{"id":77970,"date":"2026-05-04T15:23:19","date_gmt":"2026-05-04T22:23:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/?p=77970"},"modified":"2026-05-04T15:23:19","modified_gmt":"2026-05-04T22:23:19","slug":"in-the-spotlight-may-4-8-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/in-the-spotlight-may-4-8-2026\/","title":{"rendered":"In the Spotlight: May 4-8, 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span data-contrast=\"auto\">Kudos to these faculty, staff and programs.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span data-contrast=\"auto\">Do you have a spotlight item to share with the NAU community?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span data-contrast=\"auto\">E-mail your announcements to\u00a0<\/span><a href=\"mailto:Inside@nau.edu\"><span data-contrast=\"none\">Inside@nau.edu<\/span><\/a><span data-contrast=\"auto\">,\u00a0or use\u00a0our\u00a0<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/news-tip\/#.YEjwNWhKg2w\"><span data-contrast=\"none\">online submission form<\/span><\/a><span data-contrast=\"auto\">.<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li data-leveltext=\"\u25cf\" data-font=\"Calibri\" data-listid=\"1\" data-list-defn-props=\"{&quot;335552541&quot;:1,&quot;335559685&quot;:720,&quot;335559991&quot;:360,&quot;469769242&quot;:[8226],&quot;469777803&quot;:&quot;left&quot;,&quot;469777804&quot;:&quot;\u25cf&quot;}\" data-aria-posinset=\"1\" data-aria-level=\"1\"><span data-contrast=\"auto\">Department of Astronomy and Planetary Science (APS) undergraduate\u00a0<\/span><b><span data-contrast=\"auto\">Eli Resnick\u00a0<\/span><\/b><span data-contrast=\"auto\">was selected as a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Hollings scholar. Program participants receive up to $9,500 of academic\u00a0assistance\u00a0per year for two years of full-time study and a 10-week, full-time paid internship at a NOAA facility during the summer.<\/span><span data-ccp-props=\"{&quot;335559685&quot;:720,&quot;335559991&quot;:360}\">\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li data-leveltext=\"\u25cf\" data-font=\"Calibri\" data-listid=\"1\" data-list-defn-props=\"{&quot;335552541&quot;:1,&quot;335559685&quot;:720,&quot;335559991&quot;:360,&quot;469769242&quot;:[8226],&quot;469777803&quot;:&quot;left&quot;,&quot;469777804&quot;:&quot;\u25cf&quot;}\" data-aria-posinset=\"2\" data-aria-level=\"1\"><b><span data-contrast=\"auto\">Igor Steinmacher<\/span><\/b><span data-contrast=\"auto\">, an associate professor in the School of Informatics, Computing, and Cyber Systems,<\/span><b><span data-contrast=\"auto\">\u00a0<\/span><\/b><span data-contrast=\"auto\">and his research team attended the International Conference in Software Engineering (ICSE) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in April. There, graduate student\u00a0<\/span><b><span data-contrast=\"auto\">Pedro\u00a0Arantes\u00a0<\/span><\/b><span data-contrast=\"auto\">and undergraduate student\u00a0<\/span><b><span data-contrast=\"auto\">Samuel Utzinger<\/span><\/b><span data-contrast=\"auto\">\u00a0competed in the ACM Student Research Competition finals. After having their paper and poster evaluated, Utzinger went to the final oral presentation phase and finished in second place.<\/span><span data-ccp-props=\"{&quot;335559685&quot;:720,&quot;335559991&quot;:360}\">\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li data-leveltext=\"\u25cf\" data-font=\"Calibri\" data-listid=\"1\" data-list-defn-props=\"{&quot;335552541&quot;:1,&quot;335559685&quot;:720,&quot;335559991&quot;:360,&quot;469769242&quot;:[8226],&quot;469777803&quot;:&quot;left&quot;,&quot;469777804&quot;:&quot;\u25cf&quot;}\" data-aria-posinset=\"3\" data-aria-level=\"1\"><span data-contrast=\"auto\">Multiple APS students attended the 65th annual Arizona and Southern Nevada branch meeting of the American Society for Microbiology in Tuba City on April 11. Graduate students\u00a0<\/span><b><span data-contrast=\"auto\">Micheal Strane\u00a0<\/span><\/b><span data-contrast=\"auto\">and\u00a0<\/span><b><span data-contrast=\"auto\">Sam Lockhart<\/span><\/b><span data-contrast=\"auto\">\u00a0had oral presentations, and undergraduate students\u00a0<\/span><b><span data-contrast=\"auto\">Eli\u00a0Resnick<\/span><\/b><span data-contrast=\"auto\">,<\/span><b><span data-contrast=\"auto\">\u00a0Kate Killebrew<\/span><\/b><span data-contrast=\"auto\">,\u00a0<\/span><b><span data-contrast=\"auto\">Brad Tsosie<\/span><\/b><span data-contrast=\"auto\">,\u00a0<\/span><b><span data-contrast=\"auto\">Marin\u00a0Hanson<\/span><\/b><span data-contrast=\"auto\">\u00a0and\u00a0<\/span><b><span data-contrast=\"auto\">Bradley\u00a0Braibish\u00a0<\/span><\/b><span data-contrast=\"auto\">presented posters on their meteor crater research. Resnick,\u00a0Tsosie\u00a0and\u00a0undergrad\u00a0<\/span><b><span data-contrast=\"auto\">Austin Gadd\u00a0<\/span><\/b><span data-contrast=\"auto\">also presented their research at the Arizona NASA Space Grant Consortium Student Research Symposium the following weekend.\u00a0<\/span><span data-ccp-props=\"{&quot;335559685&quot;:720,&quot;335559991&quot;:360}\">\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li data-leveltext=\"\u25cf\" data-font=\"Calibri\" data-listid=\"1\" data-list-defn-props=\"{&quot;335552541&quot;:1,&quot;335559685&quot;:720,&quot;335559991&quot;:360,&quot;469769242&quot;:[8226],&quot;469777803&quot;:&quot;left&quot;,&quot;469777804&quot;:&quot;\u25cf&quot;}\" data-aria-posinset=\"4\" data-aria-level=\"1\"><span data-contrast=\"auto\">APS graduate student\u00a0<\/span><b><span data-contrast=\"auto\">Sam Hemmelgarn\u00a0<\/span><\/b><span data-contrast=\"auto\">was the lead author on the paper \u201c<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/arxiv.org\/abs\/2604.22986\"><span data-contrast=\"none\">A Machine Learning Approach to Meteor Classification<\/span><\/a><span data-contrast=\"auto\">,\u201d published in Icarus. Authors used machine learning to develop a framework for classifying meteoroids based on 13 parameters from the Global Meteor Network.<\/span><span data-ccp-props=\"{&quot;335559685&quot;:720,&quot;335559991&quot;:360}\">\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li data-leveltext=\"\u25cf\" data-font=\"Calibri\" data-listid=\"1\" data-list-defn-props=\"{&quot;335552541&quot;:1,&quot;335559685&quot;:720,&quot;335559991&quot;:360,&quot;469769242&quot;:[8226],&quot;469777803&quot;:&quot;left&quot;,&quot;469777804&quot;:&quot;\u25cf&quot;}\" data-aria-posinset=\"5\" data-aria-level=\"1\"><span data-contrast=\"auto\">APS\u00a0alumna\u00a0<\/span><b><span data-contrast=\"auto\">Catherine Clark<\/span><\/b><span data-contrast=\"auto\">\u2019s recent paper, \u201c<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/arxiv.org\/abs\/2604.22983\"><span data-contrast=\"none\">The POKEMON Speckle Survey of Nearby M dwarfs. IV. Distance-Limited Catalog (POKEMON-DLC)<\/span><\/a><span data-contrast=\"auto\">,\u201d was selected for publication in the Astronomical Journal. This is the fourth paper in a series that began with Clark\u2019s doctoral research and includes research professor\u00a0<\/span><b><span data-contrast=\"auto\">Gerard van Belle\u00a0<\/span><\/b><span data-contrast=\"auto\">as a co-author.\u00a0<\/span><span data-ccp-props=\"{&quot;335559685&quot;:720,&quot;335559991&quot;:360}\">\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li data-leveltext=\"\u25cf\" data-font=\"Calibri\" data-listid=\"1\" data-list-defn-props=\"{&quot;335552541&quot;:1,&quot;335559685&quot;:720,&quot;335559991&quot;:360,&quot;469769242&quot;:[8226],&quot;469777803&quot;:&quot;left&quot;,&quot;469777804&quot;:&quot;\u25cf&quot;}\" data-aria-posinset=\"6\" data-aria-level=\"1\"><span data-contrast=\"auto\">APS Chair\u00a0<\/span><b><span data-contrast=\"auto\">David Trilling\u00a0<\/span><\/b><span data-contrast=\"auto\">was the lead author on the recently published paper\u00a0<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/arxiv.org\/abs\/2604.27420\"><span data-contrast=\"none\">\u201cThe Solar System Notification Alert Processing System (SNAPS): Public access to SNAPS data and products<\/span><\/a><span data-contrast=\"auto\">.\u201d The living document detailing how readers can access and interact with the research team\u2019s databases also features School of Informatics, Computing, and Cyber Systems (SICCS) associate professor\u00a0<\/span><b><span data-contrast=\"auto\">Michael Gowanlock<\/span><\/b><span data-contrast=\"auto\">; SICCS research software engineer\u00a0<\/span><b><span data-contrast=\"auto\">Revanth\u00a0Munugala<\/span><\/b><span data-contrast=\"auto\">; alumnus\u00a0<\/span><b><span data-contrast=\"auto\">Daniel Kramer<\/span><\/b><span data-contrast=\"auto\">; graduate students\u00a0<\/span><b><span data-contrast=\"auto\">Maria Chernyavskaya<\/span><\/b><span data-contrast=\"auto\">,\u00a0<\/span><b><span data-contrast=\"auto\">Erin Clark<\/span><\/b><span data-contrast=\"auto\">\u00a0and\u00a0<\/span><b><span data-contrast=\"auto\">Graceson Mule<\/span><\/b><span data-contrast=\"auto\">; and alumna\u00a0<\/span><b><span data-contrast=\"auto\">Savannah\u00a0Chappus<\/span><\/b><span data-contrast=\"auto\">.\u00a0<\/span><span data-ccp-props=\"{&quot;335559685&quot;:720,&quot;335559991&quot;:360}\">\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"search-results-excerpt-link\" href=\"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/in-the-spotlight-may-4-8-2026\/\">Kudos to these faculty, staff and programs. Do you have a spotlight item to share with the NAU community? E-mail your announcements to\u00a0Inside@nau.edu,\u00a0or use\u00a0our\u00a0online submission form. Department of Astronomy and Planetary Science (APS) undergraduate\u00a0Eli Resnick\u00a0was selected as a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Hollings scholar. Program participants receive up to $9,500 of academic\u00a0assistance\u00a0per year&hellip;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":96,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-77970","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-spotlight"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77970","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/96"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77970"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77970\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}