SACNAS and AISES conferences give inspiration to students and EPSCoR alike

Participants took a day trip to Matanuska Glacier during AISES.

Increasing diversity in the science fields is one of WyomingEPSCoR’s goals when it comes to outreach and education. Minority populations and women have traditionally been underrepresented in the science fields but this is beginning to change. Organizations such as the Society for Advancement of Chicano and Native Americans in Science (SACNAS) and the American Indian Science and Engineering Society (AISES) work to empower minority students in the science fields through networking, funding and programs to help break down the barriers.

This fall Wyoming EPSCoR accompanied groups of students to both the SACNAS conference in Seattle, Washington October 11^th-14th and the AISES conference in Anchorage, Alaska October 30^th-November 4th. These conferences left a big impression on both the students and EPSCoR.

“It was inspiring to see how motivated and excited the students were at both conferences,” says Beth Cable, Education, Outreach and Diversity Project Coordinator for Wyoming EPSCoR. “In my opinion, the students really went above and beyond what I imagined in terms of networking, interviewing, learning and gleaning information from the break-out sessions. I was extremely pleased.”

SACNAS was founded in 1973 by a small group of Native American and Chicano scientists who were concerned about the lack of minority students in the science fields. Since then, SACNAS has grown to 25,000 members and continues to support Chicano and Native American students and professionals in attaining advanced degrees, careers and positions.

Four upperclassmen from the University of Wyoming attended the SACNAS conference where they joined a diversity of students from minority populations.  The conference focused on how it has expanded since 1973 and how SACNAS is helping students pursue professions in the sciences. For UW’s students, the conference provided a platform for exploring graduate schools, career options and new areas of interest.

“The students at SACNAS were very inspired and dedicated to finding out as much information as they possibly could,” says Lisa Abeyta, Student Research Programs Coordinator for Wyoming EPSCoR. “They attended the breakout sessions that would most benefit their future. We would regroup at the end of each day and they all had more ideas of what they would like to do in the future or where they wanted to attend graduate school.”

During the conference, students had the opportunity to meet and talk with professors and professionals, which they used to make connections and start networking.

“What I was most intrigued by is that the students were not intimidated to talk to professors, other professionals or even the executive director of SACNAS,” Abeyta says.

The conference provided a positive atmosphere that promoted empowerment, productivity and enthusiasm. UW’s students returned to campus rejuvenate and reenergized about their fields and futures.

A few weeks later, Wyoming EPSCoR geared up for the AISES conference in Anchorage. AISES was founded in 1977 and aims to increase the number of Native American and Alaskan Native students in the STEM fields. Its programs are designed for pre-college students, college students and professionals so as to support individuals throughout their scientific careers.

Three students from UW and three students from the WindRiver Indian Reservation attended the conference designed primarily for Native American and Alaska Native students. Like the SACNAS conference, the AISES conference provided students with a venue for exploring their options and networking.

 “What stands out to me most about the conferences is the indigenous people working so hard to better themselves, their tribe and their communities,” Cable says. “They expressed such kindness and love for their research and science, for each other and also for all of us who participated in the conference.  It was a gentle, very encouraging, environment.”

The connections made, the new options to consider and the support structures offered at the conference gave these six students new tools to use in pursuing their education and careers as scientists. It was a success all the way around, including for Wyoming EPSCoR and its programs.

“The conferences fit hugely into EPSCoR’s goals for diversity, outreach and education,” says Cable. “Both of our grants aim to collaborate with the Wind River Indian Reservation and minority populations. I was presented with so much positive, inspiring information, and now it is just finding the time and the means to really dig in and start implementing some of this.”

By Kali S. McCrackin 
Photo courtesy of Beth Cable

CI-WATER and the Supercomputer

The Colorado River Basin

The Colorado River Basin is a magnificent water system that stretches from Wyoming all the way to California. It touches seven states in the western US, including huge expanses of Colorado, Utah and Arizona. Almost 30 million people depend on and use the Basin for water. Headwater states, like Wyoming, Colorado and Utah, have to ensure that Lower Basin States receive their obligated water allotment, as described in the 1922 Colorado River Basin Compact. The problem is, western states are experiencing expanding populations with increasing demand for urban and agricultural water use. Population expansion in the Upper Basin States will not only add to the strain on the Basin’s water resources, it may also strain inter-state relationships as it becomes harder for them to meet the water obligations to Lower Basin States described in the Compact. Fortunately for the west, researchers are already looking at these issues, and they’re doing so with the help of the NSF EPSCoR grant called CI-Water.

The CI-Water grant is a three year award shared between the University of Wyoming, Brigham Young University, the University of Utah and Utah State University. Together, the four universities, among other projects, are working to address and avert the problems looming for the Colorado River Basin by mapping, modeling and creating the tools to better understand the Basin. Dr. Fred Ogden and Dr. Craig Douglas of UW are taking the lead on mapping and modeling the Basin.

NWSC off of I-80 west of Cheyenne, WY.

Mapping and modeling require significant computer power and memory. Most computers however, do not allow for the resolution and accuracy that Dr. Ogden and Dr. Douglas are looking for in their models. In order to achieve the scale they’re looking for, they need a supercomputer that can perform calculations at fast speeds, render data into models and provide a resolution vastly higher than what is currently available. It just so happens that Wyoming has such a computer, as of October 15^th, 2012.

For seven years, Wyoming and the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), with support from the National Science Foundation, have been planning and working towards building a supercomputing facility. This month, the years of planning and work came to an end with the opening of the NCAR-Wyoming Supercomputing Center (NWSC). The $74 million center houses the $30 million supercomputer, Yellowstone, which Dr. Ogden and Dr. Craig will use to model the Colorado River Basin.

Yellowstone is ranked in the top 25 list of fastest computers on Earth. It can perform 15 quadrillion (that is, 15,000,000,000,000,000) basic calculations per second. This is equivalent to everyone on the planet conducting 200,000 calculations per second simultaneously. Yellowstone can also store 11 petabytes of data, which is approximately equal to the total amount of data stored at the Library of Congress. This supercomputer opens the doors of opportunity for Wyoming researchers by giving them a tool that they have not previously had access to. It will put them on the cutting edge of science, especially regarding the environment.

Yellowstone, the supercomputer housed at NWSC.

For Dr. Ogden and Dr. Douglas, Yellowstone’s ability to synthesize large, varied data sets in a relatively short amount of time and produce accurate, usable models of the real world make all the difference in the world for their research. These models will be more complex and at a resolution 100 times higher than models produced on regular computers, which means that they will help inform policies and management decisions with more accuracy than before. The models produced by Yellowstone will be used by CI-Water to understand how population changes and water management are impacting the basin, what that means for the future of water in the west, and how we can begin planning, so that twenty years from now there is still enough water for everyone. These models and data will be an important part of the second annual CI-Water Symposium as the four universities look towards sharing information with stakeholders and decision makers, so that better plans for the future are possible.

For more information about water in the west and UW’s research in this area, visit http://youtu.be/63zWXBKQR5E.

For more information about Yellowstone, NWSC and a virtual tour, visit http://nwsc.ucar.edu/ and http://nwsc.ucar.edu/facility/visit. Or, visit http://www.uwyo.edu/uw/news/index.html for more in-depth stories about the Yellowstone supercomputer, NWSC and UW researchers.

NWSC also has a visitor center with hands-on displays and activities, which is open from 8-5 Monday through Friday and 8-4 on Saturday. The center is located 5 miles west of Cheyenne, WY off of I-80.

By Kali S. McCrackin
Photos courtesy of http://www.waterencyclopedia.com/Ce-Cr/Colorado-River-Basin.html, the University of Wyoming, UCAR 

Faces of Science: Engineering, snow storms and transportation systems

This is the forth of a series of blogs about women in science at the University of Wyoming, as we initiate our new NSF-funded program.Throughout the year we will be blogging about women in engineering, earth sciences, biological sciences and beyond. 

Dr. Young in Gulfoss, Iceland last May.

                The first significant snow storm of the year blanketed the town yesterday, reminding us all of the importance of knowing road conditions for winter travel. Wind, snow and ice create treacherous conditions, and accurate information is essential for safe travel. Most people probably don’t know that the road condition alerts and warnings around Laramie come from a collaborative effort between the Wyoming Department of Transportation (WYDOT) and an engineer at the University of Wyoming. Dr. Rhonda Young provides data analysis and algorithms to the WYDOT Traffic Management Center in Cheyenne to help them provide better information to travelers.

“We keep trying to provide information faster and have it be more reliable,” Dr. Young says.

Dr. Young is a professor in Civil and Architectural Engineering at UW. Her area of expertise is transportation systems, specifically in operating rural facilities in extreme weather conditions. With snow almost nine months a year and high winds year around, Laramie is the perfect place for Dr. Young’s research interests.

When she began her research, Dr. Young found that the digital road sign on I-80 east outside of Laramie read ‘slick in spots’ for eight and a half months straight.

“That doesn’t really mean anything,” Dr. Young says. “People aren’t going to change their travel or make any decisions because the sign says that.”

Dr. Young also found that signs reading ‘high winds’ have little meaning, especially for travelers who are unaccustomed to the high wind gusts Laramie sees. In order to help WYDOT provide travelers with more meaningful information, Dr. Young uses engineering and math to evaluate road conditions. She provides this information to the Traffic Management Center so they can post messages on highway signs that tell travelers more exact information. Dr. Young’s work in developing algorithms makes the Traffic Management Center decisions more data driven so they are faster to respond, provides more useful information, and makes the response more consistent from storm to storm.

“We still have trouble because people who aren’t from here don’t really understand what it means to be driving when it’s gusting sixty miles per hour, but at least they have some information to rely on,” Dr. Young says.

Her work, nonetheless, has helped WYDOT ensure safety for Laramie travelers year around. Their efforts help travelers weigh the risks of travel and make appropriate decisions. This impact on society is what Dr. Young was looking for in high school when she started thinking about a career.

Dr. Young found out about civil engineering one day when she walked into her high school career counselor’s office.

“I just sort of stumbled upon it,” Dr. Young says. “Most engineers are engineers because their dad was an engineer. Especially on the male side of it, it’s much more of a family history thing, and I didn’t have that.”

What Dr. Young did have however, was an interest in transportation systems and a solid understanding of math and science. Civil engineering synthesized her strengths and interests while allowing her to benefit society.

“I liked the idea of civil engineering still being related to society,” Dr. Young says. “You can talk to people about it.”

Dr. Young pursued a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering and then worked in the field for 12 years. She wanted to be a teacher, but she found that when she was in school, her favorite teachers were the ones who had worked professionally first. Her experience in the public sector has informed her classroom instruction and helped to present the softer side of engineering to her students but showing them the importance of relating engineering problems to public concerns.

“You take your engineering answer to the public and then you can’t understand how they can’t just love what you’ve done,” Dr. Young says. “It is sort of sobering to be like, ‘Oh, I never thought of it that way,’ when the public sees the problem differently.”

Working in the public sector verses the private sector allowed Dr. Young insight into working with and benefiting communities, much as she does today with her current research.

“The political process of the public sector slowed things down, we didn’t get as much built, but it was more about making sure communities were livable and bike-able,” Dr. Young says.  “It fit more with my values than just building, like in the private sector. In the private sector you calculate and you get an answer, but what does that mean? There are lots of different sides to the story.”

Dr. Young presents all these sides in her classes. She wants her students to realize how many options they have as civil engineers, where they can work as anything from an engineer on a rapid transit train in the city all the way to being the city engineer in a little town or 10,000 people.

“That’s pretty rare for engineering in general to allow you to pick what kind of lifestyle you want,” Dr. Young says.

Because of the diversity of options, most civil engineers find jobs after graduation whether it’s in the public sector, private sector or academia. The opportunity to pick the kind of lifestyle you want and the ability to help society are huge benefits of the field, especially for women.

At UW there are very few women studying civil engineering because of the architectural engineering degree which attracts more women, but nationwide there are a lot of women in civil engineering, especially in transportation systems.

As an instructor in the field, Dr. Young says that confidence is key for students, especially female students.

“There is a recognition that female students bring a certain skill set to the class and the field, whether it’s thinking about a problem differently or keeping things organized or asking different sorts of questions,” Dr Young says. “But usually they are quite good students and they are quite assertive.”

While women are very successful both as students and as professionals in civil engineering, it is important that they be aware of how they personally deal with problems and working environments. This is a lesson Dr. Young learned after leaving the public sector and starting in academia. Women tend to be team players, she says, but she had to learn to be protective of her time, especially when she was going through the tenure process.

“The tenure process is really strange because it’s a black and white mark that says ‘we’re either going to hire you for life or we’re not,’” Dr. Young says. “So, they put you through seven years of really testing you.”

This environment was drastically different than the encouraging, positive atmosphere of the public sector, because it tends to be more critical. Being critical is necessary because the department has to ensure that you can do everything due to the weight and high status that comes with the tenure decision.

Dr. Young also faced an odd environment when she began at UW because there had never been a tenured woman in the UW College of Engineering.

“It was a little bit strange for me because I thought, ‘where did they all go?’,” Dr. Young said.

Today, there are several tenured women in the college, included Dr. Young. She was the third tenured woman in the college and the first in the Civil and Architectural Engineering Department. During the tenure process, Dr. Young had her first son, which many people questioned, but Dr. Young showed that balancing, hard work and determination can overcome any perceived barrier and any doubt people may have about you. 

By Kali S. McCrackin
Photo courtesy of Dr. Rhonda Young