|
Only have a minute? Listen instead
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
EDINBURG — A news conference Wednesday at the UTRGV Edinburg campus highlighted the university’s $1.5 million partnership with Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), one of eight institutions nationwide.
Representatives from LANL, TechSource, UTRGV President Guy Bailey, U.S Sen. Ted Cruz, local and state elected officials and the university’s engineering faculty were all on-hand to speak on the collaboration.
The leading figure of the collaboration is UTRGV College of Engineering and Computer Science Associate Professor Hiram Moya.
“We are here today to announce the collaboration between the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley and Los Alamos National Lab and mark the establishment of the Homeland Security and engineering partnership, a multi-year, $1.5 million-plus collaboration, and this is only the beginning,” Moya said during his speech.
The partnership aims to work in the areas of research, outreach and networking.
“The objective with the (partnership) is to give access and opportunities to the next generation of domestic students, scientists and technologies that can fulfill the mission and objectives at a national level,” he said.
The collaboration broadens career opportunities within the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration. UTRGV will develop skilled engineers and metrology experts essential for national security.
For the research aspect of the collaboration, UTRGV will investigate and find better ways to model, manufacture, test and measure production and workplace environments for LANL.
One of the outreach programs will be to collaborate with UTRGV’s TexPrep program which is a multi-week STEM summer camp that brings over 500 middle and high school students from the region. The camp focuses on learning activities and various speakers to give students the vision of what they can achieve.
Through networking, the partnership will open access and opportunities to UTRGV students.
“I want to bring attention to the importance of manufacturing engineering,” Moya said. “We need more engineers, scientists and technologists in the U.S. and at UTRGV. We want to engage the population that we serve. UTRGV is the second largest Hispanic Serving Institution, with over 4,000 students in the College of Engineering and Computer Science. Our plan is to make the Department of manufacturing and industrial engineering the fastest growing department in the College.”
After the news conference, Moya said that the main goal is to make UTRGV a nationally recognized university for engineering for Hispanic students.
Originally from El Paso, he said one of the main reasons he decided to come to the Valley was to make an impact in the community.
“This is one of the ways that I’m making sure that we’re making progress in bringing the next generation of engineers and scientists to work in national labs, go to graduate school and consider faculty positions,” Moya said.
UTRGV engineering senior Joanna Vargas is one of three students that took part in the internship at LANL.
Vargas said the internship was interesting, especially since she’s never left the Valley.
“I really enjoyed being in Los Alamos and working at the metrology lab,” she said. “I was making different documents for all the missions that they had there and creating curriculums, networking a little bit and just getting to know the place.”
Robert Putnam, chief production scientist and program project director for LANL said after the news conference that the partnership with UTRGV is a trial process which spans three years.
“We’ve been so thrilled with where we’ve been in the first year that I anticipated continuing annually from there,” Putnam said. “Those students actually did phenomenal in their assigned project space at Los Alamos.”
Putnam anticipates more UTRGV students participating in the program in the years to come.
“I think a sustainable level could be 10 to 12 a year. Last summer, we had close to 1,800 student interns at Los Alamos,” Putnam added. “That’s just a few months ago. So I’d like to see UTRGV getting their fair share of some of those positions.”
Receiving a tour of the research facilities with UTRGV faculty and LANL representatives, Moya showcased the different areas of research and machines.
Unlike other universities, undergraduate, graduate and doctoral students get to work with hands-on experience in the research facility.
Putnam said this approach for all students is key to bringing LANL to UTRGV.
