🚜🎮 The people of Townsville need your help! Put your gaming skills to work and explore cropland transition projects in a fictional California Central Valley community. Check out the new game created in collaboration with @hmc.edu and learn more from UCS’s Erin Wooley:

Common Ground Video Game Lets Players Manage Cropland Transition in California’s Central Valley  - Union of Concerned Scientists

Welcome to Townsville, a community located in California’s Central Valley. You have been tasked with working with a few of your fellow residents to implement cropland transition projects around Townsville. There are opportunities to protect the town’s drinking water, develop renewable energy, restore the environment, and encourage your neighbors to adopt more sustainable farming practices to benefit Townsville. Along the way, you must collaborate with your fellow residents to decide which projects to pursue and negotiate with the neighboring landowners to implement a vision for the future of Townsville while facing additional hurdles from extreme weather brought on by Climate Change. You also have to consider the side effects of the current land uses that often seem invisible but have real and ongoing consequences for your community.

blog.ucs.org

By rethinking how land is used, multibenefit cropland repurposing creates solutions that protect natural resources and support communities, delivering lasting environmental benefits.

Common Ground: The Indie Strategy Game Tackling Real-World Land & Water Challenges

YouTube video by Union of Concerned Scientists

youtube.com

2/ Explore this practice through our new game, Common Ground, made in partnership with @hmc.edu students: 🔗 common-ground-game.netlify.app

#HarveyMuddCollege #engineering professor Leah Mendelson has been named #makerspace director. Read about Mendelson's goals for the 8,000-square-foot hub of student creativity as well as what she's looking forward to during her tenure. uqr.to/lm-mkr.

#HMC physics professor Eduardo Ibarra García Padilla and #physics colleagues have developed a new theory that helps explain how trions—tiny #quantum structures—form and arrange themselves into distinctive checkerboard patterns. Learn how the team worked to discover this new theory at uqr.to/eigp-nt.

#HMC students Angela Milo ’28 and Joshua Ikehara ’27 have been selected by the #AstronautScholarshipFoundation as Astronaut scholars. They join an elite cohort of undergrads recognized for exceptional academic performance, research excellence and commitment to STEM fields. uqr.to/amji-astro.

Published today! link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Trace does not preserve reflexivity - Collectanea Mathematica

In this article, we address a question raised in Dao et al. (Trans Am Math Soc Ser B 10:355–380, 2023) regarding the preservation of reflexivity under taking trace. We answer this question negatively....

link.springer.com

#Biology professor Danae Schulz has been awarded an #NSFGrant to advance research on #Trypanosomabrucei, the #parasite responsible for #AfricanSleepingSickness. Schulz's project embodies the #HMC mission to cultivate technical excellence alongside a commitment to global #impact. uqr.to/nsf-schulz.

#HMC welcomes Hae-Seo Kim and Sara Murphy POM ʼ18 to campus this academic year. They will join a faculty charged with educating and inspiring future scientists, engineers and mathematicians to become passionate problem solvers who understand the impact of their work on society. uqr.to/new-faculty.

In Sustainability & Circularity NOW, Dr. David Vosburg of @hmc.edu, a Green Chemistry Commitment signer, presents a curriculum-level approach to #GreenChemistry education in the undergraduate organic chemistry teaching laboratory sequence. 🧪 www.thieme-connect.de/products/ejo...

Staff member Karen Angemi and music professor Bill Alves were presented with the 2026 Henry T. Mudd Prize by #HMC President Harriet Nembhard. The prize recognizes faculty and staff members whose extraordinary service has significantly benefited the College. Read more at uqr.to/kaba-mudd.

#HarveyMuddCollege has received the ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge's Highly Established Action Plan Seal for 2026, recognizing institutions with strong, nonpartisan strategies to support #CivicLearning, political engagement and #StudentVoter participation. Read more at uqr.to/hmc-allin.

#HMC math and life sciences professor Heather Brooks has received an @amermathsoc.bsky.social grant. Read more on how Brooks plans to use this highly competitive national award to advance work on her project, “Using #ContinuumModels to Understand #OpinionDynamics on Networks,” at uqr.to/hb-ams.

Student entrepreneurs Kevin Xia ’28, Daniel Zhu ’29 and James Gómez CMC ’27 won the spring 2026 #SageTank pitch competition with their project, Whistle, an #agentic #ComplianceSoftware designed to help athletic departments stay compliant with #NCAA regulations. Read more at uqr.to/hmc-st26.

Congrats to all! Our spring celebrations embodied the creativity, collaboration and purpose that define the #HMC community. As we wrap up the year, we’ll be wrapping up the #MuddMinute video series and starting a new one that highlights the #CampaignForHMC. Watch the full episode at uqr.to/MMS03E11.

#HMC #engineering student Soon Young Kwon ’29 earned two prestigious international recognitions from the #ASME this spring. Kwon's prize winnings total $2,800, which he plans to use toward independent #research in #piezoelectric #actuators. Read more on our news page at uqr.to/syk-asme.

Congrats to HMC's #ClassOf2026! We are inspired by your dedication, accomplishments and kindness here at #HarveyMudd and look forward to the impact you'll make in the future. (1/2).

Mithra Karamchedu ’26, Marika Ragnartz ’26, Madeline Reeve ’26, Lilian Zhu ’26 and five recent #HMCgrads have been awarded #NSF Graduate Research Fellowships. Read how these four seniors spent their time at Mudd and where they plan to pursue their doctoral degrees: uqr.to/nsfgrf26.

You've probably stumbled across an #ant nest before, but maybe you never stopped to look: what are they doing there, right around the nest entrance? Su writes about what harvester ants do, and how we can tell, in her latest student blog post: hmcbee.blogspot.com/2026/04/here... @hmc.edu

Determing Behavior in Harvester Ant Colonies

A blog about social insect behavior, especially ants & honeybees, including field ecology, computer vision, and mathematical and simulation models.

hmcbee.blogspot.com

Ananya Venkatachalam ’26 was awarded a #FulbrightGrant to conduct research on #LiquidLiquidPhaseSeparation using physics-informed #MachineLearning at #HeidelbergUniversity in Germany. Read about Venkatachalam's research and how her time at #HMC helped her imagine a future in science at uqr.to/av-fg.

Max Schernikau ’27 earned an Outstanding Student Poster Award this spring from the #AmericanChemicalSociety Division of Physical Chemistry for his research on carbon dioxide reduction. Read more on Schernikau's award and research on our news page: uqr.to/ms-acs.

Johnson Ho ’27, Cole Plepel ’27 and Elio Thadhani ’27 have received the 2026 #GoldwaterScholarship, the most prestigious national award for #UndergradResearch in science, technology, math and engineering. Read more about their accomplishments and post-graduation plans at uqr.to/hpt-gw.

Last month, #Engineering Clinic teams gathered to exhibit the prototypes for their Clinic projects. HMC's #ClinicProgram engages Mudders in solving real-world, technical problems for companies and orgs like #AirMyne, #Indomo and #Ohmium. Learn more at hmc.edu/clinic. Photos by Lindsey Sands ’27.

Chengyi Tang ’27 is the winner of the prestigious 2026 Rudolph Polk Memorial Award in Music. Tang received a $1,200 prize intended to further #MusicalStudy. Read more about Tang and about Lucy Wen-Xin Will ’28, who received an honorable mention for the #PolkAward at uqr.to/tang-rpma.

#HMC humanities professor David Wilson has been awarded a prestigious research grant from the #CenterforChineseStudies at the #NationalCentralLibrary of Taiwan. Read more about how this research will allow Wilson to examine the National Day #ProjectionMapping Show in Taipei at uqr.to/wilson-ncl.

The College's annual Leadership Awards event was held last week to recognize students, faculty and staff for their outstanding contributions to the HMC community. Read about the contributions these leaders have had on campus and beyond by visiting our news page at uqr.to/hmc-la26.

Leilani Elkaslasy ’26 and Miski Nopo ’26 have won #WatsonFellowships, which provides a year of unparalleled international discovery for seniors after graduation. Read more about how Nopo and Elkaslasy exemplify the initiative and global perspective that define #WatsonFellows at uqr.to/watson26.

Yuan Garcia ’27 won second place at the 57th annual #SIGCSE. The recognition highlights #StudentLedResearch on how #AI is shaping student learning in intro #ComputerScience courses. Read more about Garcia's project, which examined how student work changes when #LLMs are introduced at uqr.to/ygarcia.

The 2026 #SummerSession at #HMC is just over a month away! This program allows #Mudders, other college students, ambitious high schoolers (including #RisingJuniors) & other lifelong learners to study with our exceptional faculty in selected courses across disciplines. Learn more at uqr.to/hmc-ss26.

If you closely at what seems like a weed, you may notice a beautiful #Fibonacci spiral of flowers. In the latest blog post from my Ecology Lab's #NaturalHistory series, Aabhas writes about the Common Fiddleneck and its striking form. hmcbee.blogspot.com/2026/04/fidd... @hmc.edu

Fiddling with Fiddlenecks: Pondering upon Existential Questions in Evolution

A blog about social insect behavior, especially ants & honeybees, including field ecology, computer vision, and mathematical and simulation models.

hmcbee.blogspot.com