2025 RGSAM Summary

On November 3rd, the 35th annual Rio Grande Symposium on Advanced Materials was held at the Hotel Albuquerque.

This event was made possible by several instrumental volunteers:

  • Jessica Buckner, Chair and Career Perspectives Organizer
  • Karthik Ramasamy, Co-Chair
  • Dan Lowry, Poster/Presentation Judging
  • Bryan Kaehr, Sponsorships
  • Zahra Ghanbari, Career Perspectives Organizer
  • Jay Carroll, Website/administrative work
  • Many others who helped plan, set up equipment, acquire materials, etc. including Elliott Fowler, Pankaj Kumar, Scotty Bobbitt, Matthew Christian, Anito Chou, Micah Estrada, Zachary Casias, Rachel Callaway, and many others.

This year researchers came together from Sandia National Labs, University of Texas at El Paso, University of New Mexico, New Mexico Tech, Los Alamos National Lab, Colorado School of Mines, and other institutions.

Congratulations to the following award winners in the poster and presentation competitions:

Undergraduate Posters:

  1. Holden Chavez, SNL/UNM
  2. Louis Sanchez, UNM
  3. Emil Guibadoulline, SNL/UNM

Graduate/Professional Posters:

  1. Roy Herrera Navarro, UTEP
  2. Amrutdyuti Swamy, NMT
  3. Amanda Peretti, SNL

Student Presentations:

  1. John O’Connell, NMT
  2. Zachary Barker, UTEP
  3. Sofia Pinzon, UTEP

The keynote speaker for the Kreidl Memorial lecture was Thomas Ackerson from Blue Origin. This year’s session also included the first ever “Career Perspectives” session which hosted three esteemed professionals (Tom Ackerson from Blue Origin, Chelsey Hargather from LANL, and Shalayna Smith from UTEP) to share their opinions and advice on navigating a career in materials science.

Thanks to our exhibitors at GoEngineer for supporting the conference.

The conference is sponsored by the local chapters of several professional societies with organization rotating between the societies yearly. Thanks to these societies for putting on the conference:

  • American Society for Metals, ASM
  • American Chemical Society, ACS
  • American Institute of Chemical Engineers, AIChE
  • American Ceramic Society, ACerS
  • American Vacuum Society, AVS
  • American Nuclear Society, ANS

Thanks to the attendees and congratulations to the organizers for a successful conference. Organizing the 36th RGSAM conference for October of 2026 in Albuquerque is underway. Karthik Ramasamy, of LANL, will be the chair.