SSMN Quarterly Newsletter

^{March 13, 2024}

Happy spring, Sloan Alumni!

In this quarter's newsletter:

1. SSMN Grants & Awards applications — Deadlines Extended!
2. Upcoming Networking Events in Atlanta and Boston
3. Recap of the inaugural Sloan Indigenous Graduate Symposium
4. Career Opportunities
5. Scholar Highlights

This month at SSMN HQ, we're reflecting on the success of our first SIGP Symposium in Tucson and looking forward to more in-person events with Sloan alumni this spring, including the annual UCEM Conference at the University of Illinois. These opportunities to connect in person with you — to hear what you're working on, what you're excited about, and what programs and opportunities are most valuable to you — are part of what makes our work so rewarding.

We're also getting ready to ramp up summer and fall programming: SSMN Grants and Awards announcements, the Academic Job Market Boot Camp, the SREB Institute, and more. (And we're trying out this new look for our newsletter!)

Read on to see what's new in the community.

SSMN Grants & Awards: Deadlines Extended!

The deadlines to submit applications for 2024 SSMN Grants and Awards have been extended as follows:

The deadline to submit applications for SSMN Grants is extended to Monday, March 18.

The deadline to submit applications for SSMN Awards is extended to Sunday, March 24.

Applications close at 11:59 p.m. Eastern Time on the stated deadline date. Your questions about applying are welcome at [email protected]. Good luck!

Upcoming Networking Events

We have two regional networking events coming up! Both are open to alumni and current Sloan Scholars alike. If you're in the Atlanta or Boston areas, we hope to see you soon. To attend, please click on the event and RSVP!

-- These events have passed. To see all upcoming and past events hosted by the SSMN, visit our Events Page. --

Recap: 2024 Sloan Indigenous Graduate Symposium

Thank you to everyone who joined us for the first Sloan Indigenous Graduate Symposium! It was a success — full of grounding moments, meaningful conversations, collective sharing and learning.

Events and talks highlighted the inspiring journeys of Indigenous scientists, such as Dr. Karletta Chief (Diné), whose morning keynote reflected on how she advanced her academic career while centering her culture and family, and Dr. Ruth Plenty Sweetgrass-She Kills (Hidatsa, Mandan, Nakota, Dakota), who presented on her work with tribal colleges. Three expert panels featured SIGP alumni speakers, exploring different STEM career pathways, research funding avenues, and approaches to leading research projects with and for Indigenous and historically underserved communities.

Continue reading

Career Opportunities

• Editorial Board Opportunity: Darryl Williams, Sloan Scholar alumnus and SSMN advisory board member, has shared an opportunity for postdocs and other early-career researchers. The Franklin Institute launched a new open access journal called Franklin Open and invites SSMN members with interest in gaining experience serving on an editorial board to apply to the Institute’s newly created Early Career Editorial Board (ECEB). Please see the attached flyer for additional details. The journal covers topics in the following areas:
  • Complex Networks & Cyber-Physical Systems
  • Control Engineering & Robotics
  • Energy & Power Systems
  • Information & Communications
  • Data Science & Artificial Intelligence
  • Neural Networks & Learning Systems
  • Speech, Image, & Signal Processing
     
• New Scialog Fellow Applications: Sustainable Minerals, Metals, and Materials: This Scialog series will facilitate connections between approximately 50 early career chemists, materials scientists, geologists, ecologists, engineers, and energy system modelers, with the goal of catalyzing collaborative, cross-disciplinary projects to investigate how to design, manufacture, and recycle substances so that their use and production at scale is more compatible with ethical stewardship of our environment and decarbonizing the energy system. Selected faculty will meet with senior scientists that will serve as Facilitators to frame the large questions under consideration, guide discussions, and evaluate proposals. Those who are interested can self-nominate and more details can be found at the program website.
   
• The NASEM Gulf Research Program invites proposals that provide high-school-aged youth with “opportunities to learn about and apply STEMM in the exploration and examination of environmental hazards and their effects on the health and resilience of communities in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico region.” Applications close May 8, 2024, and there will be a virtual Q&A Office Hours session on March 18, 1–3 p.m. Central Time. More info on the program website.

Scholar Highlights

• Alan Aspuru Guzik (UC Berkeley ’04) is co-author on the paper “Drug design on quantum computers,” which was published this month in Nature Physics.
• At least two Sloan Scholar alumni — Moses Leavens (University of Montana ’19) and Marie Kainoa Fialkowski Revilla (Purdue ’11), both SIGP alumni — submitted journal manuscripts this winter for work supported in part by SSMN Grants.
• Chantel Harrison (University of Arizona ’23), a 2023 MIT Solve fellow, was featured in Tribal Business News for her work on controlled-environment agriculture solutions for tribes and Indigenous farmers.
• Hisham Ali (Georgia Tech ’19) and his work on magnetohydrodynamics were recently highlighted in The Economist.

Contact Us

Veronica Zepeda, Malu Napuelua, and Camille Baptista
Staff, Sloan Scholars Mentoring Network
[email protected] | LinkedIn | Twitter | Website
Social Science Research Council
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