Neutrino Oscillation Research Advances

July 9, 2024

Neutrinos are also incredibly small and light. They have some mass, but not much and they rarely interact with other matter. They come in three types or "flavors": electron, muon, and tau.

Cosmic rays travel through space then crash into the earth's atmosphere and produce air showers that Include neutrinos and many other types of particles. When neutrinos are produced and start traveling, they can change from one flavor to another. The atmospheric neutrinos are then detected by DeepCore, a denser array of sensors in the center of the IceCube detector at the South Pole.This process is called neutrino oscillation and the IceCube Detector, a massive neutrino detector buried deep in the ice at the South Pole, has a special area called DeepCore that can detect lower-energy neutrinos.

Scientists at the IceCube Neutrino Observatory in Antarctica have made a breakthrough in measuring neutrinos. Using advanced computer techniques, they've achieved the most precise measurements to date of how these particles change as they travel through space, helping us understand fundamental properties of the universe that could lead to new discoveries in physics.

Shiqi Yu

Shiqi Yu, a research assistant professor in the Department of Physics & Astronomy at the University of Utah and others who published their findings recently in Physical Review Letters analyzed data from over 150,000 neutrino events collected over nine years (2012-2021). They used advanced computer programs called convolutional neural networks (CNNs) to process this data. The team made the most precise measurements ever of two important properties related to neutrino oscillation: Delta m²₃₂ and sin²(θ₂₃). These numbers help describe how neutrinos change as they travel.

“We also carefully studied the systematic uncertainties that arise from our imperfect knowledge of our models and chose some to use as free nuisance parameters that fit together with the physics parameters for our data,” says Yu.

Using CNNs, which use three-dimensional data for image classification, Yu and co-lead of the study Jessie Micallef first developed use cases for the CNNs to focus on the DeepCore region and trained them to reconstruct different properties of particle interactions in the detector. They then used the CNN reconstructions to select qualified neutrino interactions that happened in or near the DeepCore region to produce a neutrino-dominated dataset with well-reconstructed energies and zenith angles.

Jessie Micallef

Yu notes that the CNN-reconstructed analysis-level dataset is already being used for other neutrino oscillation analyses, such as determining the neutrino mass ordering and non-standard neutrino interactions and for atmospheric tau neutrino appearance analyses.

“The atmospheric neutrino dataset from DeepCore exhibits relatively high energies in the oscillation analyses, which is unique compared to existing accelerator-based experiments,” says Yu. “Given our dataset and independent analysis, it is interesting to see agreement and consistency in physics parameter measurements.”

This research helps confirm and refine our understanding of how neutrinos — fundamental particles that can tell us a lot about the universe — behave. The techniques developed here, animated by machine learning, can be used in future studies to learn even more about neutrinos and the universe. Those future studies will be informed by IceCube which is planning an upgrade in 2025-2026 that will allow for even more detailed measurements of neutrinos.

By studying neutrino detection and the phenomenon of neutrino oscillation, scientists like Shiqi Yu hope to answer big questions about the nature of matter, energy and the cosmos.

Journey to the Center of Biotech

July 8, 2024

Xie earned her PhD in biology from the University of Utah in 2004 and where she remained as a postdoc for several years. At the time, she never imagined herself working industry. Yet to her surprise, she amassed extensive experience in biotechnology. In her first foray from academia, she taught eighth-grade science and helped build the charter school’s AP biology program.

While she loved teaching, Xie always felt the urge to venture out and gain experience in molecular biology which she also enjoyed. As such, new technological developments in a local biotechnology startup, IDbyDNA, presented her call to action. She recalls “the startup company was pushing for a new technology that was obviously going to be the future. Now the question was, who was going to make it a reality? Why not us?”

To finally embrace the uncertainty of industry was scary, but Xie knew this was her time to act. “I can always go back to teach, but this leap of faith, if I didn’t take it, I may not have another opportunity,” she says. In fact, while learning new skills herself, she never stopped teaching and mentoring others.

Hypothesis-free Diagnostics

IDbyDNA is a local metagenomics company with an innovative algorithm that simultaneously profiles tens of thousands of microorganisms (or pathogens) in any sample by massive parallel sequencing, known as Next Generation Sequencing (NGS). Xie says this technology is fundamentally different from other available tests because it is hypothesis-free. “We’re not making any guesses, educated or not; we just treat everybody the same, and we sequence everything in there. And by analyzing the sequence in the sample, bioinformatics can tell you what it is. You don’t have to say ‘Tell me if it’s the flu.' It will tell you, ‘No, it’s not the flu, it’s something else.’”

By taking this approach to diagnosis, IDbyDNA circumvents two major problems. “The first issue is [the] diversity of the potential cause of the disease. The second issue is [one of timing as] some of the really dangerous pathogens that cause diseases such as tuberculosis, can take a long time to grow. By the time you can actually grow it and identify it, the patient's disease has progressed, and, [by then,] they might have been in the ICU for weeks.”

Hybrid Capture

Though these major concerns were sidestepped, other problems became apparent. “One problem we saw at IDbyDNA was when you get a patient sample and you start to sequence the DNA, the majority of the DNA is the host DNA because the human genome is orders of magnitude larger than the pathogen genome,” explains Xie. “Even a single human cell is going to give you much more sequencing information than the pathogen. So, you actually are not going to have the level of sensitivity you want for it to be clinically applicable.”

To bypass this problem, one can enrich the pathogen signal by selectively pulling the pathogen sequences (with complementary DNA) from the sample before analyzing. The challenge here is that the diversity of the pathogens would require extremely high complexity capturing, which means high-complexity DNA synthesis.

At IDbyDNA, Xie started as a research scientist, co-developing the Explify® clinical diagnostic platform and left as an associate director after six years. The company was eventually acquired by Illumina, a giant sequencing company.

Her next adventure in industry after IDbyDNA was as principal scientist at GenScript, a company that develops and manufactures gene synthesis products and services used by researchers in academia, pharmaceutics and biotech. Xie joined the Seattle campus because of the CustomArray technology that synthesizes millions of different DNA molecules on a semiconductor chip. This high-complexity, low-cost production of DNA became the natural extension of Xie’s earlier interest.

“When I went there [Genscript], this was pre-production, and I helped them evaluate and quantify how good they are and help them improve the product,” says Xie. Her work over nine months resulted in reduced costs and streamlined application of NGS technology in product development.

Precision Oncology

From GenScript, Xie took the position of senior director of pharma services at NeoGenomics Laboratory, a company dedicated to precision oncology. This newest endeavor is the perfect combination of her other experiences: a hypothesis-free approach applied with hybrid sequencing technology that can provide targeted therapies for cancer patients. At NeoGenomics, biopsies of tumors are sequenced and matched back to the mutation that caused them.

“Then, if the clinician needs to target the specific cancer, they can select suitable drugs that have been approved or are in clinical trials to [make a] recommendation to the patient based on the sequencing results.” This highly targeted therapy means that the patient doesn't have to suffer general chemo, Xie says. She and her team have launched several impactful tests since she joined NeoGenomics. More exciting tests are getting ready for the market.

Accelerating the pace

It took a while for Xie to leave academia, but she hasn’t looked back since. She has been dedicated to accelerating the pace in the biotech industry, making innovations at the top of the supply chain that impact research in industry and academia further down, or serving patients with state-of-the-art diagnostic technologies. While earning her PhD at the U, Xie never imagined the exciting career she would create for herself.

“[W]hat I absorbed in school was that there is no value outside academia because everything else is not as scientifically rigorous and not as innovative, not as cutting edge, not at the very boundary of human knowledge.”

But Heng Xie’s success at all levels of the biotech industry is living proof of the abundant exciting opportunities students have and a testament to the growth of science beyond academia. Her experiences showcase how rigorous research in academia impacts society through the commercialization of innovative technologies.

by Lauren Wigod

Delve into the puzzle of ice crystallization and uncover its secrets.

July 8, 2024

We learn in grade school that water freezes at zero degrees Celsius, but that’s seldom true. In clouds, scientists have found supercooled water droplets as chilly as minus 40 C, and in a lab in 2014, they cooled water to a staggering minus 46 C before it froze. You can supercool water at home: Throw a bottle of distilled water in your freezer, and it’s unlikely to crystallize until you shake it.

Freezing usually doesn’t happen right at zero degrees for much the same reason that backyard wood piles don’t spontaneously combust. To get started, fire needs a spark. And ice needs a nucleus — a seed of ice around which more and more water molecules arrange themselves into a crystal structure.

Valeria Molinero, a physical chemist at the University of Utah, builds computer simulations of water to study ice nucleation.

The formation of these seeds is called ice nucleation. Nucleation is so slow for pure water at zero degrees that it might as well not happen at all. But in nature, impurities provide surfaces for nucleation, and these impurities can drastically change how quickly and at what temperature ice forms.

For a process that’s anything but exotic, ice nucleation remains surprisingly mysterious. Chemists can’t reliably predict the effect of a given impurity or surface, let alone design one to hinder or promote ice formation. But they’re chipping away at the problem. They’re building computer models that can accurately simulate water’s behavior, and they’re looking to nature for clues — proteins made by bacteria and fungi are the best ice makers scientists know of.

Understanding how ice forms is more than an academic exercise. Motes of material create ice seeds in clouds, which lead to most of the precipitation that falls to Earth as snow and rain. Several dry Western states use ice-nucleating materials to promote precipitation, and U.S. government agencies including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Air Force have experimented with ice nucleation for drought relief or as a war tactic. (Perhaps snowstorms could waylay the enemy.) And in some countries, hail-fighting planes dust clouds with silver iodide, a substance that helps small droplets to freeze, hindering the growth of large hailstones.

But there’s still much to learn. “Everyone agrees that ice forms,” said Valeria Molinero, a physical chemist at the University of Utah who builds computer simulations of water. “After that, there are questions.”

You can read the full story in Quanta magazine. Read the published research @PNAS.

Meet Lokiceratops: Giant Blade-Wielding Dinosaur 

June 21, 2024

A remarkable, new species of horned, plant-eating dinosaur is being unveiled at the Natural History Museum of Utah. The dinosaur, excavated from the badlands of northern Montana just a few miles from the USA-Canada border, is among the largest and most ornate ever found, with two huge blade-like horns on the back of its frill. The distinctive horn pattern inspired its name, Lokiceratops rangiformis, meaning “Loki’s horned face that looks like a caribou.” The study included the most complete analysis of horned dinosaur evolution ever conducted, and the new species was announced today in the scientific journal PeerJ.

More than 78 million years ago, Lokiceratops inhabited the swamps and floodplains along the eastern shore of Laramidia. This island continent represents what is now the western part of North America created when a great seaway divided the continent around 100 million years ago. Mountain building and dramatic changes in climate and sea level have since altered the hothouse world of Laramidia where Lokiceratops and other dinosaurs thrived. The behemoth is a member of the horned dinosaurs called ceratopsids, a group that evolved around 92 million years ago during the Late Cretaceous, diversified into a myriad of fantastically ornamented species, and survived until the end of the time of dinosaurs. Lokiceratops (lo-Kee-sare-a-tops) rangiformis (ran-ɡi-FOHR-mees) possesses several unique features, among them: the absence of a nose horn, huge, curving blade-like horns on the back of the frill—the largest ever found on a horned dinosaur—and a distinct, asymmetric spike in the middle of the frill. Lokiceratops rangiformis appeared at least 12 million years earlier than its famous cousin Triceratops and was the largest horned dinosaur of its time. The name Lokiceratops translates as “Loki’s horned face” honoring the blade-wielding Norse god Loki. The second name, rangiformis, refers to the differing horn lengths on each side of the frill, similar to the asymmetric antlers of caribou and reindeer.

PHOTO CREDIT: MARK LOEWEN.
Completed reconstruction of Lokiceratops mounted for display. Study authors Brock Sisson (left) and Mark Loewen (right) peer through the frill fenestrae (windows) of Lokiceratops.

Lokiceratops rangiformis is the fourth centrosaurine, and fifth horned dinosaur overall, identified from this single assemblage. While ceratopsian ancestors were widespread across the northern hemisphere throughout the Cretaceous period, their isolation on Laramidia led to the evolution of huge body sizes, and most characteristically, distinctive patterns of horns above their eyes and noses, on their cheeks and along the edges of their elongated head frills. Fossils recovered from this region suggest horned dinosaurs were living and evolving in a small geographic area—a high level of endemism that implies dinosaur diversity is underestimated.

“Previously, paleontologists thought a maximum of two species of horned dinosaurs could coexist at the same place and time. Incredibly, we have identified five living together at the same time,” said co-lead author Mark Loewen, a paleontologist at the Natural History Museum of Utah and professor in the Department of Geology & Geophysics at the University of Utah. “The skull of Lokiceratops rangiformis is dramatically different from the other four animals it lived alongside.”

The fossil remains of Lokiceratops was discovered in 2019 and cleaned, restored and mounted by Brock Sisson, paleontologist and founder of Fossilogic, LLC in Pleasant Grove, Utah. “Reconstructing the skull of Lokiceratops from dozens of pieces was one of the most challenging projects my team and I have ever faced,” said Brock, “but the thrill of bringing a 78-million-year-old dinosaur to life for the first time was well worth the effort.”

Discover more about Lokiceratops by visiting the full article by Mark Loewen at @The U.
Read more about the story in Discover Magazine, ABC 4 News, KSL News, Science Daily, Science News.

Backtracking Core: Earth’s Inner Dynamics Unveiled

June 18, 2024

For the past two decades, the movement of this solid yet searing hot metal sphere, suspended in the liquid outer core, has been studied closely and debated by the scientific community. Past research has shown that the inner core has been rotating slightly faster than the planet’s surface.

But a different picture is emerging under a study led by the University of Southern California and published this week in Nature. The research team, which includes U geology professor Keith Koper, verified with new evidence—built on analyses of seismographic data—that the inner core’s rotation began to ease and synced with Earth’s spin about 14 years ago.

Keith Koper, University of Utah

The inner core is a solid sphere composed of iron and nickel, surrounded by the liquid iron outer core. Roughly the size of Pluto at 2,442 kilometers in diameter, it accounts for only 1% of Earth’s mass, yet it influences the magnetic field enveloping the planet and the length of the day. But the core’s location, more than 3,000 miles below Earth’s surface, presents a challenge to researchers since it can’t be visited or viewed.

Past research into the inner core’s movement has relied on data from repeating earthquakes, which occur in the same location to produce identical seismograms. Differences in the time it takes for the waves to pass through Earth indicate how the core’s position changed during the period between two repeater quakes.

In the latest study, researchers analyzed seismic data associated with 121 earthquakes that occurred in the South Atlantic between 1991 and 2023.

“The inner core is just sitting in this fluid outer core, so it’s decoupled a little bit from the rest of the planet. It’s rotating at a different rate,” Koper said. “The angular momentum has to be conserved, so if it’s rotating differently, then that could affect the rotation observed at Earth’s surface. One of the big ideas in this paper is we have basically a new model or new observations about how the inner core is rotating slightly differently than the rest of the planet.”

Bacteriophages: Nature’s bacterial killers

June 18, 2024

New research led by the University of Utah and University College London (UCL) has found that plant bacterial pathogens are able to repurpose elements of their own bacteriophages, or phages, to wipe out competing microbes. These surprise findings suggest such phage-derived elements could someday be harnessed as an alternative to antibiotics, according to Talia Karasov, an assistant professor in the U’s School of Biological Sciences.

This result was hardly what she expected to find when she embarked on this research with an international team of scientists. Microbial pathogens are all around, but only a fraction of the time do they sicken humans, other animals or plants, according to Karasov, whose primary research interest is in interactions between plants and microbial pathogens. The Karasov lab is seeking to understand the factors that lead to sickness and epidemics versus keeping the pathogens in check.

“We see that no single lineage of bacteria can dominate. We wondered whether the phages, the pathogens of our bacterial pathogens, could prevent single lineages from spreading – maybe phages were killing some strains and not others. That’s where our study started, but that’s not where it ended up,” Karasov said. “We looked in the genomes of plant bacterial pathogens to see which phages were infecting them. But it wasn’t the phage we found that was interesting. The bacteria had taken a phage and repurposed it for warfare with other bacteria, now using it to kill competing bacteria.”

A thale cress specimen collected in 1866 in Germany and preserved in a herbarium in Tubingen. Credit: Burbano lab, University College London.

Mining herbarium specimens for their microbial DNA

Burbano has pioneered the use of herbarium specimens to explore the evolution of plants and their microbial pathogens. His lab sequences the genomes of both host plants and those of the microbes associated with the plant at the time of collection more than a century ago.

For the phage research, Burbano analyzed historical specimens of Arabidopsis thaliana, a plant from the mustard family commonly called thale cress, collected in southwestern Germany, comparing them and the microbes they harbored to plants growing today in the same part of Germany. Lead author Talia Backman wonders if tailocins could help solve the impending crisis in antibiotic resistance seen in harmful bacteria that infect humans.

“We as a society are in dire need of new antibiotics, and tailocins have potential as new antimicrobial treatments,” said Backman, a graduate student in the Karasov lab. “While tailocins have been found previously in other bacterial genomes, and have been studied in lab settings, their impact and evolution in wild bacterial populations was not known. The fact that we found that these wild plant pathogens all have tailocins and these tailocins are evolving to kill neighboring bacteria shows how significant they may be in nature.”

Discover the full story behind bacteriophages and their antibiotic potential by Brian Maffly at @The U. More on this story at earth.com.

Tony Hawk : The Intuitive Physicist of Vert Skating

June 13, 2024

2024 College of Science Awards

April 4, 2024

Atomic-Scale Geometry

June 21, 2023

How Atomic-Scale Geometry Might Shape the Future of Electronics

Twistronics could illuminate a path to superconductivity, revolutionize electronic devices, or perhaps hasten the arrival of quantum computing

Mathematicians at the University of Utah have discovered that, by twisting one square lattice over another, composite materials based on the resulting bilayer moiré pattern display electrical and physical properties that can change quite abruptly. Their findings echo twistronics, the science of twisting atomic lattices, and on some rather complex geometric principles. The discovery could have implications for a wide variety of industries, as engineers might be able to precisely calibrate the electrical, optical, thermal, or even acoustic properties of these materials. Specifically, twistronics and aperiodic geometry might soon illuminate a path to higher-temperature superconductivity, revolutionize electronic devices, or perhaps even hasten the arrival of quantum computers.

“We rotated and dilated two regular lattices relative to one another, creating a veritable zoo of microgeometries—and some incredible patterns emerged,” says Ken Golden, distinguished professor of Mathematics at the University of Utah and senior author of the study.

“The resulting moiré provides a template for the geometrical arrangement of two component materials, that, together make up a new twisted bilayer composite,” he tells Popular Mechanics. Imagine chicken wire lattices layered on top of each other; these can be twisted one relative to another and form entirely new moiré scales of periodicity or non-periodicity.

Read the entire story by ADRIENNE BERNHARD in Popular Mechanics.

Bones of the Earth

June 16, 2023

“There’s always been this idea that my family has a relationship with the bones of the Earth,” says Kevin Mendoza.

The graduate student in the Department of Geology & Geophysics descended from the developers of the Nacia mine in Chihuahua Province. He recalls as a child his grandmother showing him jars of rocks from the mine given to her by her father, one of the only possessions she took with her when she immigrated to the states. A Ph.D. candidate in geophysics, Mendoza is the recipient of the 2023 University of Utah Teaching Assistantship Award: Pythonizing Geoscience Instruction. Mendoza received the award for his contributions to geoscience undergraduates. He used the assistantship to develop python programming-based core curriculum.

Mendoza joined the U after attending the University of California, Merced for his undergraduate degree where he double-majored in physics and Earth systems science. His passion for studying the deep Earth came both from his early geology lessons with his grandmother, as well as the active outdoor lifestyle his dad cultivated in him from an early age. “It was rare for any of my classmates to like even the more accessible activities like hiking, and for the Latinx students such as myself, [it was] completely unheard of at that time. I’m grateful both my parents encouraged exploration of what was then an unconventional hobby.” In high school, Mendoza was particularly passionate about gold prospecting, which he did almost every weekend in the nearby San Gabriel Mountains. He continued his wilderness ramblings in the Sierra as a park ranger in Yosemite National Park during college.

Magnetotellurics

Although his ancestors have been students of the Earth for generations, Mendoza is the first in his family to study it academically. His background prepared him to do a different type of prospecting: for electrical fields within the Earth. His research under the late Philip Wanamaker operates in the niche field of magnetotellurics (MT), which uses natural underground electrical currents to study the structure of the Earth. MT is such a specific subfield of geophysics that there are only a handful of programs across the country, including at the U. “What I do is use solar wind and lightning to basically CT scan the deep Earth,” summarizes Mendoza. From the results of this “CT scan” he can measure the water contained in the geologic water cycle, which has important consequences for plate tectonics. One of the advantages of MT is that it is more sensitive than other techniques such as seismology. “In some situations, like looking for critical battery metals and hidden geothermal resources, MT is one of the best methods for exploring mineral structures.”

Mendoza’s data comes from monitoring the voltage and magnetic field in the deep Earth with sensors deployed on the surface. In the field, these sensors are set up by placing magnetic coils and wires stretching along cardinal directions, and occasionally a coil pointing upwards. These sites are left to collect data for a few months at a time before they are relocated. Since the equipment is portable and non-invasive, MT sites are placed virtually anywhere that’s interesting geologically.

One of the main challenges with MT is visualizing the high dimensionality of the data. While common to other fields, like data science and machine learning, it takes on a unique flavor within MT. Each MT station produces nearly four times more data dimensions than seismic stations do. Complex mathematics are needed to transform this data to usable geologic models. One of the models that Mendoza works with uses over 2.5 million parameters. Analyzing the data and models is only possible using cutting-edge supercomputing tools. As part of his dissertation, Mendoza plans to provide a massive Python codebase that will help other researchers explore similar datasets.

Putting carbon back underground

While his dissertation is focused on more fundamental aspects of plate tectonics across the western U.S., Mendoza believes these findings can have application elsewhere. “Two of the biggest challenges we face with climate change are how to transition to a carbon-free economy and how to put carbon back underground. The tools I’ve developed and am developing can directly help these efforts by monitoring how stable our sequestered carbon is, or assessing the likelihood that critical metals like copper, cobalt, and lithium are in rocks hidden by deep sediment cover. These efforts require the same 2D, 3D, and 4D geophysical modeling, visualization, and evaluation techniques I’m currently using in my own research.”

That codebase will also be helpful for industry, which is possibly the endgame for Mendoza. Having briefly worked as a geotechnician after graduating with his bachelor’s, he understands that a career in academia is not a realistic or desirable path for every student. “My personal philosophy is that universities are hybrids between a job training program and a liberal education. So, we can’t just teach students general critical thinking; we also have a moral obligation to give them some tools so that they can come into the workforce ready.”

Mendoza knows from firsthand experience that mastering the science is only half the battle for many students from underrepresented backgrounds. He grew up in East LA where he learned how to reach across cultural divides from his Hispanic background to connect with others. “Learning to ‘go-between’ is a skill that’s essential for just having a community, and I think bringing that here made it really easy for me to understand when students are struggling,” Mendoza says. He asks himself questions like, How do you reach out to a student who’s not responding in a normal way? How do you make geology instruction more accessible? How do you engage students in the coursework? With this approach to teaching, Mendoza is able to connect with his students to enhance their experience and has earned multiple prior teaching awards in the process, including the National Association of Geoscience Teachers Outstanding TA Award, 2022.

Hidden curriculum

The obstacles for underrepresented students in academia don’t end after earning a bachelor’s; they just aren’t widely discussed. On top of regular classwork, first generation graduate students have to tackle the “hidden curriculum” within academia. This includes issues such as figuring out how to write a dissertation, what the college’s practices are, how to handle advisor conflict and other difficult-to-ask (and -answer) questions.

The overarching difficulty is determining what graduate school is supposed to look like in the first place, which Mendoza says is almost by design. “Grad school is very heterogeneous. Part of that is good because science looks different across disciplines, but that is [also] confusing for first gen grad students who don’t know how to navigate this unknown academic culture.” It’s a problem that is systemic, and not unique to the U.

To succeed in grad school, he says, “you can’t use the old paradigm, pushing boundaries like you did in undergrad and high school won’t necessarily result in the same success as a grad student. The cultural setting is different.” Even outside of academia, underrepresented scientists face many of these challenges. According to Mendoza, geoscience is the least diverse subfield of STEM. Nature Geoscience reported that the last 40 years has seen zero progress with respect to minority representation within geoscience. The United States Geological Survey has the poorest track record of minority employees of all the federal government agencies and is nearly half as diverse as the next ranked federal agency. The lack of diversity is mostly due to the niche nature of the discipline. Unlike, for example, computer science, there is a relatively finite employment pool.

Kevin Mendoza has come a long way since his geology lessons with his grandmother’s Chihuahuan rocks, and it has informed the legacy he is now leaving with students familiar with the challenges he has faced. The teaching award is an acknowledgement that the paradigm can shift, that the Earth can move.

By Lauren Wigod
Science Writer Intern

Neutrino Oscillation Research Advances

In the world of particle physics, electrical charges define the terms. While electrons have a negative charge, the appropriately named “positron" has a positive charge. But then there are neutrinos which have no charge at all.

Journey to the Center of Biotech

“I guess I just can’t help being a visionary,” Heng Xie jests, reflecting on her career since leaving academia.

Hypothesis-free Diagnostics

Hybrid Capture

Precision Oncology

Accelerating the pace

Delve into the puzzle of ice crystallization and uncover its secrets

Making ice requires more than subzero temperatures. The unpredictable process takes microscopic scaffolding, random jiggling and often a little bit of bacteria.

Meet Lokiceratops: A Giant Blade Wielding Dinosaur

Backtracking Core : Earth's Inner Dynamics Unveiled

For the past two decades, the movement of this solid yet searing hot metal sphere, suspended in the liquid outer core, has been studied closely and debated by the scientific community

Bacteriophages : Nature's bacterial killers

Bacteriophages, viruses that attack and destroy bacteria, are everywhere in the natural world where they play a vital role in regulating microbe populations in ways that are not yet well understood.

Mining herbarium specimens for their microbial DNA

The Intuitive Physicist of Vert Skating

'Would you consider Tony Hawk a physicist?'

'I would consider Tony Hawk a physicist. If nothing else, he’s an intuitive scientist, right?'

2024 College of Science AWARDS

Student Recognition

Faculty Recognition

Postdoc Recognition

Staff Recognition

Safety Recognition

Outstanding Undergraduate Research Award

Outstanding Undergraduate Research Mentor Award

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