The goal was to assist 50 students and in the program’s existence, ten students have received Ph.Ds and 43 students have received master's degrees.
Mo Jamshidi, founding
director of the program and regents professor of Electrical and
Computer Engineering, said ACE helps increase the opportunities
and possibilities of science and technology education and research
to minorities. “The percentage of minorities with engineering and science degrees is pretty low in America,” Jamshidi says. “It is important that UNM helps increase the number of minorities in top level engineering and science fields.”
Jamshidi said that UNM is leading the way to help students achieve their goals. He said that ACE is committed to augment diversity in science and engineering while enhancing public understanding of science and engineering and the ethics in those fields. The mission of ACE is to develop new sciences and technology concepts which are immediately useful to NASA and U.S. industry.
Robert Alvarez received his Ph.D with the help of ACE and currently is employed as the manager of TASC, Inc. in Albuquerque. He said he had never seen a program that focused on caring for its students for so long. Alvarez said ACE is a full-service program that reaches out to a diverse audience.
“I will always remember the ACE staff put a “Congratulations Bobby” cake at the back of the exam room during my dissertation presentation,” Alvarez says. “Having the cake there didn’t make the presentation any easier, but it did help me once again realize that the ACE staff was always there to support me.”
ACE attempts to prepare high-school students for science/engineering disciplines in college. The program makes scholarships available to bring qualified students to UNM, and assists them through their graduate studies. The program’s professors are available to advise and guide students through their courses of studies. The program also has state-of-the-art laboratories and equipment to assist students with class projects, theses and dissertations. The program has fostered contacts with numerous government, academic and industrial partners to help all graduates transition smoothly into the work force.
Former ACE scholar Dennis Padilla, researcher at Sandia National Laboratories, is part of a research team that is developing a MEMS micro-gyroscope and is also involved with developing obstacle detection algorithms and techniques for autonomous mobile robots.
Padilla said that ACE involves each student in real engineering problems and research and encourages team efforts. “Engineering is a vast field of interesting work and diversity is the key to success in any area of business,” Padilla says.
“Time management is one of the most beneficial skills brought out of ACE.”
Doctoral ACE graduate Edward Tunstel is now a senior robotics engineer at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He does research and flight development of mobile robots for space exploration. While participating in ACE, Tunstel was able to publish a CD, a book and numerous articles. His current research projects include development of autonomous rover navigation and control technologies that enable asteroid exploration, planetary rover outposts at Mars and the moon, and safe long distance traversal by rovers in challenging martian terrain. He is also involved in algorithm and software development for a flight rover to be deployed on an asteroid surface for NASA.
Tunstel said that there are numerous benefits in being an ACE scholar. He said students get direct exposure to some of NASA’s important engineering and science problems being addressed by JPL and students are given the opportunity to interface with NASA engineers and scientists. He said students are given the opportunity to work with integrated teams of faculty, graduate students and undergraduate students on a common research problem.
ACE also has a National Fellowship program for minority Ph.D. students. ACE fellows have graduated from the University of Southern California, University of Alabama at Huntsville, New Mexico State University, UNM and Texas A&M University. ACE currently has six doctoral fellows at University of Arizona, UNM, Northwestern University and University of Maryland at College Park.
Jamshidi said that a grant has been written to NASA to fund the program for another five years.
“It is important that we continue to reach out to minorities interested in engineering and science,” he says. “We will once again set a goal of graduating 50+ students with master’s and Ph.Ds.”
