Dr. Farough receives a new NSF grant focusing on drones and geoscience careers
Dr Farough is co-PI in a new NSF grant focusing on drones and geoscience careers. Congrats Dr. Farough!
“SOARING: Sharing Opportunities, Approaches, and Resources in New Geo-teaching” is a three-year grant that will provide training on the latest in geotechnology for teachers and students at middle schools and high schools in eight partner rural school districts. It will target geotechnology applications of airborne remote sensing in the areas of environmental and hazardous geology, water resources and geology mapping.
According to current data, Project SOARING will likely reach more than 4,400 middle and high school students in Kansas, including more than 1,900 female rural students, 2,200 Hispanic/Latino rural students and more than 200 students underrepresented in STEM fields. School districts involved are Ashland USD 220, Clay County USD 379, Dighton USD 482, Haviland USD 474, Lakin USD 215, Liberal USD 480, Skyline USD 438 and Twin Valley USD 240, all members of the Rural Education Center’s newly established Rural Professional Development School network.
Spencer Clark, associate professor of curriculum and instruction and Rural Education Center director, is the grant’s principal investigator. Co-principal investigators are Lori Goodson, assistant professor of curriculum and instruction and Rural Education Center assistant director; Aida Farough, teaching assistant professor in the K-State geology department; and Shawn Keshmiri, professor in the aerospace engineering department at the University of Kansas and faculty/researcher with the KU Center for Remote Sensing of Ice Sheets.
Each year of the grant, nine teachers, accompanied by student apprentices from their schools, will participate in summer training on the KU campus and then teach middle schoolers on the K-State campus. A key element for Project SOARING is the Summer STEM Institute, a successful partnership between Manhattan-Ogden USD 383 and the K-State College of Education. Recently completing its 10th summer, the STEM institute serves around 325 students with a variety of STEM courses. The nine teachers selected for Project SOARING will also teach content at the institute.
Dr. Behzad Ghanbarian was recently funded by the Saudi Aramco company
Unconventional reservoirs are distributed all around the world with an estimated endowment worldwide of several thousand trillion cubic feet. Shale reservoirs have been successfully explored and produced in the United States, and they recently became one of the major contributors to energy supplies. Dr. Behzad Ghanbarian, an Assistant Professor of engineering geology, was recently funded by the Saudi Aramco company to numerically investigate the effect of hydraulic fracturing treatment on permeability evolution in shales. Dr. Ghanbarian and his research team at Porous Media Research (PMR) Lab will provide numerical insights for an improved hydraulic fracturing treatment, enlarging fracture aperture, and enhancing well productivity in tight reservoirs.
Dr. Behzad Ghanbarian received the 2020 soil physics and hydrology early career award from Soil Science Society of America
Dr. Behzad Ghanbarian, Assistant Professor of engineering geology, is the recipient of the 2020 soil physics and hydrology early career award from Soil Science Society of America (https://www.soils.org/membership/divisions/soil-physics-and-hydrology/early-career-award/). The award recognizes early career scientists, who have made an outstanding contribution to Soil Physics and Hydrology within six years of completing the Ph.D. degree.
Dr. Brice Lacroix receives an USGS EDMAP award for the second time
Brice Lacroix recently received a USGS EDMAP to map a portion of the Coast Range, Central California. During the past years, Dr. Lacroix’s research group (students Christine Ward, Jacob Hughes, William Jarvis and Ben Walters) has been investigating the tectonic and metamorphic processes recorded in the Nacimiento block, Central California. They established that this area is tectonically active and records higher landslide rate. In order to better understand this area, two K-State students (William Harvis and Ben Walter) will map a section during Fall 2021 and publish their final product in the USGS National Geologic Map Database.