Month: September 2022

Research Funding

September 16, 2022

Research Funding Tops $686 Million

Growth of Research Funding

For the ninth year in a row, research funding at the University of Utah grew, totaling $686 million in fiscal year 2022, which ended on June 30. The total is a new record high for the university. The U achieved milestones of $600 million in funding the last two years and $500 million four years ago.

“Research is one of our key foundations of our university,” said Dr. Erin Rothwell, interim vice president for research. “Our students, faculty, staff and donors are continuously working together to bring solutions to some of the biggest challenges we face today as a society.”

As a member of the prestigious American Association University, the U is known for its diverse disciplines in medicines, science, social work, arts and more. This fiscal year, research grants were awarded to more than 18 colleges in diverse disciplines across campus.

Highlights from our research funding

From medicine to fine arts, research at the U spans across many studies, as growth in funding continues moving upward. The School of Medicine grew the most in funding dollars with $331 million, a 15% growth from the previous fiscal year. The College of Education has a 43% funding growth from FY2021, with $5.6 million in funding. The Scientific Computing and Imaging Institute saw an 88% growth, with $16 million in FY2021. In addition, the College of Fine Arts saw its total funding dollar grow to $1.8 million, a 23% funding growth from the previous year.

Sources of Federal Funding

Although these are some of the highlights, studies by our researchers from multiple disciplines were awarded research funding in data generation, parent-child relationships, cyberinfrastructure, and integrative health. Some of the many funding sponsors include the National Institutes of Health, the United States Department of Defense, and the National Science Foundation.

U research’s impact on Utah’s economy

U research is a major contributor to our local economy. The institution has almost 8,000 employees who are compensated by research dollars.

“Research funding is not only helping make progress in the research itself, but also helping many Utahns personally and economically,” said Rothwell. “Over the last three years, research has supported $598 million in wages that contributes to the economic engine across the state of Utah.”

Economic Impact

Discovering solutions for a better future 

Thanks to its dedicated researchers and generous donors, the U continues to move forward in breaking new ground, innovating, and discovering solutions to issues that impact the global community.

“Research is all about helping people,” said Rothwell. “The continued growth of our university’s research funding shows that many are excited and want to be a part of the solutions to the issues we face locally, nationally and globally.”

University President Taylor Randall said the U’s goal of reaching $1 billion in research funding annually will help the institution strive toward an objective of becoming a top-10 public university.

“Research funding at the university has increased annually for the past nine years. This is the trajectory we need to be on to have unsurpassed societal impact,” said Randall. “Through the hard work and dedication of our research community, the U is positioning itself to be a major player in developing solutions to the world’s grand challenges like climate change, mental health, cancer and more.”

 - First Published in @theU

 

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Jack Simons Award

September 14, 2022

Jack Simons Award

Jack Simons Award in Theoretical Physical Chemistry.

Professor Jack Simons:
Professor Jack Simons received his Ph.D. training in theoretical chemistry from the University of Wisconsin, Madison in 1970. After spending time as an NSF postdoctoral fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he joined the faculty of Chemistry at the University of Utah in 1971.

Professor Simons has made numerous contributions to the field of theoretical chemistry, especially methodologies relevant to the understanding of physical and chemical properties of negative molecular ions. He has published more than 340 papers and several monographs on various topics in theoretical chemistry, and he has been recognized by numerous awards for his contributions, including the International Academy of Quantum Molecular Science Medal, the Joseph O. Hirschfelder Prize in Theoretical Chemistry, fellowships from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation and the J. S. Guggenheim Foundation, and various named lectureships at institutions around the world.

Professor Simons has a passion for chemical education, having written several widely used textbooks on physical chemistry as well as web-based educational materials on theoretical chemistry and the principles of chemical reactivities. Professor Simons has also dedicated a tremendous amount of his time and resources to the physical chemistry community in the US, having helped establish the Telluride Summer School in Theoretical Chemistry and the ACS – PHYS divisional awards. In recognition of Professor Simons’ scientific accomplishments and service to the theoretical chemistry community, the Executive Committee of the Physical Chemistry Division of the American Chemical Society voted at the Fall 2022 to rename the Senior Theory Award to the Jack Simons Award in Theoretical Physical Chemistry.

Purpose: 
To recognize outstanding contributions in theoretical chemistry.

Nature:
At the fall ACS meeting that immediately follows the announcement of the award the recipient will present their research in one of the PHYS symposia, be honored at the annual PHYS reception, and receive a $5k honorarium. The recipient will also be invited to the next Telluride School on Theoretical Chemistry (TSTC), which are held every other summer, starting in 2009. At that meeting, he/she will present a plenary lecture.

Eligibility:
Eligibility is restricted to Physical Chemistry Division members who, at the time of the nomination, have not yet won a national award from a scientific society that is based on the nominee & scientific accomplishments. Members of the National Academy of Science are also ineligible, but fellowship in a professional society is not considered a national award in this context nor are awards that recognize service to the chemistry community. The intent of this award is to recognize a top-notch mid- or senior-career scientist who is a key player in the physical chemistry community with a long history of exemplary research contributions, but not a commensurate level of national or international recognitions. At the time of the nomination, currently serving members of the PHYS Division Executive Committee in any capacity, including subdivisions and councilors as well as individuals who are up for election to these positions, are ineligible for nomination for this award until after their term of service.

Nomination Procedures:
1. A nomination letter of not more than 2 pages.
2. At least two seconding letters with no page limit.
3. The applicant’s CV.
4. A list of the publications that the nominee is most proud.
5. A written assurance that, if selected, the nominee will attend the PHYS awards banquet
and give their seminar at the ACS meeting in person.

Application Deadline:
All materials should be sent electronically to acspchem@vt.edu. The deadline is November 1st each year. Please include the nominee’s name in the subject line of the e-mail.

Sponsor:
PHYS Division and the Telluride School on Theoretical Chemistry.

The award was established in 2008, updated in 2019, and named after Professor Jack Simons in 2022.

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NuFact 2022

September 12, 2022

NuFact 2022

Professor Pearl Sandick, Assistant Professor Yue Zhao, and Professor Carsten Rott.

Physics Department hosts NuFact International Workshop at Snowbird

Professor Carsten Rott and colleagues from the Department of Physics & Astronomy recently hosted an international workshop on neutrinos at Snowbird. Known as NuFact, the workshop brought together experimentalists, theorists, and accelerator physicists from all over the world to share their knowledge and expertise in the field. NuFact had more than 150 in-person participants and numerous virtual contributions.

A neutrino is a subatomic particle that is similar to an electron but has no electrical charge and a very small mass. Neutrinos are one of the most abundant particles in the universe, but they are difficult to detect because they have very little interaction with matter.

Professor Pearl Sandick and Assistant Professor Yue Zhao served as co-organizers of the conference. The team also included Rebecca Corley and other graduate students, who were instrumental in hosting the event.

 

Carsten Rott

“NuFact is one of the most important conferences in the field of neutrino physics,” said Rott. “It was an honor and a great opportunity that the scientific program committee selected Utah as the venue for the 23rd conference in this workshop series.”

 

One of the pre-workshops called “Multi-messenger Tomography of the Earth” encouraged experts from earth science and neutrino physics to explore the possibility of using neutrinos to understand the composition of the inner Earth. “I enjoyed the open exchange of ideas in this interdisciplinary workshop,” said Rott. “This work may one day significantly enhance our understanding of the Earth’s composition and dynamics.”

At this year’s workshop, a new working group was created called Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, Education, & Outreach (IDEEO). “We’re excited to establish this as a permanent working group associated with the NuFact conferences,” said Sandick. “This year’s sessions were incredibly productive. We already see meaningful, positive changes, and I anticipate more to come as our scientific community continues to work on IDEEO.”

Dean Peter Trapa delivers opening remarks.

The conference was supported by the University of Utah (Department of Physics & Astronomy, the College of Science, the VPR Office, the National Science Foundation, Caen Technologies Inc., the Center for Neutrino Physics @ Virginia Tech, and MPDI Instruments.

 

by Michele Swaner, first published @ physics.utah.edu.

At-Risk Forests

September 7, 2022

At-Risk Forests

Global analysis identifies at-risk forests.

Forests are engaged in a delicate, deadly dance with climate change, hosting abundant biodiversity and sucking carbon dioxide out of the air with billions of leafy straws. They can be a part of the climate solution as long as global warming, with its droughts, wildfires and ecosystem shifts, doesn’t kill them first.

In a study published in Science, William Anderegg, the inaugural director of the University of Utah’s Wilkes Center for Climate Science and Policy, and colleagues quantify the risk to forests from climate change along three dimensions: carbon storage, biodiversity and forest loss from disturbance, such as fire or drought. The results show forests in some regions experiencing clear and consistent risks. In other regions, the risk profile is less clear, because different approaches that account for disparate aspects of climate risk yield diverging answers.

 

William Anderegg

“Large uncertainty in most regions highlights that there's a lot more scientific study that's urgently needed.”

 

An international team

Anderegg assembled a team including researchers from the United Kingdom, Germany, Portugal and Sweden.

“I had met some of these folks before,” he says, “and had read many of their papers. In undertaking a large, synthetic analysis like this, I contacted them to ask if they wanted to be involved in a global analysis and provide their expertise and data.”

Their task was formidable –assess climate risks to the world’s forests, which span continents and climes and host tremendous biodiversity while storing an immense amount of carbon. Researchers had previously attempted to quantify risks to forests using vegetation models, relationships between climate and forest attributes and climate effects on forest loss.

“These approaches have different inherent strengths and weaknesses,” the team writes, “but a synthesis of approaches at a global scale is lacking.” Each of the previous approaches investigated one dimension of climate risk: carbon storage, biodiversity, and risk of forest loss. For their new analysis, the team went after all three.

Three dimensions of risk

“These dimensions of risk are all important and, in many cases, complementary. They capture different aspects of forests resilience or vulnerability,” Anderegg says.

  • Carbon storage: Forests absorb about a quarter of the carbon dioxide that’s emitted into the atmosphere, so they play a critically important role in buffering the planet from the effects of rising atmospheric carbon dioxide. The team leveraged output from dozens of different climate models and vegetation models simulating how different plant and tree types respond to different climates. They then compared the recent past climate (1995-2014) with the end of the 21st century (2081-2100) in scenarios of both high and low carbon emissions. On average, the models showed global gains in carbon storage by the end of the century, although with large disagreements and uncertainty across the different climate-vegetation models. But zooming in to regional forests and taking into account models that forecast carbon loss and changes in vegetation, the researchers found higher risk of carbon loss in southern boreal (just south of the Arctic) forests and the drier regions of the Amazon and African tropics.
  • Biodiversity: Unsurprisingly, the researchers found that the highest risk of ecosystems shifting from one “life zone” to another due to climate change could be found at the current boundaries of biomes – at the current transition between temperate and boreal forests, for example. The models the researchers worked from described changes in ecosystems as a whole and not species individually, but the results suggested that forests of the boreal regions and western North America faced the greatest risk of biodiversity loss.
  • Disturbance: Finally, the authors looked at the risk of “stand-replacing disturbances,” or events like drought, fire or insect damage that could wipe out swaths of forest. Using satellite data and observations of stand-replacing disturbances between 2002 and 2014, the researchers then forecast into the future using projected future temperatures and precipitation to see how much more frequent these events might become. The boreal forests, again, face high risk under these conditions, as well as the tropics.

“Forests store an immense amount of carbon and slow the pace of climate change,” Anderegg says. “They harbor the vast majority of Earth's biodiversity. And they can be quite vulnerable to disturbances like severe fire or drought. Thus, it's important to consider each of these aspects and dimensions when thinking about the future of Earth's forests in a rapidly changing climate.”

Future needs

Anderegg was surprised that the spatial patterns of high risk didn’t overlap more across the different dimensions.

“They capture different aspects of forests' responses,” he says, “so they wouldn't likely be identical, but I did expect some similar patterns and correlations.”

Models can only be as good as the basis of scientific understanding and data on which they’re built and this study, the researchers write, exposes significant understanding and data gaps that may contribute to the inconsistent results. Global models of biodiversity, for example, don’t incorporate dynamics of growth and mortality or include the effects of rising CO2 directly on species. And models of forest disturbance don’t include regrowth or species turnover.

“If forests are tapped to play an important role in climate mitigation,” the authors write, “an enormous scientific effort is needed to better shed light on when and where forests will be resilient to climate change in the 21st century.”

Key next steps, Anderegg says, are improving models of forest disturbance, studying the resilience of forests after disturbance, and improving large-scale ecosystem models.

The recently-launched Wilkes Center for Climate Science and Policy at the University of Utah aims to provide cutting-edge science and tools for decision-makers in the US and across the globe. For this study, the authors built a visualization tool of the results for stakeholders and decision-makers.

Despite uncertainty in the results, western North America seems to have a consistently high risk to forests. Preserving these forests, he says, requires action.

“First we have to realize that the quicker we tackle climate change, the lower the risks in the West will be,” Anderegg says. “Second, we can start to plan for increasing risk and manage forests to reduce risk, like fires.”

Find the full study here.

 

by Paul Gabrielsen, first published in @theU.

College Merger

September 3, 2022

College Merger

College of Mines and Earth Sciences to merge with College of Science.

The University of Utah College of Mines and Earth Sciences will merge with the College of Science beginning July 1, 2022, a move that will unite well-funded programs, build synergy and cooperation between faculty and create a much stronger base for science and mathematics education at the U.

Deans Darryl Butt of the College of Mines and Earth Sciences and Peter Trapa of the College of Science have worked with university administration and members of both colleges to plan the details of the merger. The College of Mines and Earth Sciences will retain its name and identify as a unit of the College of Science and all faculty, students, buildings and research programs in both colleges will continue in the combined unit.

President Taylor Randall

“Both of these colleges are leaders in student enrollment and research, providing valuable direction on some of the most important issues we face today. I am confident this union will elevate both programs and provide more opportunities for collaboration and student access to classes.”

 

“Given the incredibly strong connections and research collaborations between the two colleges already, this proposed merger brings a huge number of opportunities for students and faculty,” said William Anderegg, associate professor in the College of Science’s School of Biological Sciences. “The merger opens doors to new educational programs, student research opportunities and research avenues that should elevate the U’s prominence and impact.”

How it happened

The two colleges have a long history of collaboration, but as they came together in 2018 to begin planning for a new Applied Sciences Building, which will bring together departments from both colleges, the deans and faculty members discussed interdisciplinary collaborations and joint courses of study, leading to the proposal of merging the colleges.

In developing the merger plan, the colleges have met with university administrators and faculty and staff from both colleges. Each department in both colleges conducted an advisory vote from their faculty, with a strong majority of voting faculty being in favor of a merger.

“The alignment of COS and CMES to form a stronger and more synergistic organization would elevate the reputation, and likely national rankings, of the respective programs as the joined faculty become more comparable in size and scope to many peer colleges in the Pac-12,” said Butt. “The union will strengthen the STEM fields at the U, and provide a greater student experience through enhanced advising, tutoring, research opportunities and interdisciplinary programs.”

What will and won’t change

The yearlong Phase 1 of the merger, which begins July 1, 2022, involves integrating non-academic functions of the College of Mines and Earth Sciences, such as accounting and marketing. The deans will work to enhance communication and collaboration in the united college, and continue working with faculty, staff, students and university leadership to streamline the merger.

Students attending classes in either of the colleges this fall likely won’t notice anything different–buildings, faculty and programs will remain as they are. Students working towards existing degrees will still receive those degrees from their respective colleges. No programs will be changed and no staff positions will be eliminated.

Leadership will also look much the same, with department chairs remaining in place, and Butt remaining as dean of the entities comprising the College of Mines and Earth Sciences as the colleges consolidate.

After that, as Phase 2 begins, the unified college will report to a single dean and changes to the governance structure of the college, developed in Phase 1, will be finalized and submitted to faculty, student and administration stakeholders for final approval.

Future endeavors, such as a major in earth and environmental science currently under consideration, will utilize resources from both colleges. But the College of Mines and Earth Sciences will remain as a distinct unit within the College of Science, strengthened by the merger and well-positioned to meet its future mission to the state of Utah as the land grant school of mines.

“We are thrilled to unite with the College of Mines and Earth Sciences, with its tradition of hands-on education and impactful research,” Trapa said. “As a combined college, we’ll be positioned to prepare students for an interdisciplinary world.”

“This is an innovative solution to combine the resources of two historic colleges in a way that preserves the identities and missions of both while elevating them to the top tier of science colleges in the United States,” Butt said.

Get to know the colleges

The College of Science and College of Mines and Earth Sciences are two of the oldest colleges at the U, owing to the early missions of the university to educate Utah’s teachers and the leaders of the mining industry in the state.

The roots of the College of Mines and Earth Sciences extend back to 1901 with the establishment of the State School of Mines. Instruction in earth science and mining engineering goes back even further, to at least 1871. The college’s current name was adopted in 1988 and it currently consists of departments of geology and geophysics, atmospheric sciences, mining engineering and metallurgical engineering (jointly administered with the College of Engineering). The Global Change and Sustainability Center and the University of Utah Seismograph Stations, a network of seismometers throughout the West, are also housed in the college’s Frederick A. Sutton Building. The college has become one of the most research-intensive colleges on campus, with average annual per faculty research awards exceeding $300K. With six majors and four degrees to choose from, students in the college study everything from the nature of snow and ice to processes governing Earth’s processes to the methods and processes for producing critical materials.

The current incarnation of the College of Science was formally organized in 1970 but has roots in science instruction that dates back to the founding of the University of Utah in 1850. It includes departments of mathematics, physics and astronomy, chemistry and the School of Biological Sciences—a progression of disciplines that encompasses the structures and processes of life, the universe and, well, everything.

As one of the largest colleges at the U, the College of Science includes around 2,100 undergraduate students and nearly 500 graduate students, with 143 faculty members. In FY 2021, the college received $36 million in research funding.

In recent years the college has renovated the George Thomas Building into the Crocker Science Center and is planning the renovation and expansion, in collaboration with the College of Mines and Earth Sciences, of the William Stewart Building into the 140,000-square-foot Applied Sciences Building.

Learn more about the College of Science and College of Mines and Earth Sciences.

 

by Paul Gabrielsen, first published at @theU.

 

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College Rankings

September 1, 2022

College Rankings

U.S. News & World Report has released their 2022-2022 National University Rankings. The University of Utah is now ranked No. 1 in Utah and No. 42 nationally among public universities.

The College of Science fared even better. National rankings for public universities put Biology at No. 13, Chemistry at No. 20, Mathematics at No. 22, and Physics & Astronomy at No. 47.

There are many factors used to determine a school’s final ranking in the U.S. News & World Report but one factor that is not considered is cost. When cost is factored, there are few universities that challenge the University of Utah.

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