Women in STEM feature: Jazzelle Elias
Where are you from? I was born in Southern California near Los Angeles and lived there until I was ten. I then moved to a small logging town called Sedro-Woolley in Western Washington where I stayed until I moved to Missoula, Montana, to begin my undergraduate degree. So half of my foundational years were spent in a very urban setting, and the other half in a vastly different environment. Talk about whiplash!
UM Smokevan Progress Report: Updated Insights From a Year of Field Deployments
Inside the University of Montana’s “Smokevan”: A Mobile Lab Transforming Prescribed Fire Smoke Research The Smokevan is deployed during a prescribed burn at Lubrecht Experimental Forest The Smokevan—a mobile air quality lab
SMART FIRES Engages Fifth Graders at MSU Family Science Day
Suzi Taylor challenges kids to figure out what triggers each toy sensor while one student watches drone footage of a prescribed burn The SMART FIRES booth drew steady crowds at Montana State University’s Family Science Day on February 5, 2026.
K–2 Scientific Sensing Curriculum Distributed to nearly 50 Montana Schools
A teacher from Denton Elementary unboxes the kit in her classroom The long-awaited K–2 Sensing for Science curriculum has now been distributed to Montana schools that requested it following an announcement of availability last November.
2025 Seed Awards
The SMART FIRES Research Seed Award Program provides funding to support innovative research projects that align with the goals of the SMART FIRES NSF EPSCoR initiative, which focuses on advancing technologies and understanding around prescribed fire and its impacts on Montana communities. Open to faculty at Montana State University and the University of Montana, the program offers awards of up to $25,000 to fund activities such as equipment purchases, personnel costs, field data collection, and collaborative research.
Smart Optical Sensors for Fire and Smoke Science
The SMART FIRES project is leveraging cutting-edge technology to better understand fire behavior, smoke dispersion, and fuel conditions. Four key instruments—High Spectral Resolution Lidar (HSRL), All-Sky Polarization Imager (ASPI), Smart Unoccupied System Hyperspectral Imager (SUSHI), and the Thermal UAS Imager—are at the core of this effort. Each provides unique insights, and together they form a powerful toolkit for prescribed burn research and management.
Early Professional Career Development Awards
The 2025 SMART FIRES Early Professional Career Development awards provide support for early-career faculty and postdoctoral scholars at Montana State University in disciplines related to SMART FIRES, such as computer science, engineering, environmental science, economics, chemistry, and social science.
Advancing Prescribed Fire Training Through Immersive Simulation
Top-left: screenshot from the product demo; top-right: Johnson's Lab displays their $70K award; lower-left and -right: student lab members demo the team's product for the panel of judges. Johnson’s Lab, a team of graduate students led by Jesse Johnson, Professor of
Women in STEM feature: Morgan Hasenmyer
Where are you from?Mansfield, TXWhat do you like to do for fun?Play volleyball, hike, read and sewCan you describe your research?
Fire Science Field Day: Educators Explore Wildfire Mitigation in Montana
As part of the Montana Federation of Public Employees 2025 Educator Conference, SMART FIRES hosted a Fire Science Field Day in Missoula on October 17. The full-day event welcomed 11 educators from across the state to explore how locally relevant fire science can be integrated into K–12 classrooms.