First National Bank of Santa Fe welcomes new mortgage officer

Kathy Breneman has joined the mortgage lending department at First National Bank of Santa Fe.

She has been consistently recognized as a top-producing mortgage loan originator for more than 15 years, an e-mail stated..

Breneman is a native of Albuquerque who attended The University of New Mexico. She is a certified mortgage banker candidate with the Mortgage Bankers Association.

Labs offering tech assistance to small businesses

The New Mexico Small Business Assistance Program, a joint program of both Los Alamos and Sandia national laboratories, is looking for small businesses in need of technical assistance from the laboratories.

The NMSBA is accepting pre-proposals for calendar year 2011.

The program does not provide money or equipment, but qualifying businesses outside Bernalillo County are eligible to receive technical assistance equivalent to $20,000, and businesses inside Bernalillo County are eligible for $10,000 annually. Nonprofits and governmental entities are not eligible for NMSBA assistance.

The deadline for pre-proposals is July 23.

A limited number of businesses that submit pre-proposals will be asked to submit a full proposal, expanding on the information provided in the pre-proposal.

Full proposals will be due on Sept. 24. and will be evaluated by the NMSBA Advisory Council and staff.

For more information and details on the pre-proposal requirements, contact Lisa Henne, (505) 667-1710 at Los Alamos, or Jenni DeGreeff, (505) 844-9623 at Sandia.

Qforma awards UNM grad student $5,000 for computer science work

Santa Fe-based Qforma, a provider of advanced analytics, has granted a $5,000 award to University of New Mexico graduate student Nicholas Pattengale for his outstanding Ph.D. dissertation in computer science.

Pattengale, who just graduated from the UNM Ph.D. program in May, was recognized by this first-ever "Qforma Computational Thesis /Dissertation Award" for his work's "technical depth, sophistication and innovation," according to the chairman of computer science at UNM.

S.F. Chamber of Commerce names new board chairperson

The Santa Fe Chamber of Commerce has completed the annual transition of board leadership. Anne Sperling is ending her year of service as the chairperson of the board and Fidel Gutierrez is starting his one-year term.

Since joining the board in 2008, Gutierrez has become a major supporter of chamber projects, a statement from the board said. The statement went on to praise Sperling for her service as chairperson over the past fiscal year.



The New Mexican