News

Maggie Epstein is a second year PhD student in the Fire Center at University of Montana where she also received her master’s degree. She comes from a wildland fire fighting background and worked on a rappel crew in northern Idaho. Her research revolves around bridging the gaps between operational firefighting and fire science.

Dr. Wade Permar is a key SMART FIRES team member at the University of Montana. He specifically works on the Fire and Smoke Science thrust's new "super van," a mobile smoke sampling lab with revolutionizing UM's and Montana's ability to ask and answer questions about smoke chemistry, a crucial part of understanding both wild and percribed fire. Below read Permar's update on the van's progress as well as the role it plays in SMART FIRES. What is the update on your work and the smoke van since the September All Hands Meeting? 

Where did you grow up?I grew up in Kentucky. I was born in a very rural part of Kentucky, and that's where I spent the first several years of my life before I moved to the big city of Lexington, Kentucky.How did you get into STEM and research?

NSF provides a helpful resource called NSF by the Numbers.

On a beautiful fall day in September, a team of Montana NSF EPSCoR researchers, students and outreach professionals from several Montana colleges and universities gathered at the University of Montana’s Lubrecht Experimental Forest near Greenough, Mont.

The U.S. National Science Foundation has awarded $35 million through the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) Research Incubators for STEM Excellence Research Infrastructure Improvement (E-RISE RII) to boost research competitiveness, build partnerships across academic institutions and non-academic sectors and create workforce development opportunities.

A regional technology hub focused on photonics and smart sensors, of which Montana State University is a founding member, will receive a $41 million federal grant to help create tech jobs across Montana.

Access to presentations from the 2024 NSF EPSCoR Annual PI meeting. These presentations provide helpful information on ESPCoR funding opportunities.You can access meeting presentations web page here.

Kristen Intemann, Professor of Philosophy and Director for the Center for Science, Technology, Ethics, and Society (C-STES) at Montana State University (MSU), is working with graduate students in Land Resources and Environmental Sciences (LRES) at MSU to construct maps to analyze which communities and Tribal Nations are particularly impacted by both wildfire smoke and smoke from prescribed burns in Montana and across the U.S. This project is a product of the Social Psychology, Economics, and Ethics (SPEE) thrust of the SMART FIRES project.

SMART FIRES researchers at the University of Montana have begun to build the "Supervan," a rapidly deployable mobile laboratory with enough space and power for scientific instruments that measure, track, and sample prescribed fire and wildfire smoke.