G reetings to all our PandA Alumni!

This will be my final greeting to you as I am retiring on July 1! Distinguished Professor Greg Taylor will be stepping in as Chair so the department will be in good hands.

New Astronomy Faculty
Our biggest news is that we've hired Tim Dolch, formerly of Hillsdale College, to strengthen our effort in astronomy in general and radio astronomy in particular, as Greg becomes Chair and I retire. Tim is involved in the exciting NanoGrav project to use timing from an array of pulsars to detect a background of gravitational waves in the universe. And they think they have something but more work needs to be done to characterize it, so it is exciting times. Tim is well connected to the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), which will help strengthen our Next Generation Very Large Array (ngVLA) connections.

Quantum Information Science
Quantum continues to grow at UNM and in New Mexico generally with the backing of the administration and the state government. Quantum start-up companies continue to arrive, supported by a major investment from the state, and the Quantum New Mexico Institute at UNM, headed by Bob Ledoux, is at the center of this growing quantum ecosystem bringing together UNM, the national labs, and these private partners. Exciting times for Quantum at PandA!

New Campus Observatory Development
We are still pushing for a new Campus Observatory to replace our 70-year-old-and-aging-fast facility that is now boxed in by tall buildings with bright lights. The effort took an interesting turn this year when the opportunity came up to partner with UNM-Taos, who are building an observatory of their own. We had planned to include a small research telescope in our new facility, but we are trying to get funding to build this at Taos instead and make it remotely operable. The research observatory would provide a rare and valuable training opportunity for UNM-Taos students and hopefully create a pipeline of students to our campus. We hope this initiative to partner with one of our rural branch campuses will reflect well on us with the state legislature once we can achieve our goal of making our own new facility a UNM priority. Of course, a major donation would be a tremendous catalyst for making this all happen!

Physics and Astronomy Philanthropy
We've also had some game-changing developments on our fundraising efforts. Last year I told you about the new Kurtz undergraduate scholarship. This year, we received an even bigger gift from the estate of alumnus Ren Depew -- more than $500,000 so far -- to establish an undergraduate scholarship for majors who went to high school in New Mexico. Our SURPASS endowment for undergraduate research has almost grown to a point where we can provide a steady flow of research support for our majors, but we'd love to see it grow further!

Further donations with an interesting story attached came from the Agogino family, and that is the subject of this edition's Alumni Highlight.

Spring 2026 Graduation

Our convocation ceremony featured an address by another fascinating alumna with a notable career path, Kathrin Spendier. Kathrin earned both her BS and PhD here, in 2006 and 2012, respectively, doing research in biophysics with Jim Thomas. However, it was for her skiing talent that UNM recruited her from her native Austria, and in 2004 she helped the school win a national ski championship! Kathrin joined the faculty at the University of Colorado Colorado Springs, where she earned tenure and remained for ten years. From there, her career took some interesting turns. She left academia to join the major quantum computing startup Quantinuum in 2022, and from there moved to the XPRIZE foundation in 2024, as Technical Prize Director for their Quantum Applications competition, before recently returning to Quantinuum this year, as their Senior Lead of Platform Ecosystem Strategy. It was great to welcome Kathrin back to the department and to hear about her journey!

Don't forget about the many ways to support our efforts! You can find them all on our donations webpage.