NM Postdoc Research Symposium

Annual New Mexico Postdoc Research Symposium

An annual Research Symposium supporting and encouraging postdocs across the state of New Mexico to present their research, network, exchange ideas, meet future employers and form collaborations. 

If you attended the 2026 Research Symposium you can leave your feedback here.

Friday, March 27th, 2026, 8:30 am - 4:30 pm, University of New Mexico  

UNM is hosting our fourth annual statewide research symposium for postdocs on Friday, March 27, 2026. Similar to last year we are expecting participants from national labs and other academic institutions, as well as attendees from industry. This is the perfect event for you to attend if you are looking for a new position, a highly-skilled doctoral level employee, opportunities to collaborate, or you would like to share your research and see what other research is happening in our state! While abstract submission is only open to postdocs, faculty, staff, and grad students are all welcome to attend and see the amazing research our postdocs are doing! 

Keynote Speaker:

Jim Gould, PhD - Director of Postdoctoral Affairs and Program Director for Responsible Conduct of Research at Harvard Medical School and Making the Most of the Postdoc author

We have all come to a point in our training that leads to a new understanding and awareness of our situation. In addition, the desire for a path to advancement is critical for career development. This workshop will uncover internal struggles and external pressures that require self-reflection before setting priorities, considering career options, building a network, and preparing for next steps. Attendees will discover that we are all main characters in our own professional adventures and must be intentional in that pursuit.

Dr. Gould is the Director for Postdoctoral Affairs and the Program Director for Responsible Conduct of Research at HMS. He has implemented research, career, and professional development programs and policies for early-career scientists since 2011. Jim has spoken and published in various forums, locally and internationally, including his book, Making the Most of the Postdoc, and podcast, Propelling Careers. Jim received his PhD in Molecular Biology and Biochemistry from the University of Louisville, completed his postdoctoral training at Frederick National Labs of the National Cancer Institute, and earned a graduate certificate in Organizational Behavior from the Harvard Extension School.

 

 

 

 

Prizes (one each for oral and poster presentations):

1st place – $300

2nd place – $200

3rd place – $100

 SCHEDULE:

Short Talks
Feeding Molecules to Build Temporal Electronic Behavior - Ifigeneia Tsironi Tzinious
9:15 AM – 9:27 AM

Ecological and Evolutionary Determinants of West Nile Virus Risk and Resistance in Albuquerque, NM - Clinton Onyango
9:27 AM – 9:39 AM

Extreme Fatigue Resistance via Nanostructuring of Alloys - Heekwon Lee
9:39 AM – 9:51 AM

SomAtt: A Language Model for the Tumor Genome - David Arredondo
9:51 AM – 10:03 AM

Hardening Bacteria against CRISPR alteration using engineering ‘anti-CRISPR’ CRISPR - Prasaad Milner
10:03 AM – 10:15 AM

Colloidal Quantum Dots for Near and Short-Wave Infrared Quantum Communication - Annie Regan
10:15 AM – 10:27 AM

CANCELLED Microneedle-based LC-MS/MS profiling of dermal interstitial fluid reveals early lipid dysregulation, which is negatively correlated with painful neuropathy in prediabetic and type-2-diabetic rats - Srinivasa Gadam
10:27 AM – 10:39 AM

Density Functional Theory Analysis of Candidate Tritium Permeation Barriers for Vanadium Alloys as a Fusion Structural Material - Anne Davis
10:39 AM – 10:51 AM

The Hidden Choreography of Hantavirus Viral Assembly - Amit Koikkarah Aji
10:51 AM – 11:03 AM

Posters
Session I: 1:30 PM – 2:30 PM
Session II: 2:30 PM – 3:30 PM
P1: “Stabilizing a silicified ovarian cancer immunotherapy for long-term room-temperature storage” | Tyler Hipple
P3: “LLM-Based Term, Type, and Relationship Extraction for Ontology Learning” | Ryn Gray
P5: “Genomic Diversity Patterns of Blackbirds with Distinct Social Mating Systems” | Fernando Machado-Stredel
P7: “Selecting Key Days for Electricity Grid Capacity Expansion Planning Considering Resilience to Compound Hazards” | Rachael Alfant
P9: “Deformation is plastic; it's fantastic! Tailoring the structure of amorphous grain boundary complexions in nanocrystalline copper alloys for enhanced plasticity” | Esther Hessong
P11: “A New, Multi-Faceted Approach to Overcoming Materials Aging and Compatibility Challenges” | Nathan Bays
P13: “TBA” | Omar Hussein
P15: “Use of Bacteriophage Virus-like Particle Vaccine Platform as a Potential Alternative to the Current Acellular Formula” | Leslie Huggins
P17: “One Groove to Bind Them All: Structure-Guided Pan-Hantavirus Antiviral Discovery” | Erika Petro-Turnquist
P19: “A Visual Understanding of Circular Dichroism Spectroscopy” | Braden Weight
P21: “Oblique Plane Microscopy: Capturing Biology in 3D” | Chitra Shaji
P23: “Heterometallic Metal-Organic Frameworks as Templates for High Entropy Carbides for Extreme Environments” | Anna Gonzalez Rosell
P25: “Linking benthic microbial mats to exported biomass using depth-dependent genetic and isotopic signatures in ice-covered Lake Fryxell, Antarctica” | Marisol Juarez Rivera
P27: “The Tortoise or the Hare: Economic strategy predicts the temporal stability of plant species abundance” | Lana Bolin
P2: “Stable Telecom-Band Emission and Radiation Hardness in Colloidal Quantum Dots” | Jessica Geisenhoff
P4: “An On-Demand Distributed Additive Manufacturing Ecosystem: A Software-Defined Manufacturing-as-a-Service (MaaS) Orchestration Framework” | Henok Tsegaye
P6: “Fungal tolerance to lead (Pb) is concentration and provenance dependent” | Geisianny Moreira
P8: “Curcumin Analogues Trigger HMOX-1-Mediated Ferroptosis to Halt Endometrial Cancer Growth” | Xiangxiang Wu
P10: “Seeking the Holy Grail: Mifepristone and the Prevention of Endometrial and Breast Cancer” | Jennifer Daw
P12: “Macca mulatta Papillomavirus Type 1 (MmPV1) and Simian Immunodeficiency Virus (SIV) Co-Infections in Rhesus Macaques to Model Persistent Oral HPV and HIV Co-Infection and Its Role with Oropharyngeal Cancer Induction” | Varsha Srinivasa
P14: “Human-caused Wildfire Ignition Risk and Spread Potential Modeling for Informing Public Safety” | Meredith Brown
P16: “Adenovirus Infection Induces Organized Changes to the Host Genome Structure” | Ashley Pacheco
P18: “Archetypes for Identifying Systemic Challenges for Convergence Natural Resource Management” | Rui Zhang
P20: “Machine Learning Methods with Applications to Genetic Analysis” | Dheeman Saha
P22: “The Performance of a Redesigned Current Diagnostics for the Z Pulsed Power Facility” | Stacie Hernandez
P24: “Sweden surpasses the UNAIDS 95-95-95 Target: Estimating HIV-1 incidence between 2003-2022” | Macauley Locke
P26: “Radiation effects in gate-all-around nanosheet field-effect transistors probed with electronic transport and low-frequency noise spectroscopy” | Coleman Cariker
P28: “Human Cornea-Conjunctiva Dual Tissue Constructs on Amino Acid Scaffold ” | Nikesh Narang

Resources Fair 

TriCore

UNM Rainforest Innovations

UNM Center for Teaching and Learning

Velocity Clinical Research

Questions:

RaqThomas@unm.edu

CassidyR@unm.edu