Contact: Michael Padilla, 277-1816

December 19, 2002 UNM NASA PURSUE TEAM WINS POSTER COMPETITION AT NASA SUMMIT The University of New Mexico School of Engineering PURSUE program team recently attended the NASA PAIR Summit held in Leesberg, Va. The team presented two posters in the poster competition and two posters for the general event. The PURSUE IDMARS (Intelligent Distributed Multi-Agent Robotic Systems) poster and exhibit won the PAIR summit poster presentation award. The team also set up an exhibition booth and demonstrated LOBOT Jr., a robot kit designed for high school students, and PURSUE IDMARS laboratory research robots. The team also displayed several PURSUE publications, videos and educational CdRoms. PURSUE faculty also gave talks at various summit sessions. The team was comprised of three PURSUE faculty, PURSUE NASA technical monitor, two graduate student mentors, 10 undergraduate research assistants and the program administrative assistant. PURSUE faculty are David Kauffman, principal investigator; Nader Vadiee, program director; Robert Duncan associate dean for Research, College of Arts and Sciences; Mary Justus, PURSUE administrative assistant. Edward Tunstel, NASA technical monitor from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. PURSUE graduate student mentors are Patricino Chavez, mechanical engineering; and John Sanchez, electrical and computer engineering. Undergraduate research assistants are Marcos Ward, computer science; Frank Andazola, electrical and computer engineering; Richard Carreras, PURSUE R&D team, University Studies; Rachelle Carreras, PURSUE R&D team, biology; Katherine Goossen, electrical and computer engineering; and Alejandro R. Anaya, electrical and computer engineering. Team members from Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute included Verbie James and Lenora Salas. Bennie Sandoval represented Albuquerque Technical Vocational Institute and Damian Trujillo, Computer Science, represented New Mexico Highlands University. The purpose of the PAIR program is to integrate cutting-edge NASA-related research into the undergraduate educational experience and to strengthen teaching and research strategies across academic programs and to enhance collaboration among mathematics, science, engineering and technology (MSET) academic departments. This summit provided NASA PAIR institutions to share best practices in advancing minority students into MSET careers and to expose students to NASA enterprises and varied workforce opportunities. In addition, the summit helped expose MSET faculty to collaborative/funding opportunities within NASA Enterprises and facilitated collaborative activities between NASA enterprises and minority institutions. ###

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