What’s more exciting than a shortcut to the B-Gates? An Allosaurus at the airport!
On Tuesday, Oct. 22, the Salt Lake City International Airport and the Natural History Museum of Utah unveiled the airport’s first-ever dinosaur—Ally, a 30-foot-long, 15-foot-tall skeleton of Allosaurus fragilis.
“I’m absolutely thrilled to be here today to reveal a project that’s been 150 million years in the making,” Jason Cryan, executive director of NHMU, said to the crowd gathered to celebrate the completed Concourse B. “Turn around as we unveil Utah’s state fossil as it’s never been seen before!”
The Jurassic Park theme boomed from the speakers, and the airport assembly spun around and gasped as the curtain fell to reveal Ally in all her glory.
From the Late Jurassic to Concourse B
The museum has wanted a dinosaur at the airport for decades. The recent expansion and a gift from Kirk Ririe, Bob and Cyndi Douglass, and the Lawrence T. & Janet T. Dee Foundation made it happen.
“I’m originally from the Chicago area, and the O’Hare International Airport has an iconic Brachiosaurus skeleton that gets people excited. I’ve always wanted that for Salt Lake City’s airport,” said Randy Irmis, curator of paleontology at NHMU and professor of geology at the University of Utah. “Utah is known for its dinosaurs. We hope this inspires visitors and locals to explore the really cool dinosaur heritage of our state.”
Oct 23, 2024
Above: Christin Torres, occupational safety specialist
For occupational safety specialist Christin Torres, it all started with her love of the environment. Born in Sandy and raised in Grantsville, Utah she grew up in the Great Basin along the Wasatch Front.
The almost feral high-desert and mountain terrain profoundly shapes everyone who lives here. But it takes a special sensitivity to realize just how fragile that environment is. Torres has that sensitivity and earned not one but two associate degrees in the environmental sciences from Salt Lake Community College.
But career tracks have a life of their own, it would seem, and during a five-year stint beginning as an intern with an environmental health and safety consulting firm, Torres was tasked with an interesting and, it turned out, a transformational project related to the demolition of a smelter.
For many years in Salt Lake Valley the iconic Murray smokestacks stood like silent sentinels to the past when the duo — one of which was 450-feet tall above the former smelter — attempted back in the first half of the 20th century to lift smoke filled with lead and arsenic away from the population below.
For Torres it was the spectacular demolition and clean-up of these mid-valley landmarks that marked her foray from her training and her ambition to “try to save the world,” as she says, to the more formalized sector of environmental health and safety (EHS).
“While I was there [at the consulting firm], I got a lot of cross-training in the health and safety side of things,” she recalls. At the old Murray smelter site, her job was to do the environmental monitoring of the project, determining dust levels and making sure there wasn't cross contamination into other areas. “I got into the safety or the IH [industrial health] side of things because I started conducting exposure assessments on employees rather than the environment.”
It wasn’t just the training Torres got as the stacks came down; it was an ethic of occupational safety for individuals, an ethic that continues to this day.
This formative experience led Torres not only to a bachelor’s degree but to work in 2004 as a compliance officer at the state-level Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). Under the OSHA law created by the U.S. Congress, employers are responsible for providing a safe and healthful workplace for their workers. “I was so excited to go into the regulatory side of things,” she says, “because as a consultant we're always trying to help the employer comply with the regulations.”
Torres later advanced at OSHA to the position of an industrial hygienist, involved in identifying, evaluating and controlling hazards that can affect the health of workers, including chemical, physical, ergonomic, or biological exposures. Then, in 2004, she decided to try her luck at the federal level and found herself a consumer safety officer at the Food and Drug Administration.
Christin Torres
“I never imagined that I would work in safety,” says Torres. “I didn't know that safety and the environmental sciences went together, but they absolutely do. If you had asked me 'what are you going to be when you grow up?' it wouldn't have been a compliance officer or an occupational safety specialist.”
Except for a stint as a massage therapist for a few years prior to the pandemic, Torres has stayed in the field of health and safety where she discovered what she likes about it: researching federal and state regulations. In February she joined the Environmental Health and Safety department at the University of Utah as a compliance specialist. “I absolutely love doing research on regulations and interpretations and how they apply to this situation and how I can hold my employer accountable and to ask for corrective actions,” she says.
While Torres found what she liked about the work of EHS, she never lost track of the “why” in her career — the real motivation to learn, for example, the ins-and-outs of laboratory safety which is a new aspect of her work in compliance at a research university. Whether saving a personified Mother Earth as an idealistic youth, protecting Salt Lake Valley residents from the demolition of a toxic smelter, or, later, facilitating healing through massage, her work, currently in compliance, has been designed to help and protect others.
“This sounds grandiose,” she says, “but I really am helping people make it home every day … I'm helping employers or students who are employees become aware of their surroundings, teaching them how to do things safer so that they can go home to their family everyday with all of their fingers and [both] … their arms, being able to breathe normally because they didn't breathe in something accidentally and ruin their lungs… . If you're changing the way an employer does their business to make it a safer place to work the potential to save a life is high, in my opinion.”
Just talking with Christin Torres with her easy laugh and penchant for regulatory detail will make you feel safer.
by David Pace
This is the first in a series of periodic spotlights on staff who work in health and safety at the University of Utah. You can read more about safety and wellness, under the direction of David Thomas in the College of Science here.
October 21, 2024
Photo above: Sean Lawley, associate professor of mathematics.
Five presidential scholars for 2024 have been announced by the U's President Taylor Randall. Mathematician Sean Lawley is one of them.
The newest cohort of Presidential Scholars at the U are navigating frontiers in cyber law and artificial intelligence, plunging into the earth to understand the impact of humans on the environment, breaking language barriers in diabetes treatment, using mathematical equations to solve biological quandaries, and preventing heart disease and dementia. Recipients of this award are chosen for their leadership in their field and significant contribution to scholarship, education and outreach at the U.
The 2024 Presidential Scholars were nominated by the U’s deans and will receive $10,000 in funding, provided by an anonymous donor, each year for three years. The scholars are Matthew Tokson, associate professor in the S. J. Quinney College of Law; Tyler Faith, associate professor in the Department of Anthropology in the College of Social and Behavioral Science; Michelle Litchman, associate professor in the College of Nursing; Sean Lawley, associate professor in the Department of Mathematics in the College of Science; and Adam Bress, associate professor in the Department of Population Health Sciences in the Spencer Fox Eccles School of Medicine.
“The work being done by these exceptional researchers is crucial to our university-wide goal of impacting the lives of all Utahns,” Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs Mitzi Montoya said. “I am proud of their dedication to tackling problems that affect all of us. Their findings can help us build a brighter, healthier future.”
A new cohort of Presidential Scholars is selected every year as a means of retaining faculty who have strong scholarly recognitions, significant promise for continued achievement and are likely targets for outside recruitment.
Math: A Magical Tool
To hear Sean Lawley talk about the power of math, you would think he was describing a magical tool that answers the unanswerable and predicts the future. To an extent, you’d be right. Lawley has published more than 70 papers, many with undergraduate mentees — in less than 10 years — about the power of probabilistic models and analysis to answer questions in physiology and medicine. He uses stochastic math to answer questions like, can a cryopreservation procedure delay menopause? If so, how much tissue and what age is needed to be most effective? What nutritional supplements can speed up arsenic detoxification of the body? What should you do if you miss a dose of a prescription medication? Through math, Lawley is able to answer questions that couldn’t be found in a lab or by any other means. “The equations become the laboratory from which you can explore and do experiments and solve some of these things,” Lawley said. “What I get really excited about and am passionate about is using mathematics to improve public health, to make an impact. I think mathematics is a very purposeful tool—a very big hammer.”
by Amy Choate-Nielsen
Read about all five of the newly announced presidential scholars in @TheU.
Oct 21, 2024
Above: Priyam Patel, Associate Professor.
Associate Professor in the Department of Mathematics Priyam Patel, has been honored with the University of Utah Early Career Teaching Award 2024.
Patel is noted for her innovative and impactful teaching, including active learning strategies and creating a classroom that is welcoming and respectful to all students. One student wrote, “One notable aspect of Patel’s teaching approach is her use of mastery-based grading for homework assignments. This approach, coupled with metacognitive exercises, demonstrates her dedication to teaching students not only what to learn but also how to learn.” Another pointed out that she “cared about every student’s success,” while yet another praised her with “my goal is to become a professor like her.”
Patel’s teaching philosophy “emphasizes the creation of an active classroom, one in which students are directly involved in the learning process.” She believes “it is important for students to individually discover how and why the mathematical methods they apply actually work,” and continually strives to “improve [her] teaching strategies to … ensure that all of [her] students can thrive as mathematicians in the classroom and beyond.”
Patel’s research lies in the fields of low-dimensional topology, hyperbolic geometry, and geometric group theory. Geometry and topology are fields of mathematics focused on understanding the shapes of spaces. Geometry focuses on rigid objects where there is a notion of distance, while topological objects are more fluid. Geometric group theory is a related field of mathematics studying finitely generated groups via the connection between algebraic properties of such groups and geometric properties of spaces on which these groups act. Her research program can be divided into three main categories: quantitative questions in hyperbolic geometry, the combinatorics of 3-manifolds, and the symmetries of infinite-type surfaces.
by Angie Gardiner
This story originally appeared on the mathematics department website
Driving sustainable futures:
Wilkes and Microsoft collaborate
Oct 14, 2024
The Wilkes Center partnered with Microsoft in supporting its newly published white paper "Investing in nature for a sustainable future: Lessons from science and practice."
The paper, released on October 9, 2024, puts forward 8 actions for what is needed to empower companies to maximize the sustainability impacts of their nature-based investments.
The Microsoft-led policy paper makes a strong case for how companies have an important leadership role to play with investing in nature-based solutions such as carbon dioxide removal, water replenishment, or biodiversity conservation. The specific benefits of these investments hinge on the health of the whole ecosystems which provide these services.
Because it is challenging for companies to consider ecosystem health holistically in investment decisions, Microsoft collaborated with an international team of scientists, including Dr. William Anderegg with the Wilkes Center, to assess the opportunities and challenges of corporate investments in nature. This paper outlines the importance of investing in ecosystem health, shares Microsoft’s experience, and offers insights from science and practice.
The 𝐄𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 Lessons for moving forward:
1. Build incentives to invest in ecosystem health. Establish mechanisms that reward companies for investing in nature-based solutions that improve ecosystem health and ensure local community benefits and stewardship.
2. Agree on science-based standards for the impacts of investments on ecosystem health. Civil society and companies need to collaborate with scientists to agree on corporate standards for characterizing how sustainability investments affect ecosystem health.
3. Make science accessible and build capacity to use it. All actors in nature-based markets need to be able to use the best available science to evaluate ecological and social risks, design projects that enhance ecosystem health, and assess it effectively.
4. Accept trade-offs as inevitable and aim to minimize them. While not all sustainability benefits can be maximized at once, strategic planning can reduce negative impacts and optimize positive outcomes.
5. Innovate to de-risk investment. Nature-based investments face risks from the variability of natural systems; better tools are needed to understand, insure, and manage these risks.
6. Expand blended finance. Combining public and private capital can reduce financial risks to private investors and attract more investment into nature-based solutions.
7. Invest beyond capital. While funding is vital, projects and startups also need strategic support, including expertise, long-term demand signals, and market access.
8. Use AI for speed, scale, and reliability. AI can help companies prioritize ecosystem health by enabling cheaper, more effective measurement, trade-off analysis, and risk management.
Oct 14, 2024
Above: Ethan M. Hood, a third-year honors student studying physics and astronomy.
By Ethan Hood
“I started out as a general studies student at Salt Lake Community College. I have a wide range of interests, and it was hard to pin down what I wanted to study.
That was until I took elementary astronomy and felt my passion for the subject shine through like Sirius. That led me down the path toward joining the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, where I volunteered as an Eclipse Ambassador. This astronomy-focused outreach program serves under-resourced communities that haven’t been exposed to science. Participating in that made me realize that I hope to inspire future astronomers, and to be a public-oriented science communicator like Carl Sagan.
While I’m here at the U, I aim to be more involved in the community. I want more than just a degree. I want to develop my social skills and build strong relationships. I want to feel like a person at the U, as opposed to just a college student. Our campus is meant to be a place for students to find community—and I want to do my part in ensuring that.
I’m grateful and incredibly fortunate to be a Presidential Intern.
“One of the things I love about hydrology is that it’s something that everybody has a connection to,” says Sara Warix. “We all consume it every day, we’re all impacted by the weather, many of us use it for work or play. However far you get into the weeds of geochemistry or physics, you can always connect water back to people.”
#8 Warix (with ball) about to make a goal.
Warix has been fascinated by our dependence on water from an early age. An avid swimmer born and raised in Sacramento, it was commonplace for wildfire smoke to cancel her practices. This irony fascinated her: to jump into a large pool of water and be forced to get out due to a lack of water to fight those fires. This dynamic captured her curiosity and established the watery track of her education moving forward. She did her undergrad at the University of Pacific, continued her education at Idaho State, and culminated in a PhD in Hydrologic Science and Engineering from the Colorado School of Mines. The flow of this journey has now led to a Department of Geology & Geophysics faculty position here at the University of Utah.
Drawn to the dynamic relationship our region has with water dependency (as well as the bike trails and ski slopes!), Warix's field of research focuses on understanding headwater streams. Headwater streams are supported by upwelling groundwater before they flow into larger rivers that source downstream water supply. When asked as to their importance, Warix explains, “As the quantity and quality of water in headwater streams change, they carry those effects into the downgradient streams. Upstream changes in water quality are going to be mirrored in the downstream water quality.” An example given is that headwater stream drying frequency is expected to increase as climate alters precipitation patterns and increases temperature warming. As more headwater streams dry, there are going to be impacts on the downstream water resources that they feed into, but the severity of drying on downstream water resources is unknown.
Warix, right, collecting water samples from a tributary to the Upper Snake River, June 2024. Credit: Wyoming Public Radio
Such studies are critical, as the impacts of climate change on stream chemistry are difficult to capture in climate change models. Climate change impacts on stream and groundwater chemistry are convoluted, hidden in the subsurface and vary regionally. More pressingly, the lack of understanding of these impacts has led to a dearth of policy protections regarding drying streams. As such there is a ticking timer to deepen this understanding and to motivate a better protection of these systems. Many faculty at the U are currently working on this topic and Warix, as assistant professor, now joins them in their pursuits.
In addition to research, Warix will also begin teaching next semester, and in both roles she brings a uniquely valuable perspective. Co-mentored by Alexis Navarre-Sitchler and Kamini Singha, a geochemist and geophysicist respectively, Warix had to learn how to view and explain her research through multiple scientific lenses and to meet one mentor on their level while also learning how to “translate” their expertise to the other. Such experience with scientific communication is vital and will surely assist in explaining these concepts to students in kind.
Whether teaching, playing, or dominating the U’s water polo team in 2022, Warix’s life has always been connected to water. In a way, this is the headwater stream of her teaching career. With the skills she’s brought to the surface, she’ll surely carry those skills downstream to the students that need them.
Bringing together minds and resources for
a greener tomorrow
Oct 11, 2024
Above: Group picture from the visit to the Watershed.
From the headwaters of the Wasatch to the threatened Great Salt Lake, Utah is rich in beauty, environmental opportunities, and stories of sustainability innovation.
With an ever-growing population in city, suburban, and rural areas, the Beehive State and region’s economic potential is growing.
But the climate challenges Utah and neighboring states face pose dire consequences for the environment and the region’s residents and businesses. The exposed lakebed of the Great Salt Lake; droughts causing water shortages and shrinking lakes; and vast air pollution from wildfire smoke are just some of the challenges being seen.
The climate challenges Utah and the region face are a threat, but these challenges can also drive innovation and create a robust workforce.
Recently, the University of Utah hosted the Southwest Sustainability Innovation Engine (SWSIE) Site Visit highlighting the achievements of the first year of this project. SWSIE is a new National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded program which includes academic, community, nonprofit and industry partners across Arizona, Nevada and Utah to establish the region as a leader in water security, renewable energy, and carbon management, and develop a workforce to support those high-wage industries.
The multi-day site visit showcased Utah’s efforts to make the state and the region a hub of green innovation. Some of the highlights of the event included field trips that spanned the watershed, examples of regional collaboration, partner engagement, building an ecosystem throughout the region, and workforce development, among other topics.
A key component of the NSF Engines program is to leverage existing partnerships and coordinate efforts among researchers, industry, and government to accelerate the pace of sustainability innovation and prepare a regional workforce.
“With SWSIE, we are able to accelerate the speed that things are happening,” said Dr. Brenda Bowen, Co-PI on the SWSIE project and serves as the University of Utah lead. “Even though we are acting so fast, it needs to be faster. There’s this urgency to it, and that so aligns with the urgency of the issues that we’re facing around climate. That’s an exciting thing that SWSIE can bring, that additional incentive to really accelerate things.”
Read the full article by Xoel Cardenas in @The VPR.
The Henry Mountains, Great Salt Lake and Coyote Buttes were added to the list of geoheritage sites.
You're probably asking yourself, “What is a geoheritage site?” University of Utah Geology and Geophysics Research Professor Marie Jackson talks about the three Utah sites and what exactly a geoheritage site is, and its importance.
“I love a great storyteller,” says Robin Wheelwright. “This can come in the form of a book, music, movie, TV show, video game, live theater etc. No matter what the media, if there’s a good story involved, I’ll love it.”
Robin Wheelwright and her three daughters celebrating Pride Day.
Wheelwright must mean she loves herself — which is a good thing, of course — because she’s a great storyteller, currently fashioning her own life narrative as well as helping students draft their own as a career coach in the College of Science.
One could argue that every story needs a hero. And Wheelwright has hers: “I am my own hero,” she says. “As a survivor of domestic abuse, I firmly believe that our lives and how we navigate the struggles and hardships are completely up to us. None of it is easy, and I spent many tear-filled nights feeling like I didn’t have it in me to advocate for myself and my kids. But I did. Saving myself and my kids took strength and courage that I didn’t know I had.”
Wheelwright’s path has been a harrowing one toward healing and success, but it has made her not only the editor of her own continuing success story, but the grist for helping others achieve their dreams by drafting their own. Since her arrival at the College of Science last year, Wheelwright has been tasked with providing personalized career coaching to students guiding them through their career journey to ensure they achieve their professional goals.
Her experiences in the role have proven gratifying. One recent example of that is working with a chemistry student whose goal was to attend a graduate program in Korea so she could study Korean skincare. “We worked together on her resume and her interview skills,” reports Wheelwright. “She was quite nervous going into the interview, but after some coaching and mock interviews, she felt more confident in her ability to articulate her experiences and her motivation. After her interview she said, ‘I must have done better than I thought. I was accepted into not one, but three schools!’ I am so excited for her and this opportunity and the many doors this experience will open for her.”
Wheelwright earned both a bachelor’s degree in biology and a master’s in human resources from Utah State University in Logan. The combined degrees have made her perfectly poised to help students reach their potential as they approach graduation and enter the next phase: their work lives. Career coaching is a little bit of hand-holding and a whole lot of at-your-fingertips resources; a little bit of asking the right questions of your client (and asking them at the right time) and the uncanny ability to help someone see how cool they already are.
Unicorn madness for all ages.
It’s a lot about helping someone find an occupational “fit,” not so that they can rest on their laurels in a static world where everything is customized, but as a stop on the continuum of work that is ever-moving and ever-expanding. In this sense, Wheelwright and her colleagues Laura Cleave and Andrea LeBaron are life coaches, helping individuals develop a skill set that can then be deployed in whatever path they choose.
Wheelwright not only has the training to help students develop this skill set, but also deep, personal experiences that help her to empathize and think innovatively about a person’s options, including those outside the proverbial box. Those encounters with herself followed by deep self-reflection are threaded through the raising of her three daughters, ages 14, 12 and eight — along with a beagle and two kitties — all of whom have their own developing stories in the works just like Wheelwright’s student clients.
Wheelwright’s tastes and interests are as broad and diverse as the range of students she sees and works with. Not only does she love her kids and her pets, but also “Halloween, drag queens, being outdoors, and all things mythical and mysterious; karaoke, board/card games, and being around people who love and support an authentic and genuine life.”
Little wonder then that when she’s asked who her hero in life is, she offers a self-confident response that her career clients can relate to and that they likely need to hear at this inflection point in their lives: “I have a plaque at my desk that reads ‘She needed a hero, so she became one,'" says Robin Wheelwright. "That’s my mantra and it gets me through tough times.”
Now that’s a storyteller most anyone would pull up a pillow for to give a good listen.
The climate challenges Utah and the region face are a threat, but these challenges can also drive innovation and create a robust workforce.
