Recent News
Computer scientist wins Athlete of the Year Award for adaptive skiing technique
May 27, 2025
UNM to host first-ever residential nuclear engineering camp
May 20, 2025
UNM Regents' Scholar Rebecca Nez named 2025 Udall Scholar
May 15, 2025
Engineering Expo celebrates 10 years
May 13, 2025
News Archives
Computer scientist wins Athlete of the Year Award for adaptive skiing technique
May 27, 2025 - By Carly Bowling
Bruce Hopper and Mike Adams during a ski run. Photo by JJ Joshua Squires.
Like many students, Mike Adams would tell you skiing down a snowy slope is the perfect activity to decompress from the stresses of life as a University of New Mexico Ph.D. student in Computer Science, but Adams’s unique approach to skiing led him to become the Adaptive Sports Program New Mexico’s (ASPNM) 2025 Athlete of the Year.
“The skiing is super technical and super dynamic. I have to be on my toes at all times and so do the people who tether me. It’s just an incredible thrill,” Adams said. “I always find that when I come back, I have better ideas for my academic work.”
Adams has cerebral palsy, which leads to unpredictable and imprecise movement that require him to have assistance with tasks like eating, writing by hand and going places.
“It’s kind of like my brain adds random noise to the signals it sends to my body,” said Adams, whose Ph.D. work centers on parallel processing.
"Mike's Journey," was shown at the ASPNM Snow Ball. The short film was directed, produced, and edited by Alexandra Henry.
On the slopes, Adams skis with the support of someone tethered behind him, but his style of skiing is highly unusual in the world of adaptive sports. Most tethered sit skiers like Mike use fixed outriggers, or ski poles attached to the ski, that assist with balance and turning. While fixed outriggers help many people with disabilities access the sport of skiing, he finds they can remove some of the decision-making and challenge that gives skiing its thrill. Still, skiing without them is almost unheard of because of how easy it is for an athlete to tip over. The technique requires both the athlete and the skier tethering them to work in tandem. In adaptive skiing, the tether skier supports the athlete by calling out turns when needed and providing supportive control for speed.
Adams first tried skiing as a fifth grader in 2012 when his occupational therapist told him the ASPNM would be hosting ski days at Sandia Peak for children with disabilities. He was hooked from the start and his instructor quickly learned Adams didn’t need to rely on outriggers. Fast forward to 2016, after a few years of honing the method, Adams met Bruce Hopper, a longtime ASPNM volunteer who has become one of his regular tethering partners.
Hopper (UNM ‘85 and ‘88) started volunteering with ASPNM 35 years ago when a friend on the UNM ski team was hired on at the organization and recruited her friends to join as volunteers. He never looked back. With years of experience skiing competitively and skiing alongside athletes with disabilities, he was initially one of only a few volunteers able to tether Adams and helped teach him how to read snow conditions and slope steepness to improve his technique. As Adams has refined his no-outrigger method, he has taught more volunteers how to tether athletes who ski the same way.
“Mike is indomitable, so he doesn’t really need me. We’ve been skiing together now for several years. There are not many athletes skiing as fast, steep and aggressively as Mike does,” Hopper said. “He is extremely talented and it’s thrilling to watch him do what he does.”
Adams frequently traverses black diamond slopes, one of the steepest slope grades reserved for advanced skiers. Every journey up the chair lift and every run down the slopes has helped Adams develop a close relationship with Hopper and the other skiers who tether him.
“Many of us say that innovations like skiing without outriggers increase the independence of our athletes, and they do, but at least in my life, I cannot be independent. But, I would rather ski with my friends here any day,” Adams said during his keynote speech at the ASPNM Snow Ball, where he received the Athlete of the Year Award.
That night, ASPNM raised $100,000, which Hopper credits to Adams’s ability to motivate others. The funds will pay for scholarships and high-end equipment needed to support the athletes in the program.
Despite all the time they’ve spent together on the slopes, Adams and Hopper don’t speak much about academics or work. In many ways, skiing helps clear Adams’s head because he has to focus on the challenges presented on the mountain.
“When I go out there, it is totally a flow state, there is nothing else to think about. Even on the chair lift with all the other volunteers, we’ve all got a lot to say, so the conversation is always going about our lives, skiing, and how to get better. There’s never time to think about school and it’s refreshing in that way," he said.
Life as a Computer Science Ph.D. student
Back in the classroom, Adams has found another kind of flow.
He initially became interested in STEM because it enabled him to communicate well. Without the dexterity to write, a computer was his avenue to get his thoughts onto the page. He also discovered a passion for math. The more abstract it became in high school –– with symbols and equations –– the more he enjoyed it, even taking Calculus 2 before college. He followed that love to computer science, which led to his Bachelor of Science in May 2023 and now his Ph.D., where he is specializing in parallel processing under the advisement of Amanda Bienz, assistant professor of computer science. Adams is also a Sandia Labs intern in the AI Machine Learning Group. During his studies, he has opted to take additional math classes out of interest.
Because exams and some assignments are done by hand, Adams relies on the support of a scribe from the UNM Accessibility Resource Center to help him notate answers to the problems he is solving. Because of the complexity of work in the master’s and Ph.D. programs, Adams has developed a strong relationship with one accommodations specialist –– Carol Bartlett.
“Mike is just such a great teacher to whoever he is around and he is so full of modesty, humor and intelligence,” Bartlett said. “It takes a village. It takes all of us, and really I view it as Mike has invited me on this journey and I’m blessed to have that invitation extended to me.”
Even with 23 years of experience working with students to provide equal access, working with Adams has taught her even more about what access can look like. During exams, Adams tells her exactly what to write in order to show his work while solving a problem. Because of the complexity of the material, the use of a symbol sheet helps him quickly point to what he is trying to communicate.
“The symbol sheet we have used is a pretty new thing from what I understand, and it could help so many other people, especially in engineering, science and math. The ARC helped me from day one to figure that stuff out so I can have equal access,” Adams said.
In the early days of his undergraduate studies, the ARC helped faculty in Adams’s department better understand the adjustments he needed to have the opportunity to succeed. Now, Bartlett says if adjustments are being made, the ARC doesn’t necessarily know about them because they are happening naturally.
While Bartlett says she has yet to pick up the graduate-level mathematics she scribes, working with Adams has shown her just how complex the advanced degrees in engineering really are.
“He makes it look so easy, but it is hard,” Bartlett said.
Adams sees one similarity between his two passions. From navigating crowds on the mountain to fluctuations in his muscle tone that change the way he approaches skiing, he often has to get creative.
“On the ski runs, everything is dynamic and that is kind of how research can be too. You might go down a bad rabbit hole and you’ve just got to keep going and find another way to figure the problem out, and so it really is kind of adaptive.”