In the Spotlight: March 27-31, 2023

Kudos to these faculty, staff, students and programs 

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  • The Construction Management Student Organization built a house for a family in Mexico over spring break. Thirteen students along with one faculty adviser traveled to Puerto Peñasco, Mexico to help build a house for a family in need. This house for the Torress Medina family was built in partnership with 1Mission and was sponsored by the West Coast Partitions.  Over the course of four days, the CM students helped to roof, stucco, build interior partitions, install electrical, hang drywall and install windows. The group consisted of students and alumni Landon Waymire, Grace Falk, Angela Esparza, Jon Raben, Gabby Acosta, Ryan Whitmire, Chris Grace, Nick Osika, Jonah Graham, Jaren Geis, Gilbert Rios III, Sam Wong and Charlie Register alongside Rob Bruner, faculty adviser and associate professor of practice of civil engineering, construction management and environmental engineering (CECMEE). 
  • Visar Farhangi, assistant teaching professor of CECMEE, won the “Excellent Reviewer Award 2022” among the 785 reviewers, in recognition of his valuable contributions to one of the most prestigious geotechnical engineering journals in 2022, Journal of Rock Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering. 
  • Amy Armstrong-Heimsoth, associate clinical professor and chair of the Department of Occupational Therapy (OT), and OT students Abbey Monroe and Camryn Cupp are co-authors on the published research article, “Motor Milestones: Sensory Motor Trends of Young Children with Classic Galactosemia(CG).” The findings of this research support the need for occupational therapy services during early intervention to minimize or prevent long-term motor and sensorimotor delays in infants with CG. 
  • Cristina Thomas, assistant professor of astronomy and planetary sciences, and collaborator Andy Rivkin presented on behalf of DART in the Science Breakthrough Session. The DART mission is NASA’s demonstration of kinetic impactor technology, impacting an asteroid to adjust its speed and path. DART is the first space mission to demonstrate asteroid deflection by kinetic impactor and was one of the runners up for science breakthrough of the year. 
  • The new study, “Comet-like Activity Discovered on Quasi-Hilda Asteroid 2009 DQ118” was recently published. Authors include associate professor of APS Chad Trujillo; current postdoc and former Ph.D. student Will Oldroyd; former Ph.D. student Colin Chandler; former research experiences of undergraduates (REU) student Will Burris; former undergrad Jay Kueny; current Ph.D. student Kennedy Farrell; and current undergrad Jarod DeSpain. This paper reports evidence of comet-like activity on asteroid 2009 DQ118, a quasi-Hilda object near the 3:2 interior mean-motion resonance with Jupiter. 
  • APS associate professor Christopher Edwards, current postdocs Aurelien Stcherbinine and Chris Haberle and data scientists Nathan Smith and Kezman Saboi are authors on the recently published article, “Diurnal and Seasonal Mapping of Martian Ices with EMIRS.” This paper discusses how data from the Emirates Mars Infrared Spectrometer (EMIRS) onboard the Emirates Mars Mission (EMM) was used to monitor the diurnal and seasonal evolution of the ices at the surface of Mars over almost one Martian year. 
  • Steve Tegler, professor of APS, published an article in Research Notes of the American Astronomical Society (AAS). This paper details the partial disintegration of active centaur/comet P/2020 MK4. 

 

 

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