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STEM Ambassadors

The STEM Ambassador Program began in 2016 as a training program for a small cohort of University of Utah scientists. Since then, we have grown to work with over 170 graduate students, post-docs, faculty, staff, and undergraduate students. Scroll down to learn about the scientists who have participated. Contact us if you would like to reach out to a STEM Ambassador.

Note that many Ambassador bios were uploaded when the Ambassador joined the program and may not be current.

Apoorva Pedgaonkar

Photo of Apoorva Pedgaonkar

Apoorva works in Dr. Jamesina Simpson’s Computational Electromagnetics lab, where she uses numerical techniques to implement three-dimensional (3-D) Maxwell’s equations FDTD models of global electromagnetic wave propagation within the Earth-ionosphere waveguide. Some applications are remote-sensing of oil fields, scintillation, hypothesized electromagnetic earthquake precursors, remote-sensing of localized ionospheric anomalies, and space weather effects on the operation of electric power grids. Her work is to characterize coupling of unintentional EM interference into the atmosphere. She develops large-scale global models using supercomputers to achieve this. In her free time, she enjoys hiking, biking, badminton, and snowboarding