faculty-news | College of Science

GSL Strike Team

February 9, 2023

Utah’s public research universities – The University of Utah and Utah State University – formed the Great Salt Lake Strike Team to provide a primary point of contact for policymakers as they address the economic, health, and ecological challenges created by the record-low elevation of Great Salt Lake. Together with state agency professionals, the Strike Team brings together experts in public policy, hydrology, water management, climatology, and dust to provide impartial, data-informed, and solution-oriented support for Utah decision-makers. The Strike Team does not advocate but rather functions in a technical, policy-advisory role as a service to the state.

The Great Salt Lake Strike Team developed an evaluation scorecard to create apples-to-apples comparisons of the most often proposed options. By briefly outlining these policies and providing necessary context, options, and tradeoffs, we give an overview of expected water gains, monetary costs, environmental impacts, and feasibility. Many options work in conjunction with others, particularly “Commit Conserved Water to Great Salt Lake” which is foundational to shepherding water conserved through other policy options to the lake.

Fellow of the AAAS

February 2, 2023

Vahe Bandarian is among the 506 newly-elected Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

AAAS members have been awarded this honor because of their scientifically or socially distinguished efforts to advance science or its applications. Other fellows currently at the U including Nancy Songer, dean of the College of Education, Thure Cerling, recipient of the 2022 Rosenblatt Prize and Mario Capecchi, 2007 Nobel laureate. The U’s first Fellow was geologist and former university president James Talmage, elected in 1906. Election as a Fellow is an honor bestowed upon AAAS members by their peers.

New Fellows will be presented with a gold and blue (representing science and engineering, respectively) rosette pin and gather in spring 2023 in Washington, D.C. Fellows will also be announced in the AAAS News & Notes section of the journal Science in February 2023.

Bandarian, professor of chemistry and associate dean for student affairs in the College of Science, was elected for “discoveries in the field of tRNA modifications and key contribution to mechanistic basis of radical-mediated transformations leading to complex natural products.”

“I was thrilled when I heard the news and humbled by it,” he says.

Bandarian’s lab studies how bacterial enzymes participate in producing natural chemical products, including many products that aren’t required for the bacteria to grow, but can provide a competitive advantage in the bacteria’s ecosystem.

“These compounds span a large swath of chemical space and include modified bases in RNA, modified peptides and small molecules,” he says. “Our overall goal is to discover and understand the details of these enzymatic transformations.”

Beyond studying natural processes, Bandarian is also interested in how the process of biosynthesis, including these enzymes, can be used to produce designed compounds that could have therapeutic properties.

$1M Grant to Chemists

January 30, 2023

Grant from the W.M. Keck Foundation will help chemists learn how molecules crystallize, potentially saving time in developing new drugs and industrial materials.

Michael Grünwald

Michael Grünwald, Ryan Looper and Rodrigo Noriega, of the University of Utah Department of Chemistry, received a $1 million grant from the W.M. Keck Foundation funding studies of currently unpredictable aspects of the process of crystallization. Accurate models of how molecules come together to form solid structures will help save time in developing new pharmaceuticals and industrial materials, since researchers will be able to bypass lengthy and expensive screening processes.

“Developing a new drug that is effective, safe and affordable is an enormously expensive and time-consuming process”, says Michael Grünwald. “With our research on how drug molecules crystallize, we hope to really speed things up, so that new antibiotics or antivirals drugs can reach patients more quickly and cheaply.”

Rodrigo Noriega

Predicting how molecules will form crystals is, in the researchers’ words, “extraordinarily difficult.” A crystal is an arrangement of atoms or molecules in a repeating pattern, held together by attractive forces between them. While these atoms or molecules, like Legos, could possibly be arranged in many different ways, the principles of thermodynamics suggest that they will simply arrange themselves in the crystalline structure that maximizes their favorable interactions, just like magnets arrange themselves in a pattern dictated by the magnetic forces between them. This principle works very well for many simple crystalline substances, like table salt or gold, which only have one or two types of atoms and always form the same crystal structure.

Unfortunately, it often doesn’t work that way for organic drug molecules. These molecules are made up of tens or hundreds of atoms and can produce a variety of crystal structures. Often, when developing a new drug, only one of these structures has the “Goldilocks” properties of being stable enough that the drug doesn’t degrade but unstable enough that it can dissolve in the human body. Identifying which of these different crystal structures, or polymorphs, is the right one and how to reproducibly make the right polymorph requires dedicated teams of researchers, significant experimentation and time—ultimately delaying the delivery of life-saving medicines to the patient.

Ryan Looper

Grünwald, Looper and Noriega, along with graduate students and postdoctoral researchers, have an idea that may help make the process of predicting crystal structures simpler. Current models of crystal formation assume that crystals are built one molecule at a time. But the U team proposes that they’re likely built in chunks of two, three or more molecules, called oligomers, and that this process, rather than leading to the crystal structure favored by thermodynamics, instead picks crystallization pathways that are favored kinetically. Favoring one process over another kinetically simply means picking the faster option—like choosing restaurant X over Y because, even though you like Y’s food better, the wait is much shorter at X.

The team brings together a diverse set of researchers that study chemistry in very different ways: Grünwald is a chemical theorist who develops computer simulations to describe chemical processes, Noriega is a spectroscopist who studies the behavior of molecules in solution and Looper is a medicinal chemist who prepares and studies new drug substances. “Combining our expertise will allow us to build new models, compare them to experiments and extract insights to design new chemical systems”, says Noriega. As a group they aim to create a set of tools to help other chemists select the crystal structures they want and produce them quickly and purely.

“Crystal structure prediction of new drug molecules has the potential to really impact people’s well-being by expediting the development process and lowering the cost,” Looper says. “I am excited about our ideas to improve the drug development process, but many questions remain unanswered. The idea that thermodynamics might not accurately predict crystallization is quite controversial in the field. The Keck foundation’s support of our research is essential to provide new evidence to convince scientists to think a different way.”

About the W. M. Keck Foundation

The W. M. Keck Foundation was established in 1954 in Los Angeles by William Myron Keck, founder of The Superior Oil Company. One of the nation’s largest philanthropic organizations, the W. M. Keck Foundation supports outstanding science, engineering and medical research. The Foundation also supports undergraduate education and maintains a program within Southern California to support arts and culture, education, health and community service projects.

Pauling Medal

January 6, 2023

Dr. Cynthia Burrows

Distinguished Professor Dr. Cynthia Burrows is the 2022 Pauling Medal awardee.

Cynthia J. Burrows, Distinguished Professor in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Utah, where she is also the Thatcher Presidential Endowed Chair of Biological Chemistry. Burrows was the Senior Editor of the Journal of Organic Chemistry (2001-2013) and became Editor-in-Chief of Accounts of Chemical Research in 2014.

Burrows acquired a B.A. degree in Chemistry at the University of Colorado (1975). There she worked on Stern-Volmer plots in Stanley Cristol's laboratory during her senior year. She continued to study physical organic chemistry at Cornell University, where she received a Ph.D. degree in Chemistry in 1982 working in Barry Carpenter's laboratory. Her Ph.D. thesis work focused on cyano-substituted allyl vinyl ethers. Burrows then conducted a short post-doctoral research stint with Jean-Marie Lehn in Strasbourg, France.

The Pauling Medal recognizes chemists who have made outstanding national and international contributions to the field. It was named for Dr. Linus Pauling and is presented by the Puget Sound and Portland sections of the American Chemical Society. Dr. Burrows was awarded her medal October 29th, 2022 in Portland, Oregon, with speeches by Valeria Molinero, Alison Butler, and Jonathon Sessler.

The Burrows laboratory is interested in nucleic acid chemistry, DNA sequencing technology, and DNA damage. Her research team (consisting of organic, biological, analytical and inorganic chemists) focuses on chemical processes that result in the formation of mutations, which could lead to diseases (such as cancer). Her work includes studying site-specifically modified DNA and RNA strands and DNA-protein cross linking. Burrows and her group are widely known for expanding the studies on nanopore technology by developing a method for detecting DNA damage using a nanopore.

One of the objectives of the Burrows Laboratory is to apply nanopore technology to identify, quantify, and analyze DNA damage brought on by oxidative stresses. Burrows focuses on the damage found in human telomeric sequences, crucial chromosomal regions that provide protection from degradation and are subject to problems during DNA replication. Additionally, Burrows’ research in altering nucleic acid composition can provide valuable information in genetic diseases as well as manipulating the function of DNA and RNA in cells.

Awards and honors include:

NSF - CNRS Exchange of Scientists Fellowship, 1981–82
Japan Soc. for the Promotion of Science Research Fellow, 1989–90
NSF Creativity Award, 1993–95
NSF Career Advancement Award, 1993–94
Bioorganic & Natural Products Study Section, NIH, 1990–94
NSF Math & Physical Sciences Advisory Committee, 2005–08
Assoc. Editor, Organic Letters, 1999–2002
Senior Editor, Journal of Organic Chemistry, 2001–13
Robert W. Parry Teaching Award, 2002
ACS Utah Award, 2000
Bea Singer Award, 2004
Fellow, AAAS, 2004
Distinguished Scholarly and Creative Research Award, Univ. of Utah, 2005
Cope Scholar Award, American Chemical Society, 2008
Director, USTAR Governing Authority, 2009-2017
Member, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2009
ACS Fellow, 2010
Distinguished Teaching Award, 2011
Editor-in-Chief, Accounts of Chemical Research, 2014
Linda K. Amos Award for Distinguished Service to Women of U of U, 2014
Member, National Academy of Science, 2014
ACS James Flack Norris Award in Physical Organic Chemistry, 2018
Willard Gibbs Award, 2018

Art & Air Quality

January 3, 2023

Wendy Wischer

Public art piece finds common ground in the fight for air quality.

UTA Trax cars zip from University hills to west-side valleys, past schools, shops and churches. Carrying more than just passengers, these cars hold research-grade air quality sensors. They catalog things we can’t see—ozone, the valley’s main summertime polluter, and PM 2.5, the particulate matter that blankets our wintertime, turning Salt Lake City into a snow globe of ash. Soon they’ll carry something else: segments of public art piece In Search of Blue Sky, decorating Trax car interiors and the sides of public buses. The installation seeks both to raise community awareness of the air quality data and embed it with personal meaning. “Just putting data out there doesn’t move people, doesn’t change people,” says Wendy Wischer, the project’s artist. “Artwork can pull at emotions, and to act, we need to be moved emotionally.”

Wischer was first approached by John Lin several years ago when the sensors were installed. Both faculty at the University of Utah, Wischer teaches Sculpture Intermedia in the College of Fine Arts and Lin is a professor of Atmospheric Sciences. They received funding through the university’s Global Change & Sustainability Center (GCSC), described on its website as “an interdisciplinary hub catalyzing research on global [climate] change and sustainability.” Creative Writing Ph.D. candidate Lindsey Webb from the College of Humanities became their student collaborator, who collaborated with Wischer and Lin to write the text.

John Lin

“The more we care about each other [and] the more we feel connected to each other, the more we’re going to take action that supports a healthier environment for everybody.”

Wischer boasts a long resume of environmental art installations, having collaborated with geologists and engineers in the past. Her work explores boundaries and the places where art and science collide. Art brings a different perspective and problem-solving process to climate issues, one Wischer believes may help us navigate their complexity. “I often am seeking connecting threads between disparate ideas,” she says. “We need the disciplinary expertise, but we also need to think about … incorporating those skill sets in different ways.”

The In Search of Blue Sky panels will be a pop of color in the cityscape, each one boasting a short poem or phrase on a serene, blue-sky backdrop. Wispy cirrus clouds seen in fair weather drift lazily from one panel to the next. Webb’s words are simple, yet poetic meditations on the air around us, its beauty and degradation. In Search of Blue Sky’s simplicity may be its strongest asset—in the chaos of traffic, billboards and advertisements, it’s a breath of fresh air. It evokes a longing for that simplicity, just out of memory.

A QR code or URL lets passersby with a smartphone instantly access both the project’s website and the data collected in real-time by the Wasatch Environmental Observatory (WEO), perhaps even captured by the train car they’re sitting in. Wischer says, “I hope that this curiosity sparks conversations and that people will take further action, whether that’s riding more public transportation … [or] voting in ways that support certain policies and programs.” The data is meant for everyone. But, says Wischer, most people don’t know it exists. The campaign is accessible and bilingual (both the signage and website are in English and Spanish), and she hopes it will inspire people to learn and care more about the issue, inciting action in whatever form that might take.

Interior signage for buses and trains.

Air quality has been a pressing issue in Salt Lake City for a long time, though little has been done on the state and city levels to address it. One notable takeaway from the data is the inequitable distribution of hazardous air quality. Although everyone is affected, communities on the west side and lower-income areas suffer the most as the negative health effects of air pollution compound with other structural inequalities. As in all climate fights, our greatest weapon comes in community; our strongest allies are each other. Wischer wants the art of In Search of Blue Sky to remind us that we all have a stake in the fight. “The more we care about each other [and] the more we feel connected to each other, the more we’re going to take action that supports a healthier environment for everybody,” she says

“I often am seeking connecting threads between disparate ideas.”

Wischer believes that the biggest victories in the climate fight often come from local, grassroots efforts. “There are a number of different solutions that might be available,” she says, “but we can’t even get there if we don’t have conversations. We have to have common ground to understand why this is important and why we should care about a neighborhood that’s affected differently than our own.” One solution is public transportation, the vessel for In Search of Blue Sky. Wischer notes that the messages inside the Trax cars are different from those outside—they’re messages of thanks. “We’re always saying ‘oh, you should do this, you should do that.’ Rarely do we say ‘thank you’ for actually doing it,” says Wischer.

Our air is precious. When it’s abundant, we hardly notice it. After three short minutes without it, we die. In Search of Blue Sky reminds us what we’re fighting for; it reminds us that we’re all in this together.

Utah Transit Authority Bus Advertising

In Search of Blue Sky will run on UTA buses and Trax cars through the month of January, when Salt Lake’s winter inversion is at its worst. To learn more about the project, visit ecoart.website.

Storm Peak Laboratory

December 21, 2022

Gannet Hallar in the lab.

There are only a handful of high elevation weather labs in the world, and one of them sits at the top of the Steamboat Ski Area.

Maybe you’ve noticed that building just at the top of the Morning Side Chairlift at the Steamboat Ski Resort with all the crazy antennae and satellite dishes on the roof, and wondered what goes on there. While some local organizations are lucky enough to get inside those doors for special tours, the facility is not open to the public.

The Storm Peak Laboratory is an atmospheric science and snow hydrology research center run by the University of Utah, whose mission is to advance discovery and understanding within these scientific fields. In other words, just as you are out there enjoying the fresh air and pristine wilderness that surrounds the ski area, you’ve got some of the best scientists in the world just a few feet away doing their best to protect it.

Storm Peak Laboratory was constructed during the summer of 1995 in the Rocky Mountains of northwestern Colorado (3220 m M.S.L.; 40.455 deg N, -106.744 deg W). The new facility is the latest stage of an evolutionary process of providing a practical, easily accessible facility for researchers, teachers and students of all ages and abilities.

Snow study plot @ 10,000 ft.

We caught up with Dr. Gannet Hallar, Professor at the University of Utah in the Department of Atmospheric Science, who is the director of Storm Peak Laboratory. Under her leadership, the lab has undergone major changes including new instrumentation, new field courses and a significant building expansion. She host many undergraduate and graduate level field courses at the laboratory from a variety of institutions, including the University of Utah, University of Colorado, Texas A&M, etc.

Tell us about this facility and what makes it special.
We are located at the top of the Steamboat Ski Resort next to the Morning Side chairlift in the Routt National Forest. The lab maintains a special use permit through Forest Service for the land surrounding the facility. We are a unique high mountain in-cloud facility, one of only a few in the country

Storm Peak Lab with a coating of rime.

What kind of research is conducted there?
We do atmospheric science research. We study the impact that gasses and aerosols in the atmosphere have on climate and human health. We also study clouds and what types of particles make clouds, as well as water and ice content in clouds.

What is the commute like and how do you get all the gear up there?
On most days we take the chairlift. We have a Pisten Bully snowcat and use snowmobiles to transport equipment. Some of our researchers use snowshoes to walk to and from the chairlift because they don’t ski.

Mountain meteorology class.

Who is studying there?
Atmospheric scientists who study particles, clouds, and gasses, and we also host snow hydrologists. We have people come from all around the country. We have some permanent staff, but we always have different groups visiting. Right now, we have a group from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and a group from the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder. We also conduct a lot of field classes for students from universities all over the country. We have a 9-person bunk house, full kitchen, classroom and meeting room. The facility is 2,500 square feet.

What’s the data used for?
We do long term monitoring of several things to investigate atmospheric trends. We are part of an international global atmospheric watch program that collects long term data on particles in the atmosphere and measures trace gasses and how they change over time. Similar to all other sites, we are seeing a significant increase in greenhouse gasses, especially CO². We are also seeing changes to an increasing number of wildlife. We keep a long-term data record that goes into national database and publish papers on what we find about what is changing in our atmosphere.

The deck at Storm Peak.

Are you publicly or privately funded?
We are primarily federally funded and receive most of our funding from the National Science Foundation. It’s always a challenge to stay sustainable and the government shutdown really affected us. If you’re interested in supporting the lab, we always appreciate donations, which can be given through our website.

What is your mission?
A lot of technology development happens here. For example, our group from MIT is developing new technology to measure clouds which has the potential to address climate change and improve the de-icing of airplanes. We also do a lot of graduate and undergraduate training up here. One thing we are very proud of is how many students are trained in this facility, approximately 100 every year.

Clarivate’s Most Cited

December 1, 2022

Peter Stang One of Clarivate's Most Cited Scientists.

Each year, Clarivate identifies the world’s most influential researchers ─ the select few who have been most frequently cited by their peers over the last decade. In 2022, fewer than 7,000, or about 0.1%, of the world's researchers, in 21 research fields and across multiple fields, have earned this exclusive distinction.

Peter Stang is among this elite group recognized for his exceptional research influence, demonstrated by the production of multiple highly-cited papers that rank in the top 1% by citations for field and year in the Web of Science.

Peter Stang was born in Nuremberg, Germany to a German mother and Hungarian father. He lived in Hungary for most of his adolescence. In school, he took rigorous mathematics and science courses. At home, he made black gunpowder from ingredients at the drugstore, and developed a pH indicator from the juice of red cabbage that his mother cooked, and sold to his "fellow chemists".

In 1956, when Stang was in the middle of his sophomore year in high school, he and his family fled the Soviet invasion of Hungary and immigrated to Chicago, Illinois. Not speaking English, Stang failed his American history and English courses but scored at the top of his class in science and math. His teachers were confused by his performance and gave him an IQ test. Stang was confused by the unfamiliar format of the test and scored a 78. In spite of this, Stang was admitted to DePaul University and earned his undergraduate degree in 1963. He received his Ph.D. in 1966 from the University of California, Berkeley.

After a postdoctoral fellowship at Princeton Universitywith Paul Schleyer, he joined the chemistry faculty at the University of Utah in 1969. He became dean of the College of Science in 1997 and stepped down as dean in 2007. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, The American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a foreign member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He was editor-in-chief of the Journal of Organic Chemistry from 2000 to 2001, and Editor-in-Chief of the ACS flagship journal, Journal of the American Chemical Society (2002-2020).

Awards & Honors

Priestley Medal, (2013)
National Medal of Science, (2010)
Paul G. Gassman Distinguished Service Award of the ACS Division of Organic Chemistry, (2010)
F.A. Cotton Medal for Excellence in Chemical Research of the American Chemical Society (2010)
Honorary Professor CAS Institute of Chemistry, Beijing, Zheijiang U; East China Normal U and East China U of Science and Technology, (2010)
Fred Basolo Medal for Outstanding Research in Inorganic Chemistry, (2009)
Foreign Member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, (2007)
ACS Award for Creative Research and Applications of Iodine Chemistry, (2007)
Linus Pauling Award, (2006)
Foreign Member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (2006)
Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2002)
Member of the National Academy of Sciences.
ACS George A. Olah Award in Hydrocarbon or Petroleum Chemistry, (2003)
Member, AAAS Board of Directors, (2003–2007)
Robert W. Parry Teaching Award, (2000)
ACS James Flack Norris Award in Physical Organic Chemistry, (1998)
University of Utah Rosemblatt Prize for Excellence, (1995)
Utah Award in Chemistry, American Chemical Society, (1994)
Utah Governor's Medal for Science and Technology, (1993)
Honorary Doctorate of Science (D. Sc. honoris causa) Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia (1992)
Fulbright Senior Scholar, (1987–1988)
Univ. of Utah Distinguished Research Award, (1987)
Fellow AAAS, JSPS Fellow (1985, 1998)
Lady Davis Fellowship (Visiting Professor), Technion, Israel, (1986, 1997)
Humboldt "Senior U.S. Scientist" Award, (1977, 1996, 2010)
Associate Editor, Journal of the American Chemical Society (1982–1999)
National Organic Symposium Executive Officer (1985)

Construction Update

October 10, 2022

This important project will provide new and updated space to serve the University of Utah’s educational and research mission. It will serve as the new home for the Departments of Physics & Astronomy and Atmospheric Sciences, focusing on aerospace, semiconductor technology, biotechnology, data science, hazardous weather forecasting, and air quality. Together, the two departments teach more than 5,600 students. See why the University of Utah College of Science is so excited about launching this project.

New construction will provide a 56 percent increase in experimental and computer lab capacity. There will be 40,700 square feet of renovated space in the historic Stewart Building and a 100,00 square foot new addition. The project will preserve and restore the historic character of the William Stewart Building while introducing a modern yet complementary design for the new addition. The new building’s exterior finishes will resemble the latest addition to the Crocker Science building next door.

Tree protection plans are in place, and the project team has taken steps to ensure the safety and preservation of Cottams Gulch, which will remain open and accessible during construction. In addition, the project team is working with Simmons Pioneer Memorial Theater leadership to ensure construction does not affect theater activities.

Cottam's Gulch

What to Expect - Construction Impacts

Project construction timeline: October 2022 – May 2025
Construction hours are 7 am – 7 pm
The installation of six-foot-tall construction fencing around the project site will begin the second week of October
The existing rock wall near the University Avenue sidewalk will be dismantled for the duration of construction and restored when construction nears completion.
Construction traffic will enter and exit the project site via University Street; Full-time road flaggers will be in place to assist with traffic safety and flow
Sidewalks directly east of the Stewart building will be closed; signage will be in place to direct pedestrians east of the construction zone around the Life Sciences building
Visit the Applied Science Project construction website.

Utah F.O.R.G.E.

October 5, 2022

The Utah FORGE Project

The Frontier Observatory for Geothermal Research

There is something deceptively simple about geothermal energy. The crushing force of gravity compacts the earth to the point where its molten metal center is 9,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Even thousands of miles out near the surface, the temperature is still hundreds of degrees.

In some places, that heat reaches the surface, either as lava flowing up through volcanic vents, or as steaming water bubbling up in hot springs. In those places, humans have been using geothermal energy since the dawn of time.

But what if we could drill down into the rock and, in essence, create our own hot spring? That is the idea behind “enhanced geothermal systems,” and the most promising such effort in the world is happening in Beaver County.

Called Utah FORGE (Frontier Observatory for Geothermal Research), the site 10 miles north of Milford is little more than a drill pad and a couple of buildings on Utah School and Institutional Trust Lands Administration land. But it is the U.S. Department of Energy’s foremost laboratory for enhanced geothermal research, and the University of Utah is the scientific overseer. Seven years ago, the U of U’s proposal won out in a national competition against three of the DOE’s own national laboratories.

“If you have to pick the best area in the country to build an EGS plant, you’re going to be driven to Milford. DOE recognized that in 2015,” said Joseph N. Moore, a University of Utah Professor with the Department of Geology & Geophysics and the principal investigator for Utah FORGE.

Professor Joseph N. Moore

Among the advantages:

It’s in a known area of thermal activity. Nearby is Roosevelt Hot Springs, and a small nearby geothermal plant has been producing electricity for about 30,000 homes for years.
It has hundreds of cubic miles hot granite below the surface with no water flowing through it.
There is accessible water that can’t be used for drinking or agriculture because it contains too many naturally occurring minerals. But that water can be used for retrieving heat from underground.
It has access to transmission lines. Beaver County is home to a growing amount of wind and solar power generation, helping access to consumers.

DOE has invested $50 million in FORGE, and now it’s adding another $44 million in research money. The U of U is soliciting proposals from scientists.

“These new investments at FORGE, the flagship of our EGS research, can help us find the most innovative, cost-effective solutions and accelerate our work toward wide-scale geothermal deployment and support President Biden’s ambitious climate goals,” said Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm.

The idea is to drill two deep wells more than a mile down into solid granite that registers around 400 degrees. Then cold water is pumped down one well so hot water can be pulled out through the second well. One of those wells has been drilled, and the second is planned for next year.

But if it’s solid rock, how does the water get from one well to the other? The scientists have turned to a technology that transformed the oil and gas industry: hydraulic fracturing, also known as “fracking.” They are pumping water down under extremely high pressures to create or expand small cracks in the rock, and those cracks allow the cold water to flow across the hot rock to the second well. They have completed some hydraulic fracturing from the first well.

Moore is quick to point out that using a fracturing process for geothermal energy does not produce the environmental problems associated with oil and gas fracking, largely because it doesn’t generate dirty wastewater and gases. Further, the oil released in the fracturing can lubricate underground faults, and removing the oil and gas creates gaps, both of which lead to more and larger earthquakes.

Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm

The fracturing in enhanced geothermal does produce seismic activity that seismologists are monitoring closely, Moore said, but the circumstances are much different. In geothermal fracturing, there is only water, and it can be returned to the ground without contamination. And producing fractures in an isolated piece of granite is less likely to affect faults. The hope, he said, is that once there are enough cracks for sufficient flow from one pipe to the other, it can produce continuous hot water without further fracturing.

And it never runs out. Moore said that even 2% of the available geothermal energy in the United States would be enough the power the nation by itself.

This next round of $44 million in federal funding is about taking that oil and gas process and making it specific to enhanced geothermal. That includes further seismic study, and coming up with the best “proppant” — the material used to keep the fracture open. Oil and gas use fracking sand to keep the cracks open, and the higher temperatures of geothermal make that challenging.

“FORGE is a derisking laboratory,” said Moore, meaning the U of U scientists, funded by the federal government, are doing some heavy lifting to turn the theory of EGS into a practical clean-energy solution. He said drilling wells that deep costs $70,000 a day. They drill 10 to 13 feet per hour, and it takes six hours just to pull out a drill to change the bit, something they do every 50 hours. That early, expensive work makes it easier for private companies to move the technology into a commercially viable business. Moore said all of the research is in the public domain.

Moore said FORGE doesn’t employ many full-time employees in Beaver County at this point, but it has used local contractors for much of the work, and it has filled the county’s hotel rooms for occasional meetings. High school students have also been hired to help with managing core samples from the deep wells.

“They’ve collaborated really well with the town,” said Milford Mayor Nolan Davis. Moore and others have made regular presentations to his city council, and they’ve sponsored contests in the high school to teach students about geothermal energy. People in town, Davis said, are well aware that the world is watching Utah FORGE, and there is hope geothermal energy will become a larger presence if and when commercial development begins. “We hope they can come in and maybe build several small power plants.”

Davis also noted that the power from Beaver County’s solar and wind plants are already contracted to California. “We’d like to get some power we can keep in the county.”

College Merger

September 3, 2022

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.

Great Salt Lake Strike Team

Strike Team Policy Options

>> HOME <<

Fellow of the AAAS

Vahe Bandarian is among the 506 newly-elected Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

>> Home <<

$1M Grant to Chemists

Grant from the W.M. Keck Foundation will help chemists learn how molecules crystallize, potentially saving time in developing new drugs and industrial materials.

About the W. M. Keck Foundation

>> HOME <<

Dr. Cynthia J. Burrows

Distinguished Professor Dr. Cynthia Burrows is the 2022 Pauling Medal awardee.

>> HOME <<

Art & Air Quality

Public art piece finds common ground in the fight for air quality.

“The more we care about each other [and] the more we feel connected to each other, the more we’re going to take action that supports a healthier environment for everybody.”

“I often am seeking connecting threads between disparate ideas.”

>> HOME <<

Storm Peak Laboratory

There are only a handful of high elevation weather labs in the world, and one of them sits at the top of the Steamboat Ski Area.

UteQuake

Cowles Building

‘Life of Tree’ Returns to Life in the Crocker Science Cntr.

CAPE-K

South Biology

Skaggs Building

Peter Stang

Peter Stang One of Clarivate's Most Cited Scientists.

Awards & Honors

>> HOME <<

Construction Update

>> Home <<

Utah F.O.R.G.E.

The Frontier Observatory for Geothermal Research

>> HOME <<

College Merger

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

“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.”

How it happened

What will and won’t change

Get to know the colleges

>> HOME <<