October, 2024
Facility Director Carmela Rosaria Guadagno, along with two co-PIs Cynthia Weinig (Botany) and Jill Keith (Family & Consumer Sciences), is to lead a project titled “Harnessing Controlled Environment Agriculture to Secure Sustainability and Economic Growth." This is a collaboration with the University of New Mexico (UNM), UW, the University of South Dakota, New Mexico State University and the Santa Fe Community College. The main goal of the project is to determine best practices for secure CEA food production and socioeconomic impacts of CEA on tribal communities, including those on Wyoming’s Wind River Indian Reservation as well as through outreach with Native American high school students and UW’s Native American Summer Institute.
To learn more, please refer to this press release.
A holistic analysis of CEA practices towards climate resilience for tribal communities using basic and applied systems biology research in combination with environmental and socio-economic analysis and tailored workforce development.
September, 2024
With the beginning of the new semester, we are happy to share that our Facility is open for class tours across all departments on campus. In these first eight months of our activities, we have hosted over 50 students interested in different fields related to controlled environment agriculture, from agroecology to greenhouse management and mechanical engineering. We are planning to start a cross-departmental recruitment plan this fall to ensure that the most number of students can get exposure to this cutting edge facility and potential job opportunities. These activities will implement UW class offer while sparking interest in our student communities for controlled environment agriculture.
Plant Science students from the Greenhouse Management Class taught by Dr. Chen.
Students enrolled in Mechanical Engineering 3400 on HVAC systems taught by Dr. Wang.
August, 2024
Back in June, the Facility has participated to the Summer Wyoming Association for Career and Technical Education (WACTE) conference in Laramie as a Silver Sponsor of the event. This Association brings together the career and technical educators from all around the state and connects teachers with business representatives to dialogue about the business and industry perspective. At the Plant Growth and Phenotyping Facility, we thrive to create exposure for UW students to businesses and entrepreneurs in Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA). The relationship with WACTE allow us to broaden our opportunities in reaching out to stakeholders. Over 40 WACTE representatives also toured our Facility boosting the educators' interest in CEA with potential new collaborations with schools around the state. The relationship with WACTE stemmed from the existing work with the Wyoming Innovation Partnership (WIP).
Friday, July 12, 2024
On July 12th, the first CEA class funded through WIP (AGRI-4990) has delivered their final research presentations and officially graduated as the first "Innovators" for our program. For the last day of class, we received the visit of the WIP Executive Director from the Governor's Office, Lauren Schoenfeld, and the WIP Team for University of Wyoming: the VP of Research, Dr. Parag Chitnis; Director of Strategic Partnerships, Curtis Biggs; Aaron Barber, Project Coordinator, AVP for Economic Development. Left to right in the picture below are Isaiah Spiegelberg, Teaching Assistant for the class; Mike Baldwin, Lab Coordinator; Lina Guadagno, Class Coordinator; Duong Nguyen, Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering. Students: Christin Kere, Ivin Tardoni, Christiana Rumainum, Nicole Klosterman, Jack Mckinley, Nile Young, James Villasenor, Kyle Scholtens, Romy Agrawal.
June, 2024
In June, we also started what we hope will be a long lasting tradition for us to host and tour with the Laramie Garden Club. Our Facility seeks these kind of opportunities to reach out to our community and start outreach activities that can implement our impact in the state.
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June, 2024
After several months of brainstorming, it looks like we came up with our Facility emblem. Stay tuned for some swag 🙂
May, 2024
During the last few months, we have developed the main mission for our Facility: a convergence of cutting edge research, teaching activities, and workforce development. This month, our mission is part of the newly drawn postcards by Emily Edgar (Associate Director of Creative Services in Institutional Marketing). We hope that all visitors will take a postcard home to learn more about our Facility and activities!
Pictured below is the front side of the postcard.
Monday and Tuesday, April 22nd and 23rd, 2024
Our personnel participated to the Plenty/UW CEA conference at UW. Our student technicians, Isaiah Spiegelberg and Jade Whiting, had the opportunity to share their successful stories in CEA through the WIP program. Isaiah and Jade have been supported by WIP for taking the online CEA course "AdvanCEA" and they have participated to the CEA Short Course at University of Arizona in March 2024. Currently, they are working with a paid internship with Papa Joe's Produce in Sheridan, Wyoming, supported by the Department of Workforce Development.
April 4th, 2024
We are really excited to share that our Facility has been awarded with the Virtual Reality Phase II Grant ($127,500). In collaboration with Chocolate Milk & Donuts (CMD), a company from Texas, the WIP Program, and the UW 3D Visualization Center, we will be developing a new virtual reality program (The Plant Lab) that will take students and researchers around the state and beyond to our spaces! We plan to work also towards environmental simulations to learn more about how greenhouse spaces can be affected by climatic differences to inform future development for smart greenhouses research.
March, 2024
The PGPF has now signed up as a member of the NCERA-101. This will allow UW facility to share station reports on a yearly basis and be connected with the global community of controlled environment facilities.
Friday, February 2nd, 2024
Along with recently publishing our website, the Plant Growth and Phenotyping Facility was featured in the Winter 2024 volume of the UWYO Magazine! Click on the image below to open the link to the whole magazine.