COURTESY PHOTO
➜ Tara Astigarraga was the subject of a profile in the “Celebrating Women in STEM” series of feature stories in University News, the student paper at the University of Missouri–Kansas City. A member of the senior technical staff for Blockchain and Hybrid Cloud Solutions at IBM, Astigarraga is a past winner of two AISES Professional Awards: Most Promising Engineer or Scientist (2007) and Technical Excellence (2016). She is an alumna of the University of Arizona.
➜ Bailey Chalfant has been named a “Dreamstarter” by the Running Strong for American Youth Foundation. Chalfant won a $10,000 grant for her dream project of empowering young people with self-defense techniques and healthy relationship counseling on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation. Cofounder of the Running Strong Foundation is Olympic gold medalist Billy Mills, Oglala Lakota, who launched the Dreamstarter awards to help more Native youth realize their own dreams.
➜ Dr. Mary Jo Ondrechen merited a fast-track grant from the National Science Foundation to fund research on the coronavirus. She is a professor of chemistry and chemical biology at Northeastern University, where her researchers analyze protein groups by applying computational methods. Dr. Ondrechen is a former chair of the AISES Board of Directors.
➜ Dr. Roger Dube, a professor emeritus at the Rochester Institute of Technology and former assistant dean for Undergraduate Research and Interdisciplinary Programs in the school’s College of Science, has been awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to increase retention of First Nations students in STEM higher education programs. At RIT he was the principal investigator on an NSF-funded Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) that achieved a retention rate in excess of 90 percent for Indigenous students. Dr. Dube will build on his work at RIT through a project at the University of Manitoba, where he is serving as Visiting Indigenous Scholar. Dr. Dube is the 2019 recipient of the highest AISES honor, the Ely S. Parker Award.
The generosity of our Full Circle of Support (FCS) Partners and Circle of Support Partners is integral to the AISES mission. FCS Partners are organizations that have established a multiprogram partnership with AISES for three or more years, while Circle of Support Partners assist in funding a diverse range of programs and events in the STEM fields. We wish to thank each for their continued effort to serve AISES student and professional members.
