gists.  “We could fix every­thing about their hair and make that per­fect, but they are still deal­ing with all this inter­nal stuff. They look at them­selves and still don’t feel good. Well, it’s noth­ing to do with the aes­thet­ics, It’s got a lot to do with what’s going on inside,” she says. She found her­self talk­ing with her clients for hours before she finally real­ized, “I just don’t have enough train­ing for this.”

Her pro­fes­sors are anx­ious to see her back in grad­u­ate school.  But Pick­ett has more she wants to do first. This sum­mer she is work­ing in her newly rented space in the North Val­ley putting together sum­mer day camps for girls 12 through 16 at her new non­profit, Kamaria Cre­ations Well­ness Cen­ter.

She plans to teach stu­dents how to make their own nat­ural hair, skin and beauty prod­ucts, hair con­di­tion­ing treat­ments, and about henna art, basic sewing skills and veg­e­tar­ian cook­ing.  She is recruit­ing stu­dents now and will hold an open house on June 2 from 2 — 4 p.m. at 4231 San Isidro N.W.  She says any­one who wants to learn more about her day camp can email her at neema@unm.edu

Media con­tact: Karen Went­worth (505) 277‑5627; kwent2@unm.edu

Posted in Campus Community, University News | |

Staff Council Elects Executive Committee for 2013–14

May 21, 2013 | By Karen Wentworth

Staff Coun­cil Pres­i­dent
Gene Henley.

The Staff Coun­cil elected its new Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee, which con­sists of four offi­cers, four members-at-large and two ex-officio mem­bers. The offi­cers include pres­i­dent, president-elect, speaker and treasurer.

The four members-at-large are selected from two coun­cilors who rep­re­sent grades and two Coun­cilors who rep­re­sent precincts. The ex-Officio Mem­bers are the Past Pres­i­dent and the Staff Council’s Admin­is­tra­tive Officer.

2013–14 Staff Coun­cil Exec­u­tive Committee

Pres­i­dent — Gene Hen­ley
President-elect — Renee Delgado-Riley
Speaker — Tracy Wenzl
Trea­surer — Karen Mann
Grade-At-Large Rep­re­sen­ta­tives — Mark Reynolds and Chelsea Beth Walker
Precinct-At-Large Rep­re­sen­ta­tives — Carol Bern­hard and Traci Jas­trzem­ski
Past Pres­i­dent — Mary Clark
Admin­is­tra­tive Offi­cer — Kathy Meadows

Posted in Campus Community, University News | |

Lobo Softball Spearheads Donation Drive to Help Oklahoma Tornado Victims

May 21, 2013 | By UCAM

As news reports and updates came out of cen­tral Okla­homa on Mon­day night fol­low­ing the deadly May 20 tor­nado that struck Moore, Okla., and sur­round­ing areas of Okla­homa City, Uni­ver­sity of New Mex­ico head soft­ball coach Erica Beach felt com­pelled to do something.

“Part of being a Lobo is being will­ing to help oth­ers, whether it’s in your own com­mu­nity or some­where else that needs help,” Beach said. “For us, it’s about doing the right thing and using the resources we have avail­able to help a com­mu­nity that is des­per­ately in need.”

In a mat­ter of hours, she was in touch with other mem­bers of Lobo ath­let­ics staff and for­mer student-athletes for­mu­lat­ing a plan to help.

Beach and assis­tant Lobo soft­ball coach Lyn­d­sey Angus, along with the entire Lobo Ath­letic Depart­ment, are col­lect­ing items Wednes­day, May 22-Thursday, May 30. Beach and for­mer Lobo foot­ball player, Derek Wat­son, will haul all donated items to Okla­homa City next Fri­day, May 31.

Lobo Field is south of The Pit and can be accessed by turn­ing west onto Sun­shine Ter­race SE off Uni­ver­sity Boulevard.

Wat­son was a mem­ber of the Lobo foot­ball team from 2001-03 and played along­side Jon Oliver (1999–01) and Kyle Coul­ter (2001–04), who cur­rently reside in the Okla­homa City area.

The news of Monday’s tor­nado prompted Wat­son to check in with his for­mer team­mates and friends.

“I heard from both Jon and Kyle,” Wat­son said. “Both of their fam­i­lies are okay. Kyle jumped right in with res­cue efforts, help­ing at both of the ele­men­tary schools — Bri­ar­wood and Plaza Tow­ers. He will be our point of con­tact as far as the needs of vic­tims in the area and then, once we get there next week, he’ll help direct us to shel­ters and relief dis­tri­b­u­tion centers.”

Coul­ter lives in For­est Park, Okla., about 14 miles north­east of Moore. He is a vol­un­teer fire­fighter with the For­est Park Fire Depart­ment and arrived to the affected area within a cou­ple of hours of the tor­nado hitting.

“It’s just dev­as­ta­tion,” Coul­ter said. “It looks like a war-torn area. Parts of the town are just com­pletely dec­i­mated and there is noth­ing left but rub­ble. The only way you can tell there was any­thing there is there’s a dri­ve­way left. It’s just devastation.”

Coul­ter says peo­ple are pick­ing up what they can find — some only a small bag full of clothes or other items — and then walk­ing to find shel­ter either set up by relief orga­ni­za­tions, or with friends or fam­ily in the area. He said nobody in the area had power or water as of Tues­day morn­ing, but peo­ple were get­ting access to water and food that was brought in.

“When we arrived Mon­day night there were already peo­ple com­ing in from all over the state, other emer­gency response teams, bring­ing water and sup­plies and com­ing ready to help,” Coul­ter said. “The local Home Depot stayed open all night and gave us what­ever we needed as first responders…from chain saws and gloves and eye pro­tec­tion to any­thing else, just right off the shelves.”

The list of needs for the area is as basic as bottled/sealed water and food, to dia­pers, wipes, baby for­mula, toi­letries and “fam­ily stuff,” mean­ing toys, blan­kets, pil­lows, dog and cat food, etc.

“There was a water treat­ment plant that was affected, so water is going to be scarce and we’re going to make a huge push to bring as much water as pos­si­ble when we travel out there next week,” Beach said. “We’re accept­ing dona­tions of cloth­ing and toi­letries as well as blan­kets, toys and games and really any­thing. There are peo­ple that have lost prob­a­bly every­thing in this storm and we have to try to help them put some of the pieces back together.

“We need help from the entire Lobo com­mu­nity on this and if we all do a lit­tle part then it’s going to make a huge difference.”

The Asso­ci­ated Press reported on Mon­day evening that the Draper Water Treat­ment Plant in Okla­homa City was knocked offline as a result of the storm. Res­i­dents and busi­nesses in south­east Okla­homa City were encour­aged to stop using water until fur­ther notice.

Media con­tact: Chelsea Ein­er­wold (218) 296.2845; email: ceinerwo@unm.edu

Posted in Athletics, Campus Community, Events, University News | |

UNM Marketing Students Win 2013 API Adventures in Energy Case Competition

May 21, 2013 | By Steve Carr

(l. to r.): Eric Gross, Diana Solis, Mariah Maes­tas, RuthAnn Tib­betts and Patrick Adams.

Last week in San Fran­cisco, Calif., mar­ket­ing stu­dents at the UNM Ander­son School of Man­age­ment took top hon­ors in the 2013 Amer­i­can Petro­leum Insti­tute Adven­tures in Energy Case Competition.

UNM emerged the win­ner after top­ping the Uni­ver­sity of Find­lay and Florida Insti­tute of Tech­nol­ogy, the other two top teams who qual­i­fied to travel to San Fran­cisco for the finals.

Fol­low­ing the pre­sen­ta­tion, the stu­dent team includ­ing Patrick Adams, Eric Gross, Mariah Maes­tas, Diana Solis and RuthAnn Tib­betts, received a round of applause for their pre­sen­ta­tion skills and impres­sive research.

“These com­pe­ti­tions are a great edu­ca­tional expe­ri­ence for our stu­dents,” said Ander­son Dean Doug Brown. “They enable them to asso­ciate with oth­ers who are at the top of their game.”

John Benavidez and Nick Flor, who men­tored the stu­dents, said they couldn’t be more proud of how these stu­dents rep­re­sented Ander­son and the mar­ket­ing program.

This is the sec­ond time in three years UNM has impressed the judges at the API com­pe­ti­tion. In 2011, a team men­tored by John Benavidez and Cather­ine Ros­ter was also awarded the top prize.

The Ander­son School mar­ket­ing pro­gram has a his­tory of beat­ing top-flight col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties in national com­pe­ti­tions. In recent years the pro­gram has won com­pe­ti­tions spon­sored by Cadil­lac, Sub­aru of Amer­ica and the National High­way Traf­fic Safety Administration.

The win­ning team will receive a week-long, all-expense paid intern­ship in Wash­ing­ton D.C. with API and its web­site ven­dor, Story Part­ners, to pre­pare the redesigned Adven­tures in Energy web­site for launch accord­ing to the team’s win­ning design.

Media con­tact: Steve Carr (505) 277‑1821; email: scarr@unm.edu

Posted in Campus Community, University News | |

Money from New Mexico Legislature Will Bring Relief to STEM Students

May 21, 2013 | By Karen Wentworth
Future construction area on west side of Math & Science buiding

Future con­struc­tion area on west side of Math & Sci­ence building

UNM plan­ners are start­ing the prepa­ra­tion process to con­struct an addi­tion on the west side of the recently com­pleted Sci­ence & Math Build­ing with $5 mil­lion appro­pri­ated from the state sev­er­ance tax fund by the New Mex­ico Legislature. 

The space will house organic chem­istry labs as well as math­e­mat­ics offices and sup­port ser­vices. The addi­tion was intended to be part of the orig­i­nal Math and Sci­ence build­ing, but money ran short and the build­ing project was reduced in size.

Vot­ers statewide approved Gen­eral Oblig­a­tion Bond C, which included $19 mil­lion for projects on UNM’s main cam­pus, which will be com­bined with $850,000 appro­pri­ated in sev­er­ance tax bond money by the 2013 ses­sion of the New Mex­ico leg­is­la­ture. Money to ren­o­vate Clark/Reibsomer Hall was approved was part of that GO Bond. Con­struc­tion is esti­mated to begin in early fall 2014.

“That will be a par­tic­u­larly com­plex project because the build­ing is occu­pied and the project will affect many of the build­ings’ mechan­i­cal, elec­tri­cal, and Infor­ma­tion Tech­nol­ogy sys­tems,” said Asso­ciate Direc­tor of Cap­i­tal Projects Rick Henrard.

In addi­tion to these two projects, the first and third floors of Castet­ter Hall will be built out com­plete with upgrades to improve over­crowded and out­dated labs, elim­i­nate the need to store equip­ment in halls, as well as elim­i­nat­ing the need for offices to serve as resource libraries and to accom­mo­date pro­jected growth of 10 per­cent through 2014. Construction is expected to be com­pleted in the sum­mer of 2014, so fac­ulty and stu­dents will have new labs for the fall semester.

The Depart­ment of Biol­ogy, which is housed Castet­ter Hall, is the largest depart­ment in the Col­lege of Arts and Sci­ences, serv­ing approx­i­mately 2,000 stu­dents, 90 per­cent of whom are from New Mex­ico. Over the past 10 years, biol­ogy majors have increased 275 per­cent. Addi­tion­ally, the biol­ogy depart­ment gen­er­ates UNM’s high­est annual research fund­ing of more than $15 mil­lion in grants per year

Build­ing class­room and lab space at UNM is fre­quently a com­plex process because the money some­times comes in pieces. It’s also com­pli­cated because there is no place on main cam­pus to relo­cate fac­ulty and stu­dents dur­ing construction.

“We don’t have any surge space on the main cam­pus,” UNM Archi­tect Robert Doran said. “So there is no place to move fac­ulty and research labs while con­struc­tion is in progress in those buildings.”

Life will even­tu­ally get bet­ter for chem­istry, math and biol­ogy fac­ulty and stu­dents, but it won’t hap­pen immediately. The build­ing expan­sions and ren­o­va­tions will be exten­sive and will include new HVAC and elec­tri­cal sys­tem upgrades to meet air qual­ity, power and envi­ron­men­tal standards.

Media con­tact: Karen Went­worth (505) 277‑5627; email: kwent2@unm.edu

Posted in Campus Community, University News | |

Northrop Grumman Sponsors Senior Design Project in Adaptive Optics

May 21, 2013 | By Karen Wentworth
Senior Design Poster Session for Electrical and Computer Engineering

Senior Design Poster Ses­sion for Elec­tri­cal and Com­puter Engineering

Adap­tive optics is a spe­cial­ized area in engi­neer­ing that isn’t taught in many engi­neer­ing schools, includ­ing UNM, but an under­grad­u­ate team work­ing on a senior design project has built and tested an exper­i­men­tal sys­tem with finan­cial assis­tance from Northrop Grumman.

There are two major uses for adap­tive optics tech­nol­ogy today. One form of the tech­nol­ogy is used to explore the inte­rior of the retina, to search for the begin­nings of eye disease. The other use is to remove dis­tor­tion in the atmos­phere so astronomers can see stars much more clearly.

The tech­nol­ogy was actu­ally devel­oped in a mil­i­tary set­ting at the Starfire Opti­cal Range at Kirt­land Air Force Base in Albu­querque, by researchers seek­ing to remove atmos­pheric dis­tor­tion so that lasers could be aimed more effectively. Northrop Grum­man was part of that devel­op­ment process and has a strong inter­est in devel­op­ing engi­neers with some back­ground in the technology. This is the first time they have funded a senior design team project at UNM.

The UNM senior design team had to start from scratch, learn­ing about the tech­nol­ogy itself and then the under­ly­ing math­e­mat­i­cal cal­cu­la­tions that sup­port it. One team mem­ber said it took them awhile to fig­ure out what kind of math to use. But the result of this year long effort is a test bed for adap­tive optics at UNM.

“The Elec­tri­cal and Com­puter Engi­neer­ing senior design class project allows out stu­dents to work with indus­try part­ners to design a project from con­cep­tion to exe­cu­tion,” said Rich Com­peau, ECE Depart­ment instructor. “Because adap­tive optics and real-time pro­gram­ming are beyond the scope of our under­grad­u­ate cur­ricu­lum, the stu­dents work­ing on the adap­tive optics team gained impor­tant crit­i­cal skills from work­ing with NGC that will aid them in hav­ing a suc­cess­ful career. We are con­stantly seek­ing cor­po­rate spon­sors who will chal­lenge our stu­dents and raise the over­all qual­ity of our Senior Design program.”

Media con­tact: Karen Went­worth (505) 277‑5627; email: kwent2@unm.edu

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