meet the 2021 NMAS Board

The 2021 NMAS Board of Directors is being led by President Gretchen Gurtler; President-Elect Dr. Anton Sumali; and Vice-President Dr. Babu Chalamala. The officers have backgrounds in paleontology, mechanical engineering, and physics. Their wide-ranging expertise will provide a solid background for the coming years. ​

​The Academy is led this year by President Gretchen Gürtler, the Director of Museums at Ghost Ranch Education and Retreat Center in Abiquiu, NM.  She began serving on the board in 2015 as a Director at Large. Ms. Gürtler holds a Master of Public Administration and a Master of Arts degree in Museum Science from Texas Tech University, where she conducted paleontological research. She is the advocacy representative for New Mexico Association of Museums, a board member of The New Mexico Partnership for Math and Science Education (NMPMSE) through New Mexico First, and a participant in New Mexico Informal Science Education Network (NMISE). 
 
Dr. Anton Sumali is the 2021 President-Elect of the New Mexico Academy of Science (NMAS). Dr. Sumali received his PhD in Mechanical Engineering in 1997 from Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, VA and is currently a Research and Development Manager at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, NM.  Dr. Sumali  was an R&D staff member there from 2002 to 2011. From 1997 to 2002, Dr. Sumali was an Assistant Professor at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana.  

Dr. Sumali has served on NMAS Board since 2013.  As the new Editor-in-Chief of the New Mexico Journal of Science, Dr. Sumali has attracted manuscripts and formed an editorial board for the journal with peer-reviewers from Sandia National Labs, UNM, Harvard, Intel, Princeton, ENMU, MIT, Oxford, and other research institutions.. 

Serving in 2021 as Vice President  is Dr. Babu R. Chalamala.  He is Manager of the Energy Storage Technology and Systems Department and Laboratory Program Manager for Grid Energy Storage at Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, NM. Prior to joining Sandia in 2015, he spent twenty years in industrial R&D, mostly recently as a Corporate Fellow at MEMC Electronic Materials where he led R&D and product development in grid scale energy storage.

Dr. Chalamala spent the early part of his research career at Motorola and Texas Instruments where he made contributions to electronic materials and display technologies. He is a Fellow of the IEEE, Academy of Sciences St Louis, and a Life Member of the Electrochemical Society.  Dr. Chalamala has a PhD in Physics from the University of North Texas and has authored 120 papers  and has 10 US patents.

​Other members of the board can be found on the Board page.