Navajo graduate leads by serving
After chatter on plots, Pentagon studies length of troops’ stay
GALLUP, N.M. — Robinson Tom was an environmental science student at Navajo Technical University when he was assigned in 2014 to compare microorganisms that could survive in the harsh environment of Mars.
The red planet is 50 million miles farther away from the Sun than Earth, which means it gets a lot less sunlight and temperatures average minus 81 degrees Fahrenheit.
“It sounds like a simple assignment, but I started getting into the research of soil content, atmosphere content, and which organisms could survive in very cold temperatures,” Tom said.
“Because of that assignment, I found out that I enjoyed biology and chemistry a lot more.”
That early assignment eventually changed the course of Tom’s life. It opened the door to an exciting career in the science field that has taken him to Boston, Mass., where he now does research at Harvard University.
BUILDING BICEPS
Tom, who grew up in the Navajo Nation community of Little Water, changed majors in 2014.
He was one of the first students to enroll in the thennew Biology Department at Navajo Tech. At the time, he was the only one in his cohort because he was already ahead of the group.
“I had to rely on myself because I had no students to look up to,” Tom said. “I had to be that student.”
Tom said he was aware there was no science culture in the region. He believed more young Navajos could follow on a scientific path if they had a niche and a support group.
So he founded BICEPS, a student organization to help others with similar interests. BICEPS stands for biology, chemistry and environmental physics.
Through BICEPS, they were able to secure internships, do science demonstrations at local K-12 schools and build research collaborations with other institutions.
One of those institutions is Harvard.
“If you talk about science on the Navajo Nation, the STEM culture is kind of missing there,” Tom said. “With the BICEPS program, we got to reach out and influence young generations. It was a lot of fun.”
COOKING WITH SCIENCE
Through BICEPS, Navajo Tech science students visited schools in Crownpoint and Thoreau in New Mexico and in Window Rock, Ariz. They did demonstrations in chemistry and biology in a way younger students could relate to. They used the concept of cooking to teach chemical reactions. Tom showed students how to cook chile peppers.
“You chop it up and boil it with some butter and, as it cools down, you see a phenomena where the water moves away from the oil,” Tom said. He told students oil molecules are hydrophobic and repel water.
They also used Navajo cooking concepts during science demonstrations, showing students how to cook, for instance, blue corn mush.
“Everybody knows that corn is one of the main foods for Navajo. It turns out, when you eat corn, you can’t get all the nutrients. That’s because these plants are very tough to break. So there’s ways to prepare it to access all the nutrients,” Tom said. “Traditionally in Central America or Meso America, they developed a way to use limestone powder to break the cells of the corn to have it edible. The Navajos on the other hand learned that you can do that without lime. You can use ash.”
The process is called nixtamalization. In areas of Guatemala and southern Mexico, heated chunks of limestone would naturally be used, and experiments show hot limestone makes the cooking water sufficiently alkaline to cause nixtamalization. This process removes toxins from the corn, increasing its nutritional value, flavor and aroma. Lime and ash are highly alkaline and an alkaline diet may help reduce the acid load in the body, which in turn, may reduce risk of cancer and other illnesses.
“You can use ash because it has calcium and other alkaline similar to lime, and that’s what I tried to teach our community, that there’s science behind our cooking,” Tom said.
Tom said he prefers cedar ash when cooking. For these projects, he would take a branch of cedar and burn it in the grill outside his house and collect the ash.
FIRST NTU BIOLOGY GRAD
Tom became the first to earn a bachelor of science in biology from Navajo Tech in May.
His last semester at NTU was challenged by covid-19 pandemic restrictions. He enrolled in hybrid courses, taking some online and some in person, and he spent most of his time at the biology lab, where students worked on projects ranging from growing bacteria in controlled environments to researching wetlands.
During those early months of the pandemic, Tom thought about covid-19 virus mutations and worried about Navajo communities where families lack running water. But the pandemic was also an opportunity for biology students to study a new virus and in real time.
“My professor and I were looking for articles,” he said. “The genome of the SARS was just coming out, and what was really exciting is that I was taking an infomax course, and while I was learning the subject, this became a real time case to learn.”
When Tom graduated, he watched the online graduation program from a computer at the biology lab. At home in Little Water, the internet is still set up the old way: dial-up. It’s slow and unable to stream in real time.
“You can’t do a Zoom call,” he said. “We are in a geological position where all radio frequencies go over us.”
After graduation, Tom published a paper with Dr. Thiagarajan Soundappan, associate professor of chemistry and chair of the Navajo Tech School of Science. The paper researches activities related to non-flammable, aqueous gel electrolytes used to produce flexible aqueous lithium-ion batteries.
The research was paid for under the Army Research Laboratory and was accepted by the Journal of Power Sources.
Soundappan, the principal investigator for the National Science Foundation Partnerships for Research and Education in Materials project at Navajo Tech, said Tom secured a research opportunity at Harvard after graduation thanks to this program.
He said the PREM project was created to build pathways for undergraduate Native American students into science, technology, engineering and mathematic fields. It includes diverse perspectives and methods of scientific inquiry in research and education. Soundappan said Tom participated in the program every year, which made him the perfect candidate to transfer his knowledge and skillset to Boston.
A ‘ROLE MODEL’
“He’s going to be a role model for this project,” Soundappan said. “I plan on sending our students to Harvard for the next 10 years.”
The NTU collaboration with Harvard has been ongoing since 2018.
Dr. Kathryn Hollar, the director of Community Programs and Diversity Outreach at Harvard’s John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, has been working with Tom for the past couple of years.
“It is such a privilege to be a part of his many successes,” she said. “He is truly someone who leads by serving, and we feel so honored to have him here at Harvard. I have watched him mature over the past two years as a scientist through our partnership with NTU via funding from the NSF Division of Materials Research’s Partnership for Research and Education in Materials (PREM program).
She also pointed to his work to create the student organization and his focus on the professional development of fellow students.
“Recently, he was also selected for the latest cohort of the American Indian Science and Engineering Society Lighting the Pathway program,” she said. “I am just writing these accomplishments down, because I think he is a bit modest.”
WASHINGTON — The Pentagon is reviewing a police request to keep National Guard troops patrolling the U.S. Capitol for another 60 days after evidence of a “possible plot” by a militia group to storm the building again, two months after supporters of former President Donald Trump smashed through windows and doors in an insurrection meant to halt the certification of Joe Biden’s presidential victory.
There were no signs of disturbance Thursday at the heavily secured building, with Capitol Police and guardsmen on duty and the streets and grounds around the building closed off with an imposing razor-wiretopped fence erected after the Jan. 6 riot. There also was no evidence of a large group heading to Washington despite the warning.
Still, the threat distressed law enforcement officials, who are grappling with how best to secure the Capitol after a dismal showing in January, when rioters sent lawmakers fleeing the iconic building in a stunning siege broadcast around the world. Five people died in the riot, including a U.S. Capitol Police officer and a woman shot by police.
Several investigations are underway into security and intelligence failures, and lawmakers have asked for a long-term plan for when the Guard eventually withdraws. Right now, there are about 5,200 remaining in D.C., the last of the roughly 26,000 who were brought in for Biden’s inauguration, which went off with no problems.
Members of both parties have complained that the fence encircling the Capitol seals off access to constituents and the general public, projecting an image at odds with the seat of American democracy.
The most recent threat appeared to be connected to a far-right conspiracy theory, promoted mainly by supporters of QAnon, that Trump would rise again to power on March 4 — Thursday — and that thousands would go to Washington to try to remove Democrats from office. March 4 was the original presidential inauguration day until 1933, when it was moved to Jan. 20.
But Trump was miles away in Florida. In Washington, on one of the warmest days in weeks, the National Mall was almost deserted, save for joggers, journalists and a handful of tourists trying to take photos of the Capitol dome through the fencing.
The House had been expected to have a light schedule but called off its session, staying late Wednesday to wrap up its work in part because of the threat. The Senate remained in session Thursday on Biden’s covid-19 relief bill.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., dismissed the “silliness” of the alleged plot to restore Trump.
Still, she said that with “the threat of all the president’s men out there, we have to ensure, with our security, that we are safe enough to do our job, but not impeding” Congress.
Online chatter identified by authorities included discussions among members of the Three Percenters, an anti-government militia group, concerning possible plots against the Capitol on Thursday, according to two law enforcement officials who were not authorized to speak publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity. Members of the Three Percenters were among the extremists who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6.
But federal agents found no significant increases in the number of hotel rooms being rented in Washington, or in flights to the area, car rental reservations or buses being chartered. Online chatter about the day on extremist sites was declining.
U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, was briefed by law enforcement officials about the possible threat and said lawmakers were ready for whatever might come.
“We have the razor wire, we have the National Guard. We didn’t have that Jan. 6. So I feel very confident in the security,” he said.
But those measures aren’t permanent.