Sci

Emma-Jane Alexander graduated with a BS(Hons) computing and mathematics degree in Visualization from the University of Teesside (2000) and an Executive MBA (2006) from the University of Hull (both UK). Emma-Jane takes great pleasure in utilizing both technical and management skills to explore and nurture the successful adoption of technology and software in visualization centers based at higher education institutions. Currently the manager of the Shell 3D Visualization Center at UW, Emma-Jane enjoys the challenge of bringing together 3D visualization and supercomputing experts with faculty, students and businesses to enhance teaching, research and commercial productivity. Emma-Jane is interested in developing new multi and interdisciplinary collaborative relationships with faculty and parties external to UW. Emma-Jane holds a provisional patent in the development of a virtual therapeutic treatment for obesity, and has practical and strategic interests in STEM activity. Emma-Jane is the current president of national committee called The CAAV (Campus Alliance for Advanced Visualization).

 

Simon Alexander earned a BSc in Math/Computer Science from the University of Sheffield, followed by an MSc in Computer Graphics from the University of Teesside. At Teesside, started a PhD in Soft Cellular Modelling with emphasis on the development of a real time minimal invasive surgery simulation, before coming a Senior Lecturer in Visualization. Senior Animation programmer, at Orange UK, developing the 3D talking and animated ‘Ananova’ avatar, as well as exploring other multimedia technology including text-to-speech and voice recognition. Earned a PGCE Teaching Qualification for Mathematics in Secondary Schools, taught maths to children from 11 to 18. Returned to academia as a Research Programmer, at the University of Hull, working on developing a wind-turbine maintenance virtual training system, and a variety of teaching demos including using geoscience data to explore the Humber Estuary, to allowing school children to explore mathematical nets and volumes.

 

Cecilia Aragón Ph.D., is Associate Professor in the Department of Theatre and Dance and Latina/o Studies Program at the University of Wyoming in Laramie, Wyoming. She is the Director of Latina/o Studies Program and serves as Area Head for TYA in Theatre and Dance. Her scholarly articles and research areas include Latina/o Theatre, Indigenous Performances of the Americas, and Theatre Education. Aragon serves as past-president of Women and Theatre Program. She was recently appointed to the National Endowment for the Arts national review board.

 

Robert Baker is broadly interested in understanding the adaptation and evolution of genomes, phenotypes, and species as it pertains to intraspecific evolution and crop domestication/improvement. His specific research interests lie at the interface of development, evolution, and ecology. Baker uses comparative and experimental approaches to investigate the evolution of development (evo-devo) in growth chamber, greenhouse, and field studies. A strong foundation in plant developmental morphology and careful phenotyping at the anatomic through organismal levels anchor his work at the gene, genome, and transcriptome levels.

 

Maggie Bourque is the Student Advising Coordinator for Academic Programs in the Haub School. Maggie's professional and academic work spans education, cultural geography, natural science, philosophy, and the arts. Before joining the Academic Programs of the Haub School, she held positions with L.A. Theatre Works, Friends of Ballona Wetlands, the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, and Teton Science Schools, among others. Her professional work includes curriculum and assessment consulting, institutional ethnography, and education program administration. She specializes in place-based pedagogy, art-science integration, phenomenology, environmental social science, and field education. Maggie takes a creative, interdisciplinary, and collaborative approach to understanding complex relationships among people and places.

 

Kimberly Burkhart is currently an instructional facilitator at Laramie Middle School.  Previously, she taught science at Laramie High School.  She has over 8 years of teaching experience in public school classrooms and is highly qualified in mathematics and science.  Kim holds a K-12 principal certification as well as master’s degrees in middle level mathematics and science.  Mrs. Burkhart’s students created two electric guitars this past year as a STEAM initiative re-igniting her love of music and appreciation for art.  Her involvement in assessment work with the Wyoming Department of Education, co-facilitation in Professional Learning Communities, and serving on AdvancED Accreditation Teams has informed much of her classroom practices.  Honors Kim has received:  Carbon County School District #2's Teacher of the Year (2007). 

 

Jian Cai is an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering since January 2015. He received his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering in 2010 from Clemson University for his research in combustion measurement. He was a Postdoctoral Research Associate in School of Engineering at University of California Merced working on combustion and radiation simulations, before coming to UW. At UW, he teaches undergraduate-level Thermodynamics, Heat Transfer, and Gas Dynamics and graduate-level Combustion. His current research includes measurements and simulations of gaseous and coal flames.

 

Sculptor Ashley Hope Carlisle works in drawing and sculpture and has exhibited both nationally and internationally in England and Italy. Carlisle is an Associate Professor of Art in Sculpture at UW and has degrees from the University of Southern Mississippi and the University of Georgia. She has been featured in Sculpture Magazine and has been awarded the Wyoming Arts council Visual Arts Fellowship.

 

Michael Dillon is an Associate Professor in the Department of Zoology and Physiology and Program in Ecology at the University of Wyoming and Director of the UW-NPS Research Station in Grand Teton National Park. He has worked throughout the world, including in Central and South America, much of the Western US, and China studying how organisms live in and adapt to diverse environments from tropical rain forests to alpine meadows. Since joining the UW faculty in 2009, his work has expanded to diverse related fields including ecological impacts of past and future climate change, effects of wind-farm development on plant-pollinator communities, and effects of pesticides on native pollinators, the focus of his collaboration with CC Aragon.

 

Kara Duggan, a Colorado native, graduated from the University of Wyoming with a Bachelors of Arts in English in December, 2013. Currently, she works as the office associate at the Wyoming School-University Partnership. While she works at UW, Kara continues to take classes to explore her interests, which include literature, history, art, communication, and the environment.

 

Composer Anne Guzzo is an internationally performed composer and the founder of the New Frontiers celebration of contemporary music based in Laramie. Guzzo earned her Ph.D. at the University of California, Davis. Passionate about new music, she teaches composition, music history, and theory at UW. Her research interests include the cartoon music of Carl W. Stalling, silent movie music, and musical absurdism.

 

Melissa Hemken is the AT Lander Arts and Sciences (ATLAS) Director, a program of the Lander Art Center. ATLAS is a partnership of city, chamber, school district, state government, and local/state/international non-profits based in Lander and provide arts and sciences education for the benefit of the community. She also serves as Co-Director of Promoting Arts in Lander Schools (PALS) which works with Fremont County School District #1 to augment in-school curriculum with dynamic visual, performance and musical arts.

 

Nancy Huntly is Professor of Biology and Director of the Ecology Center at Utah State University. She is an ecologist who has studied biodiversity in old-fields, deserts, sagebrush-steppe, montane, alpine, subalpine, and subartic places. Her current research in human ecology integrates people into long-term studies of place, ecology, and biodiversity. She collaborates with artists, as well as with scientists and mathematicians from many disciplines. Her recent art-science collaborations include a co-taught and project-based course on Biodiversity in which art and science students create collaborative projects using methods from art and science; a visiting speaker series and an internal discussion series that focus on the art-science interface; science-art practice workshops; an artist-scientist collaborative residency that culminated in a project designed for the local-regional community; and an art-science symposium. She teaches several science communication courses and has also taught natural history writing.

 

Janine Jordan is the City Manager of Laramie, WY. Ms. Jordan has served in various capacities over the years, including Assistant City Manager, Management Analyst, and Administrative Intern. She holds degrees from the University of Wyoming including a B.A. in International Studies and Masters in Public Administration. A Casper native, Ms. Jordan attended Casper College and is a staunch supporter of Wyoming’s investments in post-secondary education, noting that community colleges are a critical path to the University, and success, for many young adults.

 

Sabrina Kaufman is from Wheatland, Wyoming, currently a senior studying Computer Science and Graphic Design. She has worked as an intern in the SHELL 3D Viz Center for 2 years, contributing to projects such as Virtual Healthy Me, and The Maze Project as well utilizing the 3D CAVE, Oculus Rift and Leap Motion technology in the facility. She takes great pleasure in supporting new mentors. Using the knowledge and resources available at the Viz Center her senior design group project was able to win the University of Wyoming's annual Undergraduate Research Day Competition for the Computer Science Department. Sabrina enjoys drawing from life when she is not studying or working.

 

Since earning a Masters of Fine Arts from the University of Miami in 2005, Mark Lee Koven’s research has focused on integrating the Arts with the Sciences through use of combined methodologies, data, and immersive environments. Mr. Koven’s work has been shown in over 100 exhibitions and venues including the New York Science Museum, StoreFront for Art and Architecture New York, FlashArt Milan, Miami Science Museum, Southern Exposure San Francisco, Taipei Taiwan, and Scope London. Mr. Koven’s work is also included in various public and private collections including the Perez Art Museum, the Frost Art Museum, and the Museum of Contemporary Art. In addition to being the recipient of both a Florida State individual artist fellowship and North Carolina individual artists fellowship, he was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) grant in 2015. He is currently an assistant professor in the School of Applied Sciences, Technology, and Education.

 

Michael Lange has been the executive director of the Wyoming Arts Council since 2014.  Prior to serving as executive director, Lange served as the community development specialist for the arts council and worked for the University of Wyoming where he used the arts as a catalyst for co-curricular student development initiatives. Lange is a trustee for the Western States Arts Federation (WESTAF). His research interests are centered on exploring and creating structures and atmospheres that promote creativity and collaboration.  He has presented this topic at different regional and national conferences and has taught classes on art administration and leadership in social entrepreneurialism. Lange is also a musician and composer, performing mostly in the jazz idiom, and holds a bachelor’s degree in music and a master’s in public administration.

 

Matthew Lehmitz is an interdisciplinary scientist with a wide array of interests including botany and robotics. He also enjoy working and playing in the outdoors.

 

Jeffrey Lockwood – writer, entomologist, past Ucross Fellow (2013), and current head of the UW MFA Program in Creative Writing – spearheaded the multi-year, multi-disciplinary project Cross Pollination.  Lockwood was hired as an insect ecologist at the University of Wyoming in 1986.  But over the course of 20 years he metamorphosed into a Professor of Natural Sciences & Humanities, with a joint appointment between the Department of Philosophy and in the MFA program in Creative Writing.  He teaches courses in natural resource ethics, environmental justice and the philosophy of ecology, along with creative non-fiction writing workshops.  His essays have been honored with a Pushcart Prize, a John Burroughs Award, the Albert Schweitzer Sermon Award of the UUA, and inclusion in Best American Science & Nature Writing.  His most recent books are Six-Legged Soldiers: Using Insects as Weapons of War (Oxford) and Philosophical Foundations for the Practices of Ecology (Cambridge).

 

Shelley Miller is a lover of the arts and likes to discover how art can connect people, places, and things. She likes to find out how the arts are used to expand understanding, increase awareness, heal the body, mind, and spirit. Artists are on an eternal quest for knowledge and inspiration. We are researchers of our own inquiries, inquiries that explore many disciplines and practices (unending). Many “STEM” participants are artists and know what the art connection means for them and their work. Shelley is interested in opening a conversation with others about the “STEAM” concept and its’ inherent values. The essential question is: How do our combined efforts increase positive results for humanity’s growth, health, and prosperity? Shelley studied art education, art therapy, and dance at the University of New Mexico. She is presently teaching art at Laramie High School, where she has taught for the last 16 years.

 

Adrienne Outlaw is a socially engaged, interdisciplinary artist who has exhibited at galleries and museums across the United States and abroad in Italy, Hong Kong, South Korea and Nigeria. A dozen exhibition catalogs and three art books feature her work, which has been positively reviewed in such publications as Art in America, Sculpture, Art Papers and World Sculpture News. Outlaw is the recipient of grants, awards and fellowships from such organizations at the National Endowment for the Arts, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and the Elizabeth Firestone Graham Foundation. Outlaw holds a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an MLAS from Vanderbilt University. Much of her work is informed by ethical issues -- especially as regards individual choice -- arising in a rapidly changing and interconnected world. 

 

Katharine Owens is an associate professor in the department of Politics, Economics, and International Studies and the director of the Environmental Studies program at the University of Hartford. A printmaker for over twenty years, she incorporates this mode of art making into courses on policy and environment. She also studies the impact of environmental art on attitudes, behaviors, and knowledge.

 

Mary Katherine Scott is the Acting Director for the International Programs Office at the University of Wyoming. She is also a Visiting Assistant Professor of art history in UW’s Department of Art. Scott received a bachelor’s degree in fine arts and Spanish from UW in 2003; a master’s degree in Spanish from UW in 2005; a master’s degree in art history from Northern Illinois University in 2008; and a Ph.D. in world art studies from the University of East Anglia in Norwich, U.K., in 2013. She has taught art history and Spanish at UW since 2013 as a joint member of the Department of Art and the Department of Modern and Classical Languages.

 

After completing a Bachelors of Fine Art, Studio Art concentrating in sculpture, Evan Townsend traveled the country working for conservation corps, environmental education centers, and professional trail crews. During those formative four years, Evan found that he wanted to employ both his hands and his head which lead him to graduate school at the University of Wyoming. After finishing with a double master’s majoring in American Studies/Environment and Natural Resources, Evan is working for the Wyoming Conservation Corps as a project coordinator and lecturer. He plans to co-start an education institute focused on combining climate change and the humanities in the near future.

 

Laura Vietti is the UW Geological Museum and Collections manager. Her work at the UW Geological Museum and Collections involves developing new displays that highlight Wyoming geology and paleontology, education school groups and the public about Wyoming’s world-class fossils and geology, as well as digitally opening our collection doors by digitizing the University of Wyoming fossil and rock collection. As a paleontologist, Laura specializes in the taphonomy (forensics) of fossil animals, especially their microbial decay. My work incorporates molecular biology techniques such as next generation DNA sequencing of bacteria and fluorescent in situ hybridization (FISH) to better understand and interpret the microbial communities involved in the early decay process of bone. Her work also involves using surface characterization techniques to quantify bone weathering analyses.

 

Microbiologist Naomi Ward has a research focus on bacterial cell biology and ecology. Most of her research group’s ecology work “is conducted within the human gastrointestinal tract, where we are examining the contribution of gut bacteria to pediatric health and disease.” Ward has a Ph.D in Biological Sciences from the University of Warwick, United Kingdom; and a B.Sc. in Microbiology from the University of Queensland, Australia.