atmos-news

Safe Landings Weather-wise

September 27, 2023

SAFE LANDINGS Weather-wise

 

Aviation meteorologists like 2008 atmospheric science alumnus Warren Weston connect the dots between severe weather and flight schedules by creating detailed forecasts to help planes and their travelers arrive at destinations safely.

From thunderstorms and limited visibility to scorching temperatures and turbulence, the weather dictates when and where planes can fly. Severe weather is the leading cause of air travel disruptions in the United States.

Aviation meteorologists plan for and around difficult conditions, crafting weather forecasts used to determine the nuances of flights, from altitude to optimal routes. They play an essential role in ensuring travelers get to their destinations safely and efficiently.

Several major domestic carriers, including Delta Air Lines, have in-house meteorologists who monitor global weather 24 hours a day. Delta has 28 meteorologists on staff — the largest team of any airline, it declares — who sit in the carrier’s Operations and Customer Center, alongside flight dispatchers, customer service agents and hundreds of other staffers, at its headquarters in Atlanta.

In this cavernous and screen-filled room, Warren Weston, Delta’s lead meteorologist, recently spoke about the importance of data, the difference between surface weather and upper-air hazards, and how even one degree of temperature can change a flight plan. The conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Photo credit: Delta Air Lines

Read the full Q&A with Warren Weston conducted by journalist Christine Chung in the New York Times.

GSL is Becoming Too Salty to Support Life

August 22, 2023

GSL: Too Salty TO SUPPORT LIFE?

 

 

Antelope Island, the largest island in Utah’s Great Salt Lake, has not been an island for many years; indeed, its southern shore now extends into Salt Lake City. An eight-foot fence has been built to keep the island’s bison from roaming into the nearby airport and to protect its herd of bighorn sheep from cattle diseases. As the lake shrinks, Farmington Bay, to the island’s east, is rapidly disappearing too, so that Antelope will soon be attached to the string of suburbs north of the city by playa—the exposed, dry lake bed. Here, new housing developments, each near bright white churches and with names like “Shoreline,” rise up quickly on the former wetlands. A new highway is under construction to funnel commuters to downtown Salt Lake City. Toxic algal blooms and invasive phragmite have appeared around the outflow pipes from the North Davis Sewer District wastewater treatment plant, which now flow directly into the shallows of Farmington Bay. The new pipe will funnel treated wastewater to the far side of the island, in the hope that deeper, saltier waters will dilute the sewage.

Last November, the Great Salt Lake, the largest saline lake in the Western Hemisphere, reached its lowest water level ever recorded—and its highest concentration of salt.  A toxic lake bed is emerging from the receding water as the suburban sprawl inches ever closer to meet it. At the shore of Antelope Island, where the briny water of the lake laps against land, Utah’s water issues also become air issues. “It’s like a bathtub, or a toilet bowl, with no drain,” Molly Blakowski, PhD candidate in the Department of Watershed Sciences at Utah State University, said of the lake. What we discard into the watershed ends up in the lake—and, increasingly, our air.

Since Mormon settlers arrived in 1847, the lake has been used as both a dumping ground and a source of profit from mineral extraction and brine shrimp harvesting. There is still money to be made from the lake’s water. But there’s no plan to protect the health of the 1.2 million people who live in the Salt Lake Valley and the hundreds of thousands more expected to arrive—let alone the tiny brine flies that uphold a vibrant ecosystem that extends far across the American West. And those at greatest risk are those who won’t be able to leave.

This is the cover story of the The Nation magazine 4/12/2013 where you can read the full story by KATHARINE S. WALTER.

What happened to Co2 emissions during pandemic lockdown?

June 28, 2023

Reduced traffic during the COVID-19 lockdown was likely the primary driver behind reduced CO2 emissions in Salt Lake City (SLC), according to a new study led by University of Utah professors Derek Mallia and John Lin, published in the Journal of Geophysical Research – Atmospheres.

Derek Mallia

High-density measurements of CO2 were combined with a statistical model to estimate reductions in greenhouse gas emissions across SLC during the lockdown.

The paper reports on evidence of an observable decrease in anthropogenic CO2 emissions. The analysis used measurements from the Salt Lake area’s two CO2 networks–Utah Urban Carbon Dioxide Network (UUCON) and a CO2 instrument installed on a light-rail train car (TRAX) that traverses the Salt Lake Valley. Together, the two networks estimated CO2 concentrations across SLC. The results suggest that high-density CO2 monitoring networks could be used to track the decarbonization of cities.

Of the paper, titled “Can we detect urban-scale CO2 emission changes within medium-sized cities?” Mallia said, “This work demonstrates that mobile-based carbon monitoring networks, like the one deployed on Salt Lake City’s TRAX train, will be critical tools for tracking decarbonization efforts for cities across the globe.”

Given that over half of anthropogenic CO2 is emitted from urban areas, cities will play a pivotal role in future decarbonization efforts, and quantifying CO2 emissions at the city-scale will be important for determining whether cities are meeting CO2 decarbonization targets.

The research was funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Climate Program Office (CPO) as part of an air quality research initiative to track impacts of COVID-19 lockdowns & recovery on urban atmospheric composition. The research showed that CO2 emissions across SLC relative to 2019 were reduced by ~20% during the first COVID-19 lockdown and that the largest reductions in CO2 were likely driven by reduced traffic, especially in downtown SLC on the northern end of the Salt Lake Valley.

Unlike other cities used to investigate emission reductions during the COVID-19 lockdown, SLC is a medium-sized metropolitan area with a population just over 1 million people and emits an order of magnitude less CO2 relative to larger cities like Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Washington DC/Baltimore. Determining whether CO2 emissions reductions are traceable for smaller cities and metropolitan areas has been an outstanding question which this paper now addresses. The study is the first to demonstrate that CO2 emissions in medium/small cities can be measured.

“While no one wishes for a repeat of the COVID shutdown, it does illustrate the large leverage a shift in societal behavior has on reducing greenhouse emissions, whether from reduced traffic or the transition to electric vehicles,” said Lin.

Ultimately, the analysis carried out here suggests that inverse models, combined with stationary and mobile CO2 observations, can track modest emission reductions in medium-sized cities, and to some degree, geographically identify emission adjustments at the city-scale. According to the researchers, novel urban CO2 observation networks, like the TRAX network, combined with new satellite-based measurements approaches, will also play a key role towards monitoring decarbonization efforts in cities.

Other contributors to the paper include Logan Mitchell, Andres Eduardo Gonzalez Vidal, Dien Wu, and Lewis Kunik.. Read the full paper here.

This research was tagged as a highlighted feature by Eos.org

By David Pace

Watch the cool video from Utah Educational Network about monitoring air quality in Salt Lake County along UTA TRAX lines below:  

Utah’s Environmental Challenges

June 27, 2023

“As bad as it is, I think there’s hope,” says John Lin, professor of atmospheric sciences in the College of Science at the University of Utah.

John Lin. Banner photo credit: Jim Steenburgh

Lin, who is also assistant director of the newly formed Wilkes Center for Climate Science & Policy, says the state’s desire to eventually host the Winter Olympics again has added some urgency to the matter of addressing Utah’s climate-related challenges, especially around air quality. He adds that the state’s response to such issues is often reflective of the “Utah way,” in which people with different beliefs talk to each other and work through problems.

The challenges are real, according to a story in U.S. News & World Report which often touts the Beehive State as “best” in many categories. The environment, including air quality, is not, however, one of them.

“With its five national parks, scenic mountain vistas and stunning red rock landscapes, environmental problems likely aren’t top of mind in most people’s perceptions of Utah,” the magazine reports.

“But the proof – and the pollution – is in the data.”

Utah ranks near the bottom in the natural environment category of the magazine’s recently released Best States rankings. “It’s a black mark on a largely sterling record for the No. 1-ranked state overall.”

 

Read the entire article by Elliot Davis Jr.

Dirtiest snow-year in the Wasatch accelerated snowmelt by 17 days

June 23, 2023

As the shrinking Great Salt Lake exposes an ever-growing area of its lakebed, wind-blown dust becomes more dangerous for those living in Utah’s most populous region. It also makes the snowpack dirty, which threatens the state’s most precious resource—water.

“You might see 17 days and think it’s no big deal, but our current snowmelt models don’t account for dust,” said McKenzie Skiles, assistant professor of geography at the U and senior author of a new study in which researchers analyzed the impact of dust on Utah snow during the 2022 season. They found that 2022 had the most dust deposition events and the highest snowpack dust concentrations of any year since observations began in 2009on the paper. “So, the snow is melting, water is coming out earlier and faster than we expect it to, and we’re not prepared to use it in the most efficient way. The landscape is also not expecting the water earlier, so it impacts watershed functionality as well as water availability downstream.”

The study published on June 15, 2023, in the journal Environmental Research Letters.

In 2018 Skiles authored a study that found that a single dust event accelerated snowmelt in the Wasatch by one week. That paper identified the Great Salt Lake as a relatively new dust source due to historically low water levels. Subsequent years of prolonged drought, increased evaporation and sustained agriculture and domestic water consumption drove the Great Salt Lake to record lows in 2021 and 2022 and exposed even more dry lakebed.

“Anecdotally, we kept saying, ‘This is crazy—this is the dirtiest snow in the Wasatch I’ve seen since I started making observations,’” said Skiles. “Ultimately, after we analyzed everything, it was the dirtiest year.”

You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the dust blows …

Derek Mallia

… you need co-author of the study Derek Mallia, a research assistant professor in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at the U. Strong winds can loft dust into the atmosphere and degrade air quality, which can trigger yellow or red air pollution warnings. Dust-on-snow deposition requires a specific set of factors; nearby dust sources, relatively dry conditions and winds that are strong enough to loft dust into the atmosphere. Mallia developed a dust transport model that can pinpoint where the dust on snow originated by synthesizing meteorological and soil data. For every dust event, Mallia ran his model to identify dust sources that were responsible for accelerating snow melt in the Wasatch Mountains.

“We were expecting large areas like the Great Salt Lake Desert to be a major source of dust, but we were somewhat surprised that we observed such large contributions of dust coming from the Great Salt Lake, and especially Farmington Bay. While the lake’s dust sources are much smaller than the West Desert in terms of area, the exposed dry lakebeds are much closer to the Wasatch Mountains,” said Mallia. “These results suggest that the Great Salt Lake is an important factor when it comes to accelerating snow melt across the Wasatch Front and will become a bigger player if it continues to shrink.”

Read the full article by Lisa Potter in @TheU.

 

Geologist Brenda Bowen, to chair Department of Atmospheric Sciences

June 12, 2023

The College of Science and the College of Mines and Earth Sciences (CMES) are pleased to announce that Professor Brenda Bowen has agreed to serve as the next chair of the Department of Atmospheric Sciences (ATMOS).

Bowen is a Professor of Geology and Geophysics and Director of the Global Change and Sustainability Center (GCSC). She will continue as the Director of the GCSC while serving as chair and will replace John Horel who has been at the helm of ATMOS for five years.

“Brenda Bowen is an internationally prominent researcher and an experienced academic leader,” said Peter Trapa, Dean of the College of Science. “Bowen’s vision will guide the Department of Atmospheric Sciences in exciting new directions.” 

“As most of you know, Brenda is a dynamic leader on campus who has a collaborative vision of academics and research,” said Darryl Butt, out-going dean of the CMES to his colleagues. “I am really looking forward to watching the synergy between departments in our merged college structure as you all continue to break down barriers of academics and, as I like to say, make two plus two equal something greater than four.”

 Said Bowen who begins her tour as chair on July 1, 2023, “I am excited for the opportunity to serve as Chair of Atmospheric Sciences.  I look forward to leading ATMOS in a way that creates stronger connections between our departments and the College of Science as a whole. My goal is to build on the department’s leadership in advancing field stations and long-term field-based science, commitment to conducting and advancing community-based research with highly significant societal relevance, and dedication to training students for careers of the future.”  

An interdisciplinary geoscientist, Bowen explores the links between sedimentology, geochemistry and environmental change, particularly in extreme environments.  Recent work is focused on how surface process, groundwater flow and geochemical change impact landscape evolution in human-modified systems using field observations, satellite and airborne remote sensing and a range of lab-based analytical techniques including geochemistry and microscopy. 

In addition to her geologic research and teaching, Bowen works to facilitate interdisciplinary sustainability research, practice, and academic programs that address critical issues related to understanding global change and creating sustainable solutions related to energy, resources, climate and equity.

ATMOS is the leading program of weather and climate related research and education in the Intermountain West and is recognized internationally for its expertise in cloud-climate interactions, mountain meteorology, climate physics and dynamics, weather and climate modeling, and tropical meteorology. The department, which celebrated its 75th anniversary earlier this year, houses research and teaching endeavors that provide the knowledge and tools needed by society to address the challenges posed by hazardous weather and climate change in the 21st century. The department is a student-centered department with faculty who are dedicated graduate student mentors and classroom instructors. Several of ATMOS professors have won college or university-wide teaching awards. For more information, read the department’s 2023 magazine Air Currents.

 

Tinker Toy Rises

June 9, 2023

After months of earth-moving, the Applied Science Project gets some serious hardware.

Senior Risk and Safety Manager Carlyn Chester and flagman Alan. Credit: David Pace

These days pedestrians along University Street on the westside of campus are typically met by Alan, a bearded, sixty-something employee and certified UDOT flagger dressed in Okland Construction garb, including hard hat with neck sunshade that cascades to his shoulders and sometimes flaps in the wind. Alan’s here keeping order at the gated threshold to the construction site of the Applied Science Project and is happy to give you a fist bump as you walk to work along the detour they’ve put up. Armed with a push broom, and a mobile phone, he slows traffic for entering and exiting trucks, and lines up arrivals carrying everything from timbers to a porta-potty called “Honey Bucket.”

On the morning of June 7th, the team was preparing for the delivery of a giant tower crane, in sections, which will stand around 265 feet tall for a full year at the site like a giant Tinker Toy. A tower crane features a jib or “jib arm” as a horizontal beam used to support the load clear of the main support. It can typically lift 19.8 tons (18 metric tons).

“So these cranes are so big they need to have all these counterweights and stuff,” says Carlyn Chester BS’09, Senior Risk and Safety Manager at Okland Construction. She spells her name for us: “Like George Carlin [the late sometimes raunchy comedian] but with a ‘y’ . . . and I’m not a dirty old man,” she says with a laugh. Chester oversees all of the many Okland projects at the University of Utah.  The cranes need to be “strong enough to pick up those tower pieces,” she continues over the relentless beeping of a nearby steer loader pushing gravel.  “You need a crane to build a crane. You have to put in all the counterweights and footings . . . [There are] two big semis worth of materials just to get that crane set up tomorrow before the tower crane comes in.”

Credit: Todd Anderson

The gaping hole in front of the old Stewart Building—site of the new Applied Science Building—is squared off with wooden bulwarks holding up the sides (temporary) backed by a cement retaining wall (permanent). It looks like a neatly squared-off grave for a giant of sorts, two stories deep at the back and the sides sloping down the hill to a mere curb at the street. It’s a striking contrast to the bucolic Cottam’s Gulch with its brick path and towering hybrid trees to the north which will be a preserved historic asset to what will become the College of Science’s Crocker Science Complex.

“Did you find any bones?” we ask. Back in 2017 when the George Thomas Building was being retrofitted and expanded for the Crocker Science Center, Okland unearthed human bones that turned out to be the remains of old cadavers that had been discarded decades earlier by the medical school, originally located in the Life Sciences Building, another Okland project on campus.

“We found a couple of things,” says Chester. “The paleontologist people were here every single day when we were digging.” (It turns out the bones were from modern animals.)

Credit: Todd Anderson

Carlyn points at a boxy, hexagonal structure to the left where a temporary footing has been positioned in the bottom of it. The footing is inspected by a structural engineer “to make sure it’s level and plumb so that when we start building, [the tower crane is] stable. There’s so much science that goes into it and mathematics,” she says.

Meanwhile, Alan has ambled back to the street to talk to a truck driver who has just pulled up. When he returns, he and Carlyn pose for a picture together­–all smiles under their hard hats and neck shades that faintly remind one of Lawrence of Arabia’s. Alone, we ask Alan to “Flash the U” for us which he struggles a bit with. “My dad went to BYU,” he says sheepishly.

Bright and early next morning, Alan was back giving his signature fist bumps to passers-by. They stopped for a few moments to witness the newly arrived crane-to-build-a-crane with a synchronized telescoping boom as high (or higher) than one of those vertiginous, gut-wrenching rides at Lagoon amusement park north of here. Soon the semis arrived with tower segments which were off-loaded, rigged and then lofted off the ground vertically.

Even the rowdy fox squirrels in Cottam’s Gulch paused in a moment of awe as the Tinker Toy began to rise, a flash of yellow latticed steel against the summer sky.

By David Pace

 

 

 

2023 Outstanding Undergraduate Research Mentors

June 2, 2023

The Office of Undergraduate Research has created a faculty award to honor mentors for their work with students. The Outstanding Undergraduate Research Mentor Award, now in its inaugural year, is given to those who were selected by their college leadership and peers for their dedicated service to mentorship.

Of the 420 mentors across campus who worked with the Office of Undergraduate Research this year, two of the 2023 winners of the Outstanding Undergraduate Research Mentor Award are seated in the College of Science: Ofer Rog (biology) and Gannet Hallar (Atmospheric Sciences).

Dr. Ofer Rog’s research focuses on the complex regulation of chromosomes during meiosis. Dr. Rog and his assembled team of top-notch researchers have developed new methods, used innovative approaches, and carried out meticulous studies that are now revealing key elements of this complex process. The work conducted by him and his research group has provided stunning insights into the fundamental cellular processes explaining the origin and maintenance of different sexes, including our own. As Director Frederick Adler states, “Dr. Rog is also an extraordinary communicator with a dedication to helping colleagues and students find new ways to communicate.”

The Mario Capecchi Endowed Chair in the School of Biological Sciences (SBS), Rog was a catalyst in forming and managing the LGBTQ+ STEM interest group in the College of Science. The group seeks to create change in our campus community with an inclusive environment for LGBTQ+ individuals and allies.

You can read about Rog’s work with condensate illustration in a recent feature in SBS’s OUR DNA here.

 

Dr. Gannett Hallar has been successfully mentoring undergraduate researchers at the University of Utah since 2016. Her mentees participate in the Hallar Aerosol Research Team (HART) making connections between the atmosphere, biosphere, and climate. Her mentees have successfully received awards such as the Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program and Wilkes Scholars. Her commitment to mentoring includes her role as a faculty fellow with Utah Pathways to STEM Initiative (UPSTEM), training in inclusive teaching and mentoring strategies.

As stated by Dean Darryl Butt, “Dr. Hallar is a world-class mentor. Her dedication to our undergraduate students comes naturally, but she is also very deliberate in creating a structure of experiential learning that is inherently unforgettable.”

Director of the Storm Peak Lab, the premier, high-elevation atmospheric science laboratory in the Western U.S., Hallar says the facility atop Steamboat Springs Ski Resort is “the perfect place, to have your head in the clouds.” The laboratory sits in the clouds about 40 percent of the time in the winter. “That allows us to sample clouds and the particles that make clouds at the same time. And from that, the lab has produced about 150 peer-reviewed publications.”

Outstanding Undergrad Research Awards 2023

April 25, 2023

The University of Utah is one of the top research academic institutions in the Intermountain West, and it’s thanks in major part to the U’s undergraduate student researchers and the faculty who advise and mentor them.

Some of the university’s up-and-coming researchers and mentors were honored at the 2023 Office of Undergraduate Research (OUR) Awards, held virtually on April 3 due to a winter weather advisory in the Northern Utah area.

Every year, OUR recognizes one undergraduate student researcher from each college/school with the Outstanding Undergraduate Researcher Award, according to the office’s website. Partnering colleges and schools are responsible for selecting the awardee.

Dr. Annie Isabel Fukushima, director of the Office of Undergraduate Research and associate dean of Undergraduate Studies at the U, said the OUR recognizes that to foster a culture of future problem-solvers working in tandem with current premier researchers in their fields of study, they must also foster a culture of recognition and rewards.

This year, 16 undergraduate researchers were honored with the Outstanding Undergraduate Researcher Award, three of them from the College of Science:

Yexalen Barrera-Casas (left) Mentor: Professor Michael Morse, Dept. of Chemistry

Alison Wang (center) Mentor: Professor Caroline Saouma, Dept. of Chemistry

Nancy Sohlberg (right) Mentor: Professor Gannet Hallar, Dept. of Atmospheric Sciences

“The Outstanding Undergraduate Researcher Awards exemplify excellence in research at the University of Utah across the disciplines,” Fukushima said. “The awardees are creative thinkers, innovators, and solving pressing societal problems.”

Dr. Carena Frost, Associate Vice President for Research Integrity and Compliance at the University of Utah, gave opening remarks on behalf of the Office of the Vice President for Research (VPR). Frost told the audience there’s no doubt the student researchers will continue to innovate in science, medicine, technology and many more fields thanks to the work they do.

“Research is all about helping people,” she said. “Finding solutions for our society is what gets me most excited about the future of research at the U, and you are at the forefront of it.”

At the ceremony event, award recipients were able to thank their mentors, family and others for their support. Four students were honored for being Parent Fund Undergraduate Research Scholarship recipients.

For the first time in the event’s history, mentors were honored with the Outstanding Undergraduate Research Mentor Award. Nineteen mentors were recognized at this year’s event.

Fukushima, who is also an associate professor of Ethnic Studies, was one of the mentor award honorees. She said mentoring relationships are successful because of commitment, communication, and a culture — both within a department and university-wide — that is invested in research occurring at all stages of academic, from undergraduate to faculty.

“Student-faculty collaborations are successful because mentors invest the time, and mentees are willing to risk going into the unknown and the uncomfortable,” Fukushima said. “Doing research is hard, but it can be rewarding.”

More information and criteria for both awards can be found on the OUR’s website to see OUR awards program click here.

Fulbright Award

April 3, 2023

Fulbright Award

The U.S. Department of State and the Fulbright Program have announced that Dr. Randall Irmis, Chief Curator and Curator of Paleontology, Associate Professor Geology and Geophysics, University of Utah, has been selected as a Fulbright U.S. Scholar for 2023-2024 for Argentina.

Fulbright Scholar Awards are prestigious and competitive fellowships that provide unique opportunities for scholars to teach and conduct research abroad. Fulbright scholars also play a critical role in U.S. public diplomacy, establishing long-term relationships between people and nations. Alumni include 62 Nobel Laureates, 89 Pulitzer Prize winners, 78 MacArthur Fellows, and thousands of leaders and world-renowned experts in academia and many other fields across the private, public, and non-profit sectors.

Joining the Museum staff in January 2009, Irmis is extensively experienced for someone who is in the early stages of his professional career. He received his PhD in Integrative Biology in December of 2008 from the University of California, Berkeley. In 2004, he received an Extended B.S. in Geology with an Emphasis in Paleontology, graduating Magna Cum Laude from Northern Arizona University.

Irmis's research asks how vertebrate animals living on land evolved through deep time, particularly in response to climate change and other events. This has engaged him in discovering more about the Triassic Period, the oldest known time for dinosaurs. During this time, there were many reptiles living besides dinosaurs, many of which were larger and more abundant than early dinosaurs. This unique fact has Irmis asking the question: Why did dinosaurs become so successful while other animal groups died out?

Irmis’s research has resulted in many field seasons at Ghost Ranch in New Mexico where critical fossils have been found documenting this early time of dinosaur evolution. According to Irmis, Utah also offers the same geologic rock formations as the Triassic Period and possibly fossils that will reveal more about this time period, and Irmis is currently leading field projects to understand what was going on in Utah during this time of early dinosaurs.

The new Fulbright awardee is also leading museum fieldwork in the Late Cretaceous of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument (southern Utah), where his team is investigating why Utah had such unique dinosaur and other reptile species 80-75 million years ago, even though an enterprising dinosaur could have walked from Alaska to the Gulf of Mexico. As Irmis says, "Perhaps the changes in climate and vegetation from north to south kept different species from spreading widely across the continent."

Irmis has published over 100 scientific articles, papers and abstracts, including several papers in the leading scientific journals Science and Nature. He has received many grants and fellowships for his research, including from the National Science Foundation, National Geographic Society, National Park Service, and Bureau of Land Management.

With over 20 years of field experience, Irmis works primarily in the Triassic Chinle Formation of Utah, New Mexico and Arizona; the Late Cretaceous of southern Utah; with other field projects in the Miocene near Bakersfield, California, Triassic and Jurassic of Ethiopia, and Pleistocene of Sonora, Mexico.

Prior to the announcement of his Fulbright, Irmis was recognized with many academic awards and honors throughout his student career, including the 2011 Faculty Research Award from the University of Utah Department of Geology & Geophysics, NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, University of California George D. Louderback Award, and Society of Vertebrate Paleontology Bryan Patterson Memorial Award.

Fulbright exchange experiences lead to greater international co-publication, continued international exchange, and stronger cross-cultural communication skills. The benefits of a Fulbright Scholar Award extend beyond the individual recipient. Fulbright Scholars raise the profile of their home institutions as well.

 

Listen to the Science Friday episode featuring Randall Irmis here.

 

 

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