The University of Wyoming family has suffered a tremendous loss.

As was noted in earlier communications, three members of our swimming and diving team died in a single-vehicle crash on U.S. Highway 287 about 10 miles south of the Wyoming-Colorado border Thursday afternoon. Their families have now been notified.

Killed were Charlie Clark, 19, a sophomore on the men’s team and a psychology major from Las Vegas, Nev.; Carson Muir, 18, a freshman on the women’s team and an animal and veterinary sciences major from Birmingham, Ala.; and Luke Slabber, 21, a junior on the men’s team studying construction management from Cape Town, South Africa.

Two other members of the men’s swimming and diving team were injured in the crash. Their injuries are not believed to be life-threatening.

The terrible news of this fatal crash comes as our campus is still reeling from last week’s loss of Army ROTC student Sabrina Geller, of Laramie. Her body was found in the Vedauwoo area Feb. 14. The circumstances of her death are still being investigated, but law enforcement officials say there was no sign of foul play.

As we mourn the loss of these students, let’s do our best and pull together, support those who are suffering, and show the compassion and kindness that characterize what it means to be part of this community.

Learn more here.

University of Wyoming statistics graduate student Allie Midkiff, from Liberty, Mo., recently was named the winner of the Lyman and Margie McDonald Research Award for Quantitative Analysis in Wildlife.

To win the award, Midkiff had to fulfill a number of criteria relating to the impact, scholarly value and practical value of her research. The award, designed to provide monetary support to UW graduate students in zoology and physiology as well as mathematics and statistics, will help support Midkiff’s continued research in the field of wildlife ecology.

Midkiff’s project, titled “Using State-Space Models to Evaluate Uncertainty in Competing Survey Designs for Monitoring Pronghorn Abundance and Recruitment at the Sheldon-Hart Mountain National Wildlife Refuge Complex,” is focused on finding cheaper and safer ways for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) to survey pronghorn in the Sheldon-Hart Mountain National Wildlife Refuge complex. The refuge in Oregon and Nevada, one of the largest in the entirety of the continental U.S. at over 840,000 acres, stands as one of the few remaining bastions of vital sagebrush steppe habitat, which is crucial for sustaining pronghorn populations.

Keep reading to learn more here.

The winter issue of UWyo Magazine, the University of Wyoming’s flagship publication, highlights how the university touches every corner of the state with outreach and engagement programming.

“To know what the people of Wyoming need and want, we must constantly be listening, responding and collaborating,” UW President Ed Seidel says. “We have made such engagement a top priority during my time as president, and our current strategic plan aims to take us to new levels of performance in serving the people of Wyoming.”

This special issue of UWyo Magazine coincides with the university’s new designation for community engagement by the American Council on Education and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. The 2024 Carnegie Elective Classification is a highly-sought-after designation, particularly by land-grant universities such as UW.

Read these stories and many more in the winter issue at www.uwyo.edu/uwyo-mag.

Two teams of University of Wyoming students have been selected to advance to Phase 2 in NASA’s 2024 Micro-g Neutral Buoyancy Experiment Design Teams (NExT) engineering design challenge.

Seven undergraduate students in the UW College of Engineering and Physical Sciences, dubbed the UW Crater Cowboys, designed and built the Little Lunar Saddlebag, a hand carrier device that can be used to store and move tools during lunar extravehicular activity in microgravity. Team members include Maria Allen, of Parker, Colo.; Hanna Detmer, of Sheridan; Autumn Highland, of Cheyenne; Hunter Kindt, of Cody; Ivan Leon and Michael Richardson, of Green River; and Erin Poyer, of Rock Springs.

Additionally, eight undergraduate students in the UW College of Engineering and Physical Sciences, dubbed the UW Space Cowboys, designed and built the Flag Assembly with Shark-Stake and Tether, a lunar flag, flagpole and anchoring system that can be deployed on the lunar surface. Team members include Brian Baker and Jake Kravetsky, both of Jackson; Jakob Borrman, of Loveland, Colo.; Daemon Carroll, of Smithfield, Va.; Joshua Gardner, of Pensacola, Fla.; Eduardo Mendoza, of Powell; JW Mills, of Colorado Springs, Colo.; and Jacob Wells, of Cheyenne.

“I am so pleased with the efforts that I’ve seen these teams put forth and am proud that students from the mechanical engineering department will again be able to represent UW in the Micro-G NExT challenges,” says Kari Strube, an assistant lecturer of mechanical engineering and team adviser. “Last year, I was impressed with the dedication shown by our students, who had a successful test of their zip-tie installer, and I expect that this year’s groups will perform equally well in their challenges. They both have been working hard to continue to refine their designs, and I look forward to seeing them test their finished products in NASA’s facilities.”

Micro-g NExT encourages undergraduate students to design, build and test a tool or device that addresses an authentic, current space exploration challenge. The experience includes hands-on engineering design, test operations and public outreach. Micro-g NExT provides a unique opportunity for students to contribute to NASA’s missions, as the design challenges are identified by NASA engineers as necessary in space exploration missions.

Discover more about the teams' projects here.

Congratulations to Department of Mechanical Engineering Assistant Professor Xiang Zhang on recently receiving a National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER award.

The award entitled "CAREER: Multiscale Reduced Order Modeling and Design to Elucidate the Microstructure-Property-Performance Relationship of Hybrid Composite Materials" will allow his team to leverage the multiscale modeling and design expertise within computations for advanced materials and manufacturing laboratories.

Furthermore, Xiang and his team will also partner with the ME department, SoC, ARCC, WyrkShop, the Idaho National Laboratory, and other industry partners to further their research.

Through the CAREER program the NSF provides some of the most prestigious awards to early-career faculty. These awards are designed to support individuals who show promise in becoming academic role models in both education and research. Moreover, they aim to empower recipients to spearhead advances within their respective departments or organizations.

In pursuit of this mission, Xiang’s team will utilize the award to not only advance their research but also to conduct education, outreach, and workforce development initiatives.

Congratulations to School of Computing's Associate Director Jeff Hamerlinck, who received news last week from the UW Office of Research and Economic Development that the SoC and the 3D Visualization Center will be jointly funded to create a new data analytics and visualization space in the Science Institute Building.

The working title for the room is the "Data-X Studio," which will be equipped with high-resolution wall panels and a multi-touch 'touch table' workstation supporting a range of collaborative exploratory data visualization and analysis for both small teams and larger audiences connected through a web interface.

Current plans call for the space to be operational later this summer.

This past month, the UW School of Computing has launched the new SoC Undergraduate Research Experience (SURE) Program.

Currently, there are sixteen students and nine mentors in the program this semester, with projects including a breadth of topics from analysis of bird song traits to conversion of heat into electricity via thermoelectric devices, to EDGE computing platforms, and wildlife migration data.

SoC is excited to have this first cohort in the program and look forward to growing and expanding SURE in the next academic year.

On Feb. 13, Ramesh Sivanpillai, Jeff Hamerlinck, Beth McMillan, and a group of School of Computing (SoC) students attended GEO WEEK in Denver, CO.

At GEO WEEK, attendees discovered the latest cross-industry technology that integrates the built environment, advanced airborne/terrestrial technologies, and commercial 3D technologies. 

In addition to exhibits, there were sessions on diversity in geospatial leadership and strategies to navigate the growing geospatial workforce.

Three SoC graduate students attended, "Preparing for a Career in Research and Academia."

The photo on the right features (left to right): Yen-Yi Wu (Ph.D. student), Beth McMillan, Maggie Sobolewski (MS student), Aidana Mukhamedina (Ph.D. student), Devon Borthwick (UG Geography major) and Sage Wright (UG GIST major).

UW School of Computing's (SoC) Ben Koger and Jeff Hamerlinck will be serving as Faculty Ambassadors at the Wyoming State Legislature on Tuesday, March 5.

The theme is “Computing & Wyoming, the future is here.”

Koger and student ambassador, Matthew Butrim, will demonstrate the use of imagery and computer vision to study ecological systems.

Hamerlinck and team will demonstrate capabilities of touch table technology to support small-group collaboration using geospatial data and mapping software applications.

Lars Kothoff, William Cain and Mia Williams, along with their student ambassadors will be presenting on a variety of AI topics.

Getting students and faculty in front of our state legislators is critical in building relationships with this influential group. Good luck to all of the presenters!

Wyoming Professional Engineers Week 2024 was a huge success with 4,306 of Wyoming's 6,738 third graders from 88 schools and 245 classes in 21 counties participating in the event.

Gratitude goes out to the 126 volunteer engineers from 84 firms that facilitated the engineering design challenge activities. In addition, Wyoming's third graders and third grade teachers are thankful to Union Telephone for continuing to sponsor this event each year. The success of Engineers Week in Wyoming would not be possible without Union's generous support. 

If you’re interested in learning how your department can partner with the CEPS K-14 STEM Education Outreach Office, contact Cindy Jones.

Photo on right features Meadowlark Elementary, Gillette, WY.

STEM Days across Wyoming has been an awesome experience for the CEPS K-14 STEM Education Outreach Office.

The events were held in collaboration with other outreach offices, including the Science Kitchen and the Science Initiative Road Show.

So far this year, CEPS student ambassadors and Cindy Jones have facilitated engineering design challenges in eight schools, reaching over 1,500 students in grades K-12.

The CEPS K-14 STEM Education Outreach Office has many more STEM days coming up this spring semester, and looks forward to meeting many more of Wyoming's future problem solvers!  

If you’re interested in learning how your department can partner with the CEPS K-14 STEM Education Outreach Office, contact Cindy Jones.

The College of Engineering and Physical Sciences K-14 STEM Education Outreach Office was invited into two Taipei City High Schools during this school year to work with their 11^th and 12^th grade students to discuss what engineers and scientists are doing to address the carbon sink and ocean acidification issues facing the world today and determine what they can do in their communities to help.

Visits are taking place over multiple Zoom virtual sessions synchronously, and weekly feedback and discussions are occurring asynchronously online.

The students continue to work on this year long project, and the final result will be brochures created to help educate their classmates on ways everyone can help. 

Cindy Jones even got to visit in-person with one of the teachers who came to visit Laramie, WY, after the first two Zoom virtual sessions, where they enjoyed dinner, Wyoming style, at the Rib and Chop House with the UW Fulbright Scholar who connected the outreach office with the schools in Taipei. 

If you’re interested in learning how your department can partner with the CEPS K-14 STEM Education Outreach Office, contact Cindy Jones.

Ramesh Sivanpillai, a research scientist with UW School of Computing, was recently invited to Laramie Middle School to conduct an extension activity to describe and demonstrate the role of Earth Observation satellites for tracking seasonal and annual changes in vegetation conditions.

Eighth grade students at Laramie Middle School saw how Earth observation satellites capture the progression and recession of green waves in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres caused by changes in vegetation conditions.

Students were able to connect how the amount of sunlight received influences vegetation growth on Earth. More than 150 students participated in this educational outreach activity.

In the students' current science unit, LMS science teachers Mr. Krysl and Mr. Peterson, introduced their students to how Earth’s orbit around the sun and its tilt causes differences in the amount of light received by different parts of our planet.