homenews | College of Science

Hub For Earth System Sciences Amplifies Impact

October 20, 2025

Gannet Hallar

In mid-September of this year, even before thunderstorms over the Pacific Ocean began to significantly build, experimental forecasts at the U.S. National Science Foundation National Center for Atmospheric Research (NSF NCAR) showed the emerging weather system intensifying into Super Typhoon Ragasa. With 165-mile-per-hour winds it was the most powerful storm on Earth so far this year.

The innovative computer modeling approach scientists used last month to detect Ragasa is just one example of how federally funded research helps save lives and property by improving predictions of hurricanes. And NSF NCAR, managed by the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR), is at the center of that public impact.

“UCAR allows for the atmospheric science community to speak with one voice, with expertise across the nation,” says Gannet Hallar, U professor and associate chair in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences who is one of two new trustees of the UCAR board announced October 13. The consortium of universities nationwide, she continues, “helps shape the U.S. weather research enterprise. It also provides the university community the opportunity to collaborate and shape our national center (NCAR).” She has served as the member representative for Utah since 2017.

Relatively far from the observations in emerging fine-scale resolution simulations of super typhoons is Storm Peak Laboratory where, for nearly two decades, Hallar has been the director. At this high elevation facility, located in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, she and her team collect high quality measurements of trace gases, aerosol physical and chemical properties, and cloud microphysics to understand connections between the biosphere, atmosphere, and climate, along with the impact of anthropogenic emissions on these connections.

The lab, staffed at different times with students (both undergraduate and graduate) as well as post-doctoral researchers, has been recognized by the NSF as a Community Instruments and Facilities (CIF) for the atmospheric sciences. Hallar’s connection to NCAR and UCAR started 25 years ago as a graduate student conducting research aboard the Lockheed C-130 Hercules aircraft in weather-related missions.

Over the course of several years she served in many different UCAR roles, most recently as a member and chair of the UCAR’s nominating committee and before that as program director for Physical and Dynamic Meteorology (PDM) within the Division of Atmospheric & Geospace Sciences at the NSF. Currently, she serves on the leadership team of the U’s Wilkes Center for Climate Science & Policy and as an affiliate scientist at NCAR.

Founded in 1959, UCAR is a collection of 129 North American colleges and universities focused on research and training in Earth system science. It’s a critical institutional nexus for what is not only global phenomena but a dynamic system in constant flux. In partnership with the NSF, UCAR established the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in 1960 as a federally funded research and development center.

UCAR does more than field trusted administrators of the financial, human resources, facilities and information technology functions essential to the science. It also facilitates community programs. These initiatives extend and enhance the world-class research done at the national center by encouraging students to pursue science careers and providing online professional training, data delivery, and other valued services.

Says Hallar, “It is an honor to be elected by my peers and I look forward to the service. NCAR has provided extensive value to my research career, and I admire others serving on the board currently and those that have served previously."

As a new board trustee, Gannet Hallar is joined by Daniel Cziczo, Purdue University.

By David Pace

You can learn more about UCAR in the video below.

2025 Innovation Awards Recipients

October 17, 2025

The awards recognize the efforts U students, staff, faculty and startups have made to pursue impactful research and contribute to the university’s culture of innovation.

The recipients were acknowledged on Oct. 13, along with those at the university who have accomplished the following in fiscal year 2025:

Received a patent
Completed Ascender Grant milestones
Completed the first and second phases of the I-Corps program
Received SBIR/STTR funding

Highlighted below are the three awards won by faculty and researchers affiliated with the College of Science.

Startup of the Year: Trace AQ

Derek Mallia

Trace AQ, a U spinout, delivers advanced forecasting and air quality solutions to provide accurate and reliable intelligence to communities, corporations and health care systems, targeting an issue especially prominent in Salt Lake City. These advanced forecasts allow Trace AQ’s customers to adjust their outdoor lifestyles around the times when local air quality will be the best, maintaining their respiratory health and safety.

The company started as a National Science Foundation project in the U’s Department of Chemical Engineering, with several of its team members focusing their research on wildfire behavior and smoke. Co-founded by atmospheric scientists Derek Mallia, Taylor (Kai) Wilmot — both from the Department of Atmospheric Sciences in the College of Science along with Heather Holmes and Victor Gill, (the latter joining as the founding CEO), Trace AQ has translated the team’s academic insight in atmospheric modeling, air quality analysis and wildfire behavior into a successful commercial platform that directly improves the respiratory health of their clients.

A major cause of mortality

Taylor (Kai) Wilmot

"Poor air quality is a major cause of mortality across the U.S. (>50,000), which exceeds that of all natural hazards (~500), combined,” says Mallia whose research centers on advancing the understanding of extreme air quality events to improve the predictability of these events. Much of the research Mallia, Holmes, and Wilmot has done at the U was used to develop a state-of-the-art air quality forecast system for North America. This model was commercialized as part of an existing NSF project (CREATE-AQI) and serves as the backbone of the forecast operations at Trace AQ. “The ultimate goal of this work,” says Mallia, “is to provide the public with timely and actionable air quality forecasts to reduce exposure to air pollution."

The spinout has also worked with the Venture Hub’s Energy Accelerator to build their business model, closing their $1.25 million seed round and moving their research beyond the lab into real-world applications. In commercializing their cutting-edge translational technology, Trace AQ has well-earned the Startup of the Year Award.

Founders of the Year: Vahe Bandarian and Karsten Eastman

Vahe Bandarian

Department of Chemistry’s faculty member Vahe Bandarian and associate researcher Karsten Eastman (Ph.D. ’23) co-founded the startup Sethera Therapeutics. Their PolyMacrocyclic Peptide (pMCP) Discovery Platform revolutionized peptide-based drug discovery. The Sethera platform generates conformationally constrained chains of amino acids that bind to biological targets in the body and regulate biological processes and treat diseases from there.

Sethera Therapeutics’ pMCP Discovery Platform is designed to engage multiple targets at once, and it allows the modulation of intricate biological pathways, coupling of complex functionalities and engineering of peptides for any target or indication. .

Federal scientific support

Karsten Eastman

The duo’s work started with fundamental studies on enzymatic cross-linking in peptides — basic science that only led later to the applications they are now seeing through Sethera. It was research done with support from the National Institutes of Health, says Bandarian, professor of chemistry and associate provost for Mission-Aligned Planning at the U, “underscoring the role of the federal scientific support in discoveries. We formed the company to translate the scientific discoveries from my lab at the U towards hopefully significant societal impact.”

This platform, says Eastman who serves as Sethera’s CEO, “lets us build highly constrained peptides that can be engineered to engage complex biology, sometimes across multiple targets, while dialing in properties that matter for real therapeutics. The recognition means a lot because it underscores the University of Utah’s role in translating rigorous chemistry and biochemistry into tools that partners can use to tackle hard problems in human health.”

Bandarian and Eastman’s technology places their company in a unique position in drug discovery. They have both leveraged their many years of biochemical research on enzymatic transformations at the U to commercialize and translate their findings, ranking them among the most notable researchers of the year.

Lifetime Achievement Award: Bob Palais

Bob Palais

Bob Palais, research professor in the Department of Mathematics at the U, has devoted decades of experience to his study of DNA melting analysis. His long-term efforts and work with the Wittwer Lab have led to the development of high-resolution melting methods for DNA analysis that provide a rapid, inexpensive means of mutation scanning, genotyping and sequence matching through the use of saturation dyes.

“I am surprised, moved and humbled to receive this recognition for what has always been a group effort and accomplishment,” said Palais at the awards event, before crediting a long list of colleagues and predecessors, teachers and graduate students, along with the Department of Mathematics where he is a faculty member.”

Innovation ecosystem

“On my very first of many hikes to this day with Carl Wittwer, Kirk Ririe and Randy Rasmussen,” said Palais to the appreciative crowd, “the discussion included something called an ‘invention disclosure’ dropped off [at] someplace called the university's Technology [Licensing] Office.” That auspicious “drop off” became a patent for a novel use of a DNA saturating dye that would revolutionize diagnostics of infectious disease and genetic variations.

On another hike up the same mountain a couple of years later, reported Palais, “I had the idea that led to my first patent with Carl Wittwer, U professor of pathology and a longtime colleague of Palais’.

The Wittwer Lab

Since these formative years, ARUP Labs in the U’s Research Park where much of Palais’ work was commercialized has performed 1.2 million genetic tests with the software he developed with Wittwer. Additionally, four million-plus designs have been simulated by the uMelt software he developed with data engineer Zach Dwight by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as well as universities and companies around the world.

“Orders of magnitude more high-resolution DNA melting analysis tests have been performed by the BioFire Diagnostics [now bioMérieux] platforms,” added Palais. "The rapid contact tracing these tests enabled made it possible to tamp down incipient epidemics like Ebola, preventing potential pandemics.”

“The Technology Licensing Office used to have a quote from me on a poster in the entry," concluded Palais, “expressing my immense appreciation and praise for the support you all provide for faculty and student inventors to facilitate entrepreneurial collaborations that has built a thriving regional technology innovation ecosystem. That gratitude has only grown stronger.”

When a rat makes up its mind, these neuroscientists know

October 16, 2025

Thomas Luo, assistant professor, School of Biological Sciences, University of Utah

In the new study led by Princeton University, researchers used AI to trace the trajectory of decision making in the frontal cortex of rats, determining the instant when the brain “committed” to a choice and began tuning out new information.

Understanding this commitment process could improve how we study attention, impulsivity and decision-making in both healthy brains and in disorders like ADHD or schizophrenia.

“We’ve discovered a biomarker of the precise moment when a decision is finalized, and the deliberation ends,” said co-first author Thomas (Zhihao) Luo, an incoming assistant professor at the University of Utah who completed the research as a postdoctoral scholar at the Princeton Neuroscience Institute. “We’re now able to begin to pinpoint the exact moment when an animal makes up its mind and commits to a decision because we now have more accurate mathematical models of how neurons work together.”

The findings were published on Sept. 17, 2025, in the journal Nature.

A click decision

Everyone dreads deciding what grocery lane will move the fastest.

Given little time and uncertain data, most people estimate each cashier’s scanning speed, how complicated a fellow customer’s cart looks and other key details to make up their mind about which lane is most likely to get them out the door the soonest.

While rats are spared from checkout-line dilemmas, they do face critical food choices based on uncertain cues, such as tracking where a tasty cricket may be hiding among the grass by listening to its stridulations.

In lieu of tracking chirps, though, researchers in the laboratory of Carlos Brody, professor of neuroscience at the Princeton Neuroscience Institute, trained thirsty rats to calculate some simple auditory arithmetic. Each time a parched rat correctly judged which of two sound speakers produced more clicks over the course of just a fraction of a second, they earned a sip of water.

As the rats were making these decisions, the researchers monitored hundreds of brain cells in the frontal cortex, an area critical for decision making.

Math illuminates when choices are made

Luo and Timothy Kim, co-first author and Brody lab graduate student alumnus, then developed a new AI-based tool to sift through the vast dataset of brain activity. This was done without any explicit instructions on what patterns to look for, as an unbiased approach to detect whatever patterns are most salient in the data.

The agnostic analysis revealed that a rat’s brain shifts through two distinct phases during decision making.

At first, it processes sensory information from the outside world, which for these rats were the clicks from the speakers. Then, at a certain point, the brain switches gears and begins acting independently, as if it’s locked in a choice and stopped paying attention to new input.

This second phase seems to be the moment the rat “commits” to a decision. Notably, this “moment of commitment” happened at different times across trials and wasn’t always tied to when the sounds started or stopped. That suggests that decisions depend on both what’s happening around, as well as how the brain processes and interprets new information.

Collaboration charts a path for the future

These discoveries were only possible through collaboration between scientists with complementary expertise. Luo brought his background of electrophysiological tools to record thousands of neurons across multiple brain regions simultaneously, while the rats performed cognitive tasks.

“Without the large-scale neural recordings collected by Thomas, we would not have been able to make these findings,” Kim said. “That dataset allowed me to develop a deep learning method that discovered a distinct shift in neural representation before and after the animal makes up its mind.”

Together, Kim and Luo have opened the door to studying how decisions are made not just in rats, but in people too.

““If we can understand the mathematical rules that describe how neurons work together, we may begin to see how those rules break down in conditions that affect thinking or emotion,” Luo said.

The research may one day improve how doctors diagnose or treat conditions like ADHD, schizophrenia or Alzheimer’s. And in the long run, it may even inspire smarter AI systems that make decisions more like the brain; fast, flexible and tuned to changing information.

This work was supported by a grant from the United States National Institute of Health (F32 MH115416, R01MH108358, R01MH138935 and 5U19NS132720) and the Simons Foundation (SF 542953).

CITATION: “Transitions in dynamical regime and neural mode during perceptual decisions,” Thomas Zhihao Luo, Timothy Doyeon Kim, Diksha Gupta, Adrian G. Bondy, Charles D. Kopec, Verity A. Elliott, Brian DePasquale, Carlos D. Brody. Nature, Sept. 17, 2025. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09528-4

Adapted from a story by the Princeton Neuroscience Institute.

SRI Stories: Mentoring Through Microbes

October 15, 2025

In middle school, she entered a science fair with a project testing which yogurt brand grew mold the fastest. Years later, a college microbiology course set her on a path toward studying bacteria in depth, eventually leading to a doctorate degree in Matthew Mulvey’s lab in the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Utah.

Now, Rousek is taking on a new position as a postdoctoral researcher with the Science Research Initiative (SRI), where she leads a new research stream investigating Extraintestinal Pathogenic E. coli (ExPEC) — the bacteria responsible for urinary tract and bloodstream infections. Her work focuses on a specialized subset of bacteria known as persister cells, which enter a dormant, “hibernation-like” state that allows them to survive antibiotic treatment and cause recurrent infections.

“One of the most common issues in the field of studying UTIs is recurrent infection,” she explains. “We’re trying to understand why these infections keep coming back, even though all of the bacteria should be killed by antibiotics.” The importance of this medical issue is often underestimated, but it can have serious health consequences on an individual and community level. “Not only does this affect a lot of people, but it specifically affects a lot of women, so I think it's important to study,” she says. “So many people are consistently taking antibiotics for these recurrent infections, which can be really unhealthy, and can actually contribute to the rising rates of antibiotic resistance.”

Thanks to clinical samples shared by her Ph.D. mentor, Rousek’s stream will give undergraduates the chance to work with bacteria isolated directly from human patients. This means their research doesn’t just happen in theory but reflects the pathogens causing real-world infections today. “What we’re finding is going to be representative of actual infections,” she says. “I think it’ll be really cool for my students to get to perform research on real, very relevant stuff.”

Dream Opportunity

While SRI is opening new doors for its students, the program’s postdocs, like Rousek, also benefit from the program’s unique model. “It’s really different from any other type of postdoc,” she says. “It’s like I’m running my own lab, which is a really cool opportunity, but with so much support from the program itself. Honestly, it’s a dream opportunity to be able to do my own science without having to jump straight into a professorship.”

Beyond the lab, Rousek is excited about mentoring undergraduate researchers. “I really like teaching people science and getting them excited about it,” she says. “Working with a wider diversity of students will be really fun and potentially challenging, but in a good way. There’s just more opportunities for students to work together, collaborate, and develop their own projects.”

Rousek hopes to build a productive and engaging research stream that inspires students to pursue whatever field they’re passionate about. “Science is hard already, and not having a good support system or a good mentor makes it a lot harder,” she reflects. “I’ve been really lucky to have incredible mentors, and I hope to pass that on to the students who come through my stream.”

Penrose Medalist Thure Cerling: A year of exceptional accomplishments

October 9, 2025

The GSA bestows medals and awards to recognize individuals who have, through their outstanding achievements, made significant contributions to the geosciences. A Distinguished Professor in the Department of Geology & Geophysics and the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Utah, Cerling certainly merits this recognization.

Nominated for the award by colleague Marjorie Chan, distinguished professor emerita of Geology & Geophysics at the U, Chan wrote, "Dr. Cerling is an exceptional, award-winning geoscientist who has advanced our understanding of Earth history through groundbreaking isotope geochemistry work in forensics, cosmogenic dating, and paleo-CO2 records of biological and geological significance. This impactful work has addressed major scientific questions and societal issues. His outstanding science, service, and mentoring make him one of the most influential, creative living scientists and fully deserving of GSA's highest honor."

The announcement of the Penrose Medal this year is an opportunity to highlight many of the research papers published this year by the celebrated scientist and beloved former chair of the Department of Geology & Geophysics who also holds an appointment in the School of Biological Sciences:

Soil carbonates in a Michigan forest.

Pedogenic carbonate as a transient soil component in a humid, temperate forest (Michigan, USA)

Kelson JR, TE Huth, K Andrews, MN Bartleson, TE Cerling, L Jun, MP Salinas, NE Levin, (2025). Quaternary Research 124: 105-120. [Link to paper]

This study investigated unusual carbonate rinds found in a forested environment in Michigan — an environment where carbonates rarely form. The combined study of carbon and oxygen isotopes, including 17-O, clumped isotopes, and ¹⁴C, show that these carbonates are a mix of detrital and modern soil carbonates.

Strontium isotope mapping of elephant enamel supports an integrated microsampling-modeling workflow to reconstruct herbivore migrations

Yang D, Podkovyroff K, Uno KT, Bowen GJ, Fernandez DP, Cerling TE (2025). Communications Biology, 8(1) 1–9. [link to paper]

Strontium isotopes in modern and fossil teeth are increasingly used to study migration. This study uses an elephant with a unique migration (transfer between a zoo in California to one in Utah) to show that modeling strontium recycling from bone is necessary to properly model animal movement -— it takes two years for an elephant to equilibrate to a new environment.

Thure Cerling with Dave Marchetti on 230,000 (230 ka) year ago debris flow near Capitol Reef

Boulder armored benches in the Teasdale/Torrey lowlands, Fremont River, Utah

Marchetti DW, Ellwein AL, Huth TE, Cerling TE, Anderson LS, Passey BH, Hynek SA, (2025). Geosphere [Link to paper]

Numerous debris flows and river terraces in the Torrey / Teasdale lowlands reach of the Fremont River in the northwestern Colorado Plateau are dated using cosmogenic 3-Helium. researchers determined that asymmetrical downcutting on the south side of the Fremont River is significantly higher than on the north side. This disparity is attributed to two key factors: a thicker and more extensive layer of erosion-resistant volcanic boulders on the south side and a lower river gradient upstream.

This story originally appeared at the Department of Geology & Geophysics website.

Detecting the elusive neutrino in Antarctica

October 8, 2025

Vivian O’Dell, Upgrade Project Director at the IceCube

“It’s all about the upgrade,” said Vivian O’Dell, Upgrade Project Director at the IceCube Neutrino Observatory in Antarctica. O’Dell was one of the featured speakers in the opening salvo of the IceCube Neutrino Collaboration’s semi-annual meeting, October 6-10, this year convened at the University of Utah.

The Collaboration is an international group of scientists using the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, a one-cubic-kilometer detector located in Antarctica. The site is designed to detect high-energy neutrinos from cosmic sources and to study dark matter, cosmic rays and neutrino properties.

Since its construction, which started in 2004, the IceCube Neutrino Observatory has revolutionized the field of astroparticle physics, by enabling us to observe the Universe in fundamentally new ways, using high-energy neutrinos as cosmic messengers. Most recently, in 2023, the IceCube Neutrino Observatory produced the first view of our home galaxy using high-energy neutrinos and measured neutrino properties through a phenomenon known as neutrino oscillations.

Made up of 450 people from 58 institutions in 14 countries, the Collaboration is also positioned to explore fundamental physics, and the upgrade O’Dell—based at the University of Wisconsin-Madison—was referring to is an on-going, multi-year improvement of the massive observatory. Beginning this week, Dennis Soldin from the U will take on the role of the IceCube Analysis Coordinator, coordinating the scientific data analysis efforts across all member institutions.

Adding Strings

Most recently the upgrade includes adding seven additional vertical “strings” or cables to the already existing 86. Light sensors called digital optical modules frozen into the Antarctic ice form the giant detector that uses the ice as its natural medium to detect the ghostly, electrically neutral, subatomic particle with a mass close to zero.

Once deployed, the strings are connected to the main computing facility via a surface junction box. The box is the point where the buried strings, once commissioned, link with the detector’s central data acquisition system. From there data will be analyzed by IceCube scientists and high-level data from neutrino bursts will be shared with researchers across the globe in real or close-to-real time.

Pearl Sandick, Interim Dean, College of Science

At the meeting’s opening session Monday morning at the new L. S. Skaggs Applied Science Building, O’Dell and the Detector Operations Manager Matt Kauer walked the assembled group of scientists through enhancements at the site largely focused on upgrade support and integration, including surface array improvements. IceCube Spokesperson Erin O’Sullivan reviewed the scientific program of the observatory.

Collected data on neutrinos and interactions of cosmic rays with the Earth’s atmosphere are critical to the work of particle physicists around the world including at the U where Carsten Rott, Jack W. Keuffel Memorial Chair professor and chair of the Department of Physics & Astronomy, correlates observations of high-energy neutrinos with other cosmic messengers. “To establish any correlation, it’s essential that we can accurately point back to where neutrinos originated on the sky,” said Rott in a 2023 profile about the potential of the ongoing upgrade.

“We hope that the IceCube upgrade will be just the first step towards a much larger facility for multi-messenger science at the South Pole that combines optical and radio neutrino detection with a cosmic ray air shower array.”

Utah’s Particle Detection Legacy

Rott was on hand Monday to welcome the Collaboration to the U, as was Senior Dean and Vice Provost of the Colleges of Liberal Arts & Sciences Peter Trapa who reviewed the history of astroparticle physics at the U. It began in 1959 with the arrival of Jack Koeffel whose “early detection experiments over 60 years ago,” said Trapa, “were designed to isolate the neutrino event from the other events” using what we now consider to be primitive detection systems.

In other opening remarks, particle physicist and Interim Dean of the College of Science Pearl Sandick detailed the work of the Utah Neutrino Detector with origins in a nearby 600-meter-deep Park City mine. The mine's depth provided the necessary shielding from cosmic rays, allowing scientists to focus on the rare, highly penetrating neutrino particles.

Carsten Rott, Chair, Dept. of Physics & Astronomy

Dennis Soldin, IceCube Analysis Coordinator

Known as the Spiro Tunnel, the site was intended to be a laboratory, reported the Park Record newspaper at the time, to "help probe the mysteries of outer space" by detecting neutrinos from the far reaches of the universe and Earth's atmosphere. The researchers published a paper in 1969 describing the observation of two "neutrino events" in their detector.

Despite erroneous conclusions in the paper, the experiment was considered a pioneering effort in the field of particle physics, and the U’s Cosmic Ray group, founded by Keuffel, was established. The group would ultimately include George Cassiday, Eugene Loh and Haven Bergeson. Their research in high-energy physics continued, and later projects, such as the Fly's Eye experiment in the 1980s, were built upon this early work.

More recently, Sandick reminded the group, the highest energy cosmic ray ever was detected in Utah’s Telescope Array in 1991 with the second highest energy cosmic ray detected in 2021 at the same site in the high desert of Millard County, Utah, near the town of Delta.

Public Event

With the Beehive State’s illustrious history of investigating astroparticle physics, the University of Utah is a fitting location for the IceCube Neutrino Collaboration’s meeting. And while most of the proceedings are closed to members, the U.S. premiere of “Messengers” a documentary film featuring two "winter overs" who spent an entire year in isolation at the geographic South Pole running the IceCube Neutrino Telescope experiment is open to the public on Wednesday, October 8 at the Utah Museum of Fine Art on the U campus.

The free public screening is part of the IceCube Neutrino Telescope Collaboration Meeting hosted by the Department of Physics & Astronomy and co-organized, with Rott and Soldin,

Meanwhile, the fascinating and complex upgrades to the Observatory reported on by Vivian O’Dell and others continue in Antarctica. Annually, an estimated 100,000 neutrinos will now be detected and their properties measured with what’s being called “unprecedented precision.”

by David Pace

Dataset tracks ecological traits for 11K birds

October 3, 2025

Çağan Şekercioğlu

With the help of countless students and volunteers, the University of Utah conservation biologist has finally released BIRDBASE, an encyclopedic dataset of traits covering all the bird species recognized by the world’s four major avian taxonomies.

Described this week in a study published in the journal Scientific Data, the dataset covers 78 ecological traits, including conservation status, for 11,589 species of birds in 254 families. The main trait categories tracked are body mass; habitat; diet; nest type; clutch size; life history; elevational range; and movement strategy, that is whether and how they migrate.

While some little-known species still have incomplete data, the dataset provides a foundation for ornithologists around the world to conduct new global analyses in ornithology, conservation biology and macroecology, including the links between bird species’ ecological traits and their risk of extinction, according to Şekercioğlu, a professor in the university’s School of Biological Sciences. He also hopes BIRDBASE will help other biologists win support for studying avian conservation.

“To get funding you have to have a big question, but without data, how are you going to answer those big questions?” Şekercioğlu posed. “It also shows we still have ways to go. Birds are the best-known class of organism, but even though they are the best known, we still have big data gaps.”

BIRDBASE’s public launch coincides with the release of the first unified global checklist for birds, known as AviList, a grand taxonomy under one cover.

The BIRDBASE project started in 1999 when Şekercioğlu was a graduate student at Stanford University, spending field seasons in Costa Rica. While writing the first chapter of his Ph.D. thesis, he needed to know the percentage of tropical forest understory bug-eating birds, technically known as insectivores, that are threatened with extinction. He was perplexed to discover that information had yet to be determined.

Variation in seven example traits provided in BIRDBASE. Bars indicate the number of species within categories or subsets of each trait: (A) average body mass, (B) primary habitat, (C) primary diet, (D) nest type, (E) maximum clutch size, (F) elevational range, and (G) movement strategy. Example species (from left to right, top to bottom) include: Bee Hummingbird, Common Ostrich, Keel-billed Toucan, Cream-coloured Courser, Rainbow Bee-eater, Bearded Vulture, Chinese Blackbird, Malleefowl, Adelie Penguin, Northern Bobwhite, Horned Lark, and Snowy Albatross. Graphic credit: Çağan Şekercioğlu.

“I realized that statistic doesn’t exist because nobody had analyzed all the birds of the world and their threat status based on diet,” he said. “I’m like, this is unbelievable. There’s no global database on birds. I’m lucky that I was in grad school because I was naive and I love birds.”

In other words, he set out to figure it out himself. That meant gathering and organizing life history traits for all such bird species, including their diets, habitats and conservation status. For a keen birder like Şekercioğlu, it seemed like a simple task that would be fun, compiling data found on thousands of bird species published in huge beautifully illustrated volumes. It turned out to be tedious and seriously time consuming, but worthwhile.

Thanks to a cadre of volunteers in the Stanford Volunteer Program and undergraduates, whose labors were compensated by the Stanford Center for Conservation Biology, Şekercioğlu answered his question within a couple years. Twenty-seven percent of tropical understory insectivores were threatened or near threatened with extinction. This finding wound up not supporting the hypothesis of his research, but that’s science.

Yet the dataset was so helpful that he labored on with the data-compiling project to eventually cover all bird species and expanded the number of traits included. “What started as this little specialized question turned into this global database, the first of its kind” he said.

BIRDBASE has proven a boon to many other avian researchers who have tapped it to support dozens of papers, most of them listing Şekercioğlu as co-author. The tally of Şekercioğlu’s papers that have used BIRDBASE currently stands at 98, accounting for 14,000 of Şekercioğlu’s 24,000-plus citations.

Among the conclusions the dataset has enabled is that a majority of the world’s bird species, or 54%, are insectivores, and many species in this group are under pressure.

“Most of them are tropical forest species. It is a very important group and they’re declining,” he said. “They’re sensitive even though they’re not hunted. They are small, so they don’t need a big area. You wouldn’t expect them to be the most sensitive group to habitat fragmentation but they are highly specialized.”

The dataset also showed that fish-eating seabirds are at elevated risk of extinction as well, and fruit-eating birds are vital to the survival of tropical rain forests.

Broad-billed Tody, Dominican Republic. Photo credit: Çağan Şekercioğlu

“The most important seed dispersers in the tropics are frugivorous birds,” Şekercioğlu said. “In some tropical forests, over 90% of all woody plants’ seeds are dispersed by fruit-eating birds who eat them and then defecate the seeds somewhere else and they germinate.”

Now for the first time BIRDBASE is publicly available to all researchers online, “no strings attached.” It can be found as an Excel spreadsheet on a site hosted by Figshare, with separate worksheet tabs for trait values, trait definitions, nest details and data sources, packaged on one row per species.

Şekercioğlu emphasized that BIRDBASE remains a work in progress that will be continuously updated. Kind of like a medieval cathedral that is open for worship, but never really finished. He estimated that nearly 30 person-years of labor have gone into the project, work that entails entering data collected from various authoritative sources, such as BirdLife International, Birds of the World, hundreds of bird books and ornithological papers, and Şekercioğlu’s field observations of more than 9,400 bird species.

“Thanks to my being naïve, something that started with just a little question in grad school led to the foundation of my career. Right now, if one of my students came to me and said, ‘Hey, as part of my PhD I want to enter the world’s birds into a dataset,’ I’m like, ‘No, you’re not doing that. You’ll never finish your Ph.D.’ Fortunately I finished my Ph.D., but think about it, 1999 is when I had the idea and we are still putting finishing touches in 2025.”

by Brian Maffly
This story originally appeared in @The U.

The study, titled “BIRDBASE: A Global Dataset of Avian Biogeography, Conservation, Ecology and Life History Traits,” appeared Sept. 30 in Scientific Data, published by Springer Nature. Co-authors include current and former graduate students and lab members Kyle Kittelberger, Flavio Mota, Amy Buxton, Nikolas Orton, Adara DeNiro, Evan Buechley, Joshua Horns, J. David Blount, Jason Socci and Montague Neate-Clegg.

Stories about past research findings based on BIRDBASE data:

“Alien” bird invasions

Discovering the traits of extinct birds

Çağan Şekercioğlu’s Frontiers of Science presentation in 2017, “Why Birds Matter.”

Could a fungus provide a blueprint for next-gen hydrogels?

October 3, 2025

Fungi are vital to natural ecosystems by breaking down dead organic material and cycling it back into the environment as nutrients. But new research from the University of Utah finds one species, Marquandomyces marquandii, a ubiquitous soil mold, shows promise as a potential building block for new biomedical materials.

In recent years, scientists have examined fungal mycelium, the network of root-like threads—or hyphae—that penetrate soils, wood and other nutrient-bearing substrate, in search of materials with structural properties that could be useful for human purposes, particularly construction.

In a series of lab demonstrations, U mechanical engineering researchers and biologists show M. marquandii can grow into hydrogels, materials that hold lots of water and mimic the softness and flexibility of human tissues, according to a recent study.

Unlike other fungi that struggle with water retention and durability, M. marquandii produces thick, multilayered hydrogels that can absorb up to 83% water and bounce back after being stretched or stressed, according to Atul Agrawal, the lead author of the study. These properties make it a good candidate for biomedical uses such as tissue regeneration, scaffolds for growing cells or even flexible, wearable devices.

“What you are seeing here is a hydrogel with multilayers,” said Agrawal, holding a glass flask containing a fungal colony growing in a yellowish liquid medium. “It’s visible to the naked eye, and these multiple layers have different porosity. So the top layer has about 40% porosity, and then there are alternating bands of 90% porosity and 70% porosity.”

Looking to nature to innovate materials

Bryn Dentinger

Agrawal is a Ph.D. candidate at the John and Marcia Price College of Engineering. His paper is the latest to emerge from the lab of senior author Steven Naleway, an associate professor of mechanical engineering who explores biological substances to develop bioinspired materials with structural and medical applications.

Agrawal and Naleway are seeking patent protection for their discoveries about the Marquandomyces fungus.

“This one in particular was able to grow these big, beefy mycelial layers, which is what we are interested in. Mycelium is made primarily out of chitin, which is similar to what’s in seashells and insect exoskeletons. It’s biocompatible, but also it’s this highly spongy tissue,” said Naleway, whose lab is funded by the National Science Foundation. “In theory, you could use it as a template for biomedical applications or you could try to mineralize it and create a bone scaffolding.”

Fungi comprise its own kingdom of organisms, with an estimated 2.2 to 3.8 million species, and just 4% have been characterized by scientists. For decades, scientists have derived from fungi numerous pharmacological substances, from penicillin to LSD. Naleway is among a cohort of engineers now looking to fungal microstructures for potential use in other arenas.

Why fungal mycelia have interesting mechanical properties

In collaboration with U mycologist Bryn Dentinger, Naleway’s lab has produced a string of papers documenting potentially useful structural properties of various species of fungi. One outlined how fungi that grow short hyphae are more stiff than those that grow longer hyphae. Another catalogued the various ways bracket fungi’s high strength-to-weight ratios make them a viable alternative in various applications, including aerospace and agriculture.

The way fungal hyphae grow is the reason why mycelia could have useful structural properties.

A novel high-speed, high-def hyperspectral video camera

October 2, 2025

Rajesh Menon

This process is slow, however, meaning that hyperspectral cameras can only take still images, or videos with very low frame rates, or frames per second (fps). But what if a high-fps video camera could capture dozens of wavelengths at once, revealing details invisible to the naked eye?

Now, researchers at the University of Utah’s John and Marcia Price College of Engineering and College of Science have developed a new way of taking a high-definition snapshot that encodes spectral data into images, much like a traditional camera encodes color. Instead of a filter that divides light into three color channels, their specialized filter divides it into 25. Each pixel stores compressed spectral information along with its spatial information, which computer algorithms can later reconstruct into a “cube” of 25 separate images—each representing a distinct slice of the visible spectrum.

This instantaneous encoding enables the researchers’ camera system—small enough to fit into a cellphone—to take high-definition video, and the compressed nature of the component images opens up new real-world applications.

Fernando Guevara Vasquez

A study demonstrating the camera was led by research assistant professor Apratim Majumder and professor Rajesh Menon, both in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering. Coauthors include Fernando Guevara Vasquez, a U professor of mathematics. Funded by the Office of Naval Research, this research was conducted in collaboration with the U tech startup Lumos Imaging, which Menon and Guevara Vasquez founded in 2015.

The results are reported in the journal Optica.

The camera’s design represents a leap forward in how spectral data can be captured.

“We introduce a compact camera that captures both color and fine spectral details in a single snapshot, producing a ‘spectral fingerprint’ for every pixel,” Menon said.

Hyperspectral cameras have long been used in agriculture, astronomy and medicine, where subtle differences in color can make a big difference. But these cameras have historically been bulky, expensive and limited to still images.

“When we started out on this research, our intention was to demonstrate a compact, fast, megapixel resolution hyperspectral camera, able to record highly compressed spatial-spectral information from scenes at video-rates, which did not exist,” Majumder said.

The U team’s breakthrough lies in how it captures and processes the data. The key component is a diffractive element that is placed directly over the camera’s sensor. It’s the element’s repeating nanoscale patterns that diffract incoming light and encodes both spatial and spectral information for each pixel on the sensor. By encoding the scene into a single, compact two-dimensional image rather than a massive three-dimensional data cube, the camera makes hyperspectral imaging faster and more efficient.

“One of the primary advantages of our camera is its ability to capture the spatial-spectral information in a highly compressed two-dimensional image instead of a three-dimensional data cube and use sophisticated computer algorithms to extract the full data cube at a later point,” Majumder explained. “This allows for fast, highly compressed data capture.”

Instead of a filter that divides light into three color channels, the University of Utah engineers and mathematicians have developed a diffractive element that divides it into 25.

The researchers’ diffractive element contains a repeating pattern of nanoscale features.

Guevara Vasquez, of the Mathematics Department, modeled and designed the diffractive filter array and co-designed, with co-author Fernando Gonzalez del Cueto, the algorithm to reconstruct the hyperspectral images from the raw data captured by the sensor.

The camera’s streamlined approach also cuts costs dramatically.

“Our camera costs many times less, is very compact and captures data much faster than most available commercial hyperspectral cameras,” Majumder said. “We have also shown the ability to post-process the data as per the need of the application and implement different classifiers suited to different fields such as agriculture, astronomy and bio-imaging.”

Data storage is another advantage.

“Satellites would have trouble beaming down full image cubes, but since we extract the cubes in post-processing, the original files are much smaller,” Majumder added.

To demonstrate the camera’s capabilities, the researchers tried three real-world applications: telling different types of tissue apart in a surgical scene; predicting the age of strawberries as they decayed over time; and mimicking a series of spectral filters that are used in astronomy.

The current prototype takes images at just over one megapixel in size and can break them down into 25 separate wavelengths across the spectrum. But the team is already working on improvements.

“This work demonstrates a first snapshot megapixel hyperspectral camera,” Majumder said. “Next, we are developing a more improved version of the camera that will allow us to capture images at a larger image size and an increased number of wavelength channels, while also making the nano-structured diffractive element much simpler in design.”

By making hyperspectral imaging cheaper, faster and more compact, the U engineers have opened the door for technologies that could change the way we see the world and uncover details hidden across the spectrum.

Build up Nepal wins $250K Wilkes Climate Launch Prize

September 29, 2025

Build up Nepal replaces polluting coal-fired bricks with eco-friendly ones while making safe housing affordable for poor communities. Their interlocking Compressed Stabilised Earth Bricks can be made using locally available materials, with minimal cement and they are compressed, not fired.

The annual Wilkes Climate Launch Prize was established to accelerate worldwide progress and encourage technological advances for combating climate change. The 2025 Wilkes Climate Launch Prize received over 1,100 submissions worldwide, more than five times the number received in 2024. (See an interactive map of applicant locations.)

Build up Nepal was selected from among six finalists that presented their ideas at the 2025 Wilkes Climate Summit in May. The finalists were evaluated by a team of independent expert judges for scalable impact, feasibility and potential for co-benefits to communities, economies or ecosystems. The runners-up for the prize are Roca Water, a company in Alameda, California, and De Novo Foodlabs, based in Raleigh, North Carolina. Read more about all the teams below.

Wilkes Center co-director Fielding Norton moderates a panel with Climate Launch Prize winner Björn Söderberg (in person), and representatives from runners-up De Novo Food Labs (cofounder Jean Louwrens, left screen) and Roca Water (Margaret Lumley, cofounder and CEO, right screen).

The winner: Build up Nepal

Build up Nepal’s eco-brick technology is empowering poor families in Nepal to rebuild their homes after a series of earthquakes in 2015, and again in 2023, caused widespread damage and impoverishment. Their building technology uses a process that is far less polluting than conventional building techniques and provides a model approach that local construction entrepreneurs can adopt across the world.

Björn Söderberg, co-founder of Build up Nepal, visited the U this week to accept the award. Söderberg said Nepal is one of the most disaster-prone countries in the world, but until recently, poor families could not afford disaster-resilient homes, most of which are built with bricks. The coal-fired brick industry is responsible for 37% of CO₂ emissions from combustion in Nepal, on top of dangerous air pollution and poor working conditions. Build up Nepal trains local entrepreneurs to make climate-friendly eco-bricks, build safe, affordable homes and create jobs in low-income communities.

According to Söderberg, their sustainable construction methods gained trust two years ago after another earthquake struck Nepal.

“When 90% of the buildings at the epicenter fell down, ours stood tall,” said Söderberg. “We believe this is the time to really introduce better, stronger, cheaper technology, not only to this place [that suffered earthquake damage] but demonstrating that this can become the standard for low-cost construction in all of Nepal.”

“Winning the Wilkes Climate Launch Prize is an honor, and a huge boost for our mission,” Söderberg noted. “It will help us scale up our construction projects and bring safe, affordable homes to marginalized families affected by climate change and natural disasters.”

Runner up: Roca Water

Roca Water uses electrochemistry to recover valuable materials from wastewater, reducing pollution and climate emissions while returning resources to productive use instead of losing them.

Their novel electrochemical process addresses two major climate challenges: reducing nitrogen pollution that leads to eutrophication and nitrous oxide (N₂O) emissions, and decarbonizing fertilizer production by replacing the energy-intensive Haber-Bosch ammonia synthesis with ammonia produced from wastewater.

Nitrous oxide emissions from wastewater plants are roughly 265 to 300 times more potent than CO₂over a 100-year period, which Roca Water aims to tackle.

“Longer term, we’re hoping that nitrous oxide gets more attention, which is happening. As there is more quantification happening around nitrous oxide emissions broadly, that will help us to tell our story,” said Margaret Lumley, cofounder and CEO of Roca Water.

Runner up: De Novo Foodlabs

De Novo Foodlabs is working to produce essential food proteins without needing animals for food using engineered microorganisms.

The company uses precision fermentation technology to create scarce, valuable nutrients and compounds that are difficult to source traditionally, developing next-generation nutritional solutions. Their goal is to produce a product that actively captures and removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, making the process net carbon negative.

During a panel discussion with the three top finalists on Thursday, Sept. 25, Jean Louwrens, co-founder of De Novo Foodlabs, said his team’s concept originated from their goal to improve the food system and create healthy and accessible ingredients for people—with the climate solution piece being a secondary benefit.

“If it’s just a climate solution, and it doesn’t solve any real-world problems for your customers, you’re probably going to fail and it won’t be a climate solution because your company isn’t going to be around anyway.”

Watch video recordings of the prize announcement and the climate entrepreneurship panel.

The story originally appeared in @ The U.

Hub For Earth System Sciences Amplifies Impact

Atmospheric scientist Gannet Hallar elected as trustee to UCAR board.

2025 Innovation Awards REcipients

On October 10, 2025 the University of Utah’ Technology Licensing Office announced the recipients of the third annual Innovation Awards.