It’s another three years for Garnett S. Stokes at the helm of The University. The Board of Regents unanimously voted to extend Stokes’ contract just before the New Year. Hers is an additional three-year term with an option for an additional two-year extension. Her annual compensation increased from $601,000 to $662,000.

Stokes was praised as a strong leader who has brought stability to the University. Regents President Doug Brown said feedback about Stokes, who came to UNM five years ago from the University of Missouri, was overwhelmingly positive.

“We are at a point where we have not been in almost 30 years at this university,” he said, “and are so pleased that we are doing so.”

While navigating the COVID-19 pandemic, Stokes led UNM through years of growth – a 32 percent increase in research funding, including more than $50 million in external funding for the University’s Grand Challenges; growth in the Consolidated Investment Fund and a record $125 million in private support in Fiscal Year 2021-2022; and increased enrollment and a significant increase in the diversity of incoming first-year students.

Stokes, using a catch-phrase that has become her signature, said, “I am encouraged that our Regents are inspired by the strong momentum we have at The University for New Mexico. I am looking forward to building on that energy to enrich the Lobo experience in the years to come, and it continues to be my great honor to serve as your president.”

Yolanda Sanchez, PhD, a pioneer in cancer research, has been named director and CEO of The University of New Mexico Comprehensive Cancer Center.

Sanchez has been a professor of Molecular and Systems Biology and associate director of Basic Sciences at Dartmouth Cancer Center. She was born in El Paso, but grew up in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, and will become the first Hispanic woman to lead a National Cancer Institute-designated comprehensive cancer center.

UNM President Garnett S. Stokes called her “a proven leader and collaborator” and Douglas Ziedonis, MD, MPH, executive vice president for Health Sciences and CEO of the UNM Health System, said Sanchez’s experience as a Mexican-American in the sciences gives her “a unique perspective to diversity, equity and inclusion efforts at academic institutions.”

Sanchez completed her undergraduate and graduate degrees in the University of Texas system and completed her PhD research at the MD Anderson Cancer Center. She joined the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine faculty in 1998 and was granted tenure in 2004. She was recruited to Dartmouth Medical School (now known as the Geisel School of Medicine) in 2006.

Sanchez has worked extensively with leaders of clinical oncology groups in the Dartmouth Cancer Center, an NCI-designated comprehensive cancer center and Dartmouth Health System to understand their concerns and clinical care passions and found ways to increase research and mentoring in those settings.

As a co-investigator of Dartmouth’s Program for Oncology Workforce Education and Research Experience, she helped develop innovative training and recruitment platforms to help women and under-represented minorities pursue careers in oncology.

Returning to the Southwest and joining UNM “is the opportunity of a lifetime,” Sanchez said. “I’m looking forward to partnering with community stakeholders – including the American Indian pueblos and nations and Black and Hispanic communities – to fuel transdisciplinary research and develop innovative methods to translate UNM Comprehensive Cancer Center discoveries to reduce the cancer burden and overcome health disparities in New Mexico.”

Donna Riley, the head of the Purdue University School of Engineering, will join UNM as dean of the School of Engineering in April. Prior to joining Purdue in 2017, she was interim head of the Department of Engineering Education at Virginia Tech, program director for engineering education at the National Science Foundation and a faculty member at Smith College.

“UNM attracted my interest with its record of inclusive excellence and its clear vision for how New Mexico’s public flagship university can drive workforce development and economic opportunity in the state and beyond,” said Riley. “As an engineer, I know how our ability to dream, design and develop can contribute to addressing critical community challenges.”

Riley earned a B.S.E. in chemical engineering from Princeton and a Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon in Engineering and Public Policy. Her research focuses on the integration of ethics, communication, social analysis, lifelong learning and other critical capacities in the formation of engineering professionals.

Riley fills the position held by Christos Christodoulou, who has been dean since 2017, and who will continue as a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

Vaping is often seen as a safer alternative to cigarette smoking, and its popularity has exploded in recent years, especially among young people. But some researchers are concerned that vaping – technically referred to as electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS) – poses health risks. Vaping tools heat liquid to high temperatures in order to vaporize it, which creates a chemical reaction that generates potentially toxic products such as formaldehyde and acrolein, says Nathan Jackson, an assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering.

Jackson is partnering with Pavan Muttil from the College of Pharmacy and Katie Zychowski from the College of Nursing to assess the feasibility of developing safer vaping technology. “Our technology uses a silicon substrate, where no metal is in contact with the liquid and it uses less heat, so potentially we can reduce the health risks associated with vaping,” Jackson said. “Also, our technology can generate micro-scale droplets instead of the nano-scale droplets found in current vaping tools, so that means that droplets are less likely to enter the blood stream and cluster together, which could also result in safer aerosols.” The trio has received a pilot award for a study called “Droplet and Metal Particle Analysis of ENDS,” from the UNM Comprehensive Cancer Center.