The National Science Foundation has announced that 18 teams will be moving forward into the final round of the $6 million Visionary Interdisciplinary Teams Advancing Learning (VITAL) Prize Challenge. Among those selected for the finals is the team composed of Ameé Hennig, Wyant College Media Content Manager, Prof. Allison Huff, Assistant Prof. at UArizona College of Medicine, and Vincent Hood, Illustrator and member of the Yavapai-Apache Nation. As well as newly added team members Trivikram Gummaraj Shivakumar Sridevi, MS student in Data Science at the iSchool and Whitney Aragaki, VITAL Challenge Education Mentor.

Recently, Prof. Meredith Kupinski and optical sciences PhD students Micah Mann and Leo Bia attended the American Indian Science and Engineering Society (AISES) conference in Spokane, WA to represent the Wyant College of Optical Sciences at the college's booth. Read more about their time at the conference.

Congratulations to Fringe Metrology and PhD student, Joel Berkson, for winning the Tech Launch Arizona (TLA) Liftoff Award at the recent IdeaFunding Event on Nov. 9, part of TENWEST. Joel shared about the award, "I'm really looking forward to graduating and working on Fringe full-time. I think we have a lot to offer in our unique approach to precision 3D scanning. I can't wait to become a part of the growing Optics Valley!"