homenews | College of Science

25th Research on Capitol Hill

February 26, 2025

By translating classroom knowledge into experimental design and data analysis, these students gain invaluable experience that can inspire future careers in research, medicine, and policy — equipping them to collaborate with policymakers and use science to address complex challenges.

This year, College of Science student research was represented in 12 of the 25 projects from the University of Utah. Their diverse research covered topics on synthesis of organic molecules, monitoring groundwater storage in the Salt Lake Valley, fungi, breast cancer, spider venom, birds, cardiac imaging, bacteria, and more. While the event provides a tremendous learning opportunity for undergraduates, the relationship between students and researchers is equally impactful—undergraduates make meaningful contributions to ongoing academic research, advancing scientific discovery.

Below are College of Science majors who presented at this year’s Research on Capitol Hill

Parker Guzman, graduating spring 2025, majoring in biology, with an emphasis in ecology and evolution and a minor in integrative human biology

Poster: Birds Groom More During Molt

Mentor: Sara Bush, Professor, School of Biological Sciences

In the Clayton/Bush lab Guzman is focused on studying the relationship between molt and preening/grooming behavior in captive pigeons. “Molt is a huge but necessary energy investment for pigeons,” explains Parker. Research has played a central role in Parker’s undergraduate experience and future plans. “After I leave the U,” Parker says, “I want to work in the field and then apply for a PhD program in ecology and evolution. I could see myself staying in academia, I enjoy teaching or doing research.”

You can read more about Parker Guzman’s research journey in SRI Stories: Of Bees & Pigeons

Marlon Lopez, graduating spring 2025 majoring in biology and a minor in chemistry

Poster: Exploring Short-form RON as a Therapeutic Target for Breast Cancer

Mentor: Alana Welm, Professor of Oncological Sciences and Senior Director of Basic Science at the Huntsman Comprehensive Cancer Center

“My curiosity started when I was in elementary school. There was a lesson about the cell that really caught my interest. The complexity and all of its functions and capabilities fascinated me. Coming to college I knew I wanted to study biology and learn about the intricacies of the cell and its components,” Marlon says, but “as a first-generation college student, my college experience has had its challenges.

"Initially, I didn't know how to get involved in research, but by looking for programs I stumbled upon a summer research program named SPUR. I applied and got accepted to do research at the Huntsman. "Working in a lab that studies breast cancer and knowing I have contributed to novel and impactful research has been exciting."

Kisha Thambu, graduating spring 2025 with a double major in computer science (honors) and biology with a minor in chemistry

Poster: Enhancing Myocardial T1 Mapping with a Deep Learning Framework for Deformable Motion Compensation using Utah Patient Data

Mentor: Ganesh Adluru, Associate Professor, Radiology & Imaging Sciences, School of Medicine

Kishan’s research leveraged artificial intelligence to improve MRI imaging for cardiac mapping. Figuring out ways to clean up the images in a patient that is actively breathing, offers the promise to improve diagnosis and treatment outcomes for patients with heart disease.

More about Kishan Thambu

Isaac Graham, graduating spring 2026, double majoring in biology and chemistry

Poster: Characterization of Silver Nanoparticles on Mesoporous Silica Supports

Mentor: Ilya Zharov, Professor, Chemistry Department

“Research at the University of Utah has helped show me that I want to continue onto graduate school in organic chemistry and eventually work in industry on drug synthesis.

"I found my lab by surveying the chemistry department website and then cold emailing Professor Zharov to see if I could get involved in research in the lab.”

Alisson Nopper, graduating spring 2025, with a double major in biology and chemistry

Poster: Deaminative contraction chemistry for the synthesis of [2.2]paracyclophane and asymmetric derivatives

Mentor: Andrew Roberts, Professor, Chemistry Department

“My undergraduate research experiences started with the SRI program doing cancer biology research. After I took organic chemistry 1 and 2 — the synthesis courses — I decided to apply to work in a chemistry lab. I’ve been working on organic synthesis for two years now, in the Roberts lab, and will be pursuing a PhD in organic chemistry beginning this fall.”

Colton Williamson, graduating summer 2025, majoring in geoscience with an emphasis in geology

Poster: Quantifying Submarine Discharge in Farmington Bay and the Great Salt Lake using Radon-222

Mentor: Douglas Kip Solomon, Professor, Geology & Geophysics, Mines and Earth Sciences

After graduating, Colton will be continuing his education and research in groundwater and hydrology as a master’s student in geoscience, mentored by Kip Solomon.

“Undergraduate research has been crucial to my development at the U," sys Colton. "I was able to see science in real time, which helped me better understand concepts related to geology and groundwater. After my master’s degree, I want to work in industry, specifically in hydrology and groundwater management, so that I can help people make informed decisions on water budgets.”

Kyle Pope, graduating fall 2025, majoring in geology with an emphasis in geophysics

Poster: Monitoring Groundwater Storage Change in the Salt Lake Valley Using Repeat Microgravity and GPS

Mentor: Tonie van Dam, Professor, Geology and Geophysics

Kyle is from California and has a bachelor’s in history, which he completed in 2013. His pivot to science was inspired by the outdoors.

“After spending a decade as a Grand Canyon river guide I got a lot of perspective on the time and scale of things and the sure mass of this place," he says. "I fell in love with rocks and that’s when I decided I wanted to go back to school and learn more about them. When I started at the U, I found out I loved processes that explain how this place came together."

"I quickly realized that [this area of science] involves a lot of math, something I did not have a lot of confidence in. I met Professor Tonie Van Dam who gave me the confidence to pursue the things I’m interested in. After graduating I want to get into geothermal exploration and anything involving natural sources of power.”

Ella Bleak, graduating 2026, double majoring in Chemistry (honors) and Mathematics

Poster: Understanding Weapons of Bacterial Warfare

Mentor: Talia Karasov, Assistant Professor, School of Biological Sciences

“My research is focused on finding a solution to the antibiotic crisis that healthcare is facing. It is a massive problem because we are finding that there are more and more bacteria resistant to antibiotic medicines so we are no longer able to fight bacterial infections the way we once did. Our proposed solution is to actually use tailocins, which are proteins produced by bacteria. The proteins show promise as an alternative to current antibiotic types. We have been able to successfully extract and use tailocins to kill bacteria [in lab experiments]. Research has been integral in helping me decide I want to pursue a PhD.” Learn more about Ella bleak here article

America Cox, graduating 2026, double majoring in biology (honors, with an emphasis in ecology, evolution, and environment) and philosophy of science, with minors in chemistry, media studies and honors integrated ecology on the East Africa track.

Poster: Cryptic Coevolution of Ant-Farmed Fungi: Linking Genomic and Metabolic Profiles

Mentor: Bryn Dentinger, Associate Professor, School of Biological Sciences

“Mycology is such an emerging field because about 70 years ago, people still thought fungi were plants,” she explains. “So when I went to Mexico, we were out there just seeing what there is. Being able to see that at the ground level and seeing the field [of mycology] start to move in new ways is really cool.”

Learn more about America Cox

Allie Perkins, graduating spring 2026, majoring in biology and Spanish

Poster: Quaking Aspen Pathogen Defenses Change in Response to Drought Events

Mentor: Talia Karasov, Assistant Professor, School of Biological Sciences

“My freshman year, I participated in the Science Research Initiative, SRI. Being part of that program gave me a supportive environment where I gained foundational research skills and learned more about the research process. I am looking forward to this event [Research on the Capitol] and the opportunity to share my research with lawmakers who can impact the issues I am studying."

"Right now feels like a scary time for research because of the executive orders from the new presidential administration, and I feel like my whole undergraduate research experience has prepared me to talk about science with people from a variety of backgrounds. I feel ready to meet people where they are and able to help build their foundation of scientific knowledge.”

Learn more about Allie Perkins: Humans of the U, February 19, 2025 and on Wilkes Center: Research Minutes (video)

Logan Reeves, graduating spring 2026, majoring in biology (honors), minoring in chemistry, pediatric clinical research, and ecology and legacy

Poster: Testing of an Indoor Climbing Program to Promote Physical, Mental, and Social Well-Being for College Students

Mentor: Akiko Kamimura, Associate Professor, Sociology, Social and Behavioral Science

Logan took a different approach to getting involved in research, by merging his passion for climbing with a desire to address mental health challenges in college students that followed COVID.

“My project involved working with three other students [all non-STEM majors] and was hosted by the department of sociology. Honestly, as a biology major, this research was very, very fun. Most biological research has a lot of pipetting. I am so grateful to have been able to do this, to do the sport that I love and be able to interact and get to know the participants.”

Alexander Rich, graduating spring 2026, majoring in biology with a chemistry minor

Poster: Decoding Species Identities: A Spider Venom RNA Analysis

Mentor: Rodolfo Probst, SRI Fellow and PhD alum of the School of Biological Sciences

“I study spider venoms. Spiders are very diverse and most produce venoms, Alexander says. "Venoms have very specific cellular and molecular targets that have the potential to be developed into pharmaceuticals. We are using a very old collection of spider venoms and then working backward to identify the species source."

"This research has been really impactful, both for teaching me about the biological processes that venom has and how they might apply to my future in medicine. It has also been a great avenue for me to connect to different people in science and get their perspectives on my research. It’s been a great opportunity for me to grow in science, research, and as a future medical professional.”

Steven Chu’s Random Walk in Science

February 25, 2025

Credit: Todd Anderson

It's also a resonant place for Frontiers of Science, the U’s longest running lecture series sponsored by the College of Science with, on February 18, Nobel laureate physicist Steven Chu at the podium.

Professor of physics, molecular and cellular physiology and energy science and engineering at Stanford University, Chu held the audience of nearly 500 captive with the central trope of his presentation that scientific trajectories — as with the course of one’s life — seldom follow a predictable path. The diminutive, bespectacled Chu with his self-deprecating, intrepid manner was there as exhibit A.

Chu's opening salvo was a retrospective of family photos of his unusually bright and accomplished family of birth, beginning with his father, mother and his father’s oldest sister who came to the U.S. from China, his father to attend MIT before graduate school during World War II. With two brothers, one Harvard-educated and another who, despite never earning a high school diploma, was accepted to UCLA and eventually snared five degrees, including a Ph.D at the age of 22, Chu describes himself as the “black sheep of the family.”

“How do you compete with that?” he quipped.

Following his bachelor’s at the University of Rochester, Chu found himself in graduate school at the University of California, Berkeley. After earning his Ph.D. he remained at Berkeley as a post-doctoral researcher for two years before joining Bell Labs. It was there that he and his co-workers developed a way to cool atoms by employing six laser beams opposed in pairs and arranged in three directions at right angles to each other. Trapping atoms with this method allows scientists to study individual atoms with great accuracy. Additionally, the technique can be used to construct an atomic clock with great precision. This work led to his 1997 Nobel Prize in physics.

While it may seem a straight line between his graduate work to stints at national laboratories, including as director of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and professor of physics at Stanford, Chu’s tour through academic and high-level lab work was hit-and-miss, serendipitous and otherwise indirect. Even so, he managed to traverse multiple research interests, expanding into biological physics and polymer physics at the single-molecule level. He studied enzyme activity and protein and RNA folding using techniques like fluorescence resonance energy transfer, atomic force microscopy and optical tweezers. His polymer physics research used individual DNA molecules to study polymer dynamics and their phase transitions. He has continued researching atomic physics, as well, developing new methods of laser cooling and trapping.

Deepwater Horizon Explosion

But it is Chu’s work to help mitigate climate change and his advocacy for a greener economy that he is, perhaps, most celebrated for. During his four years as Secretary of Energy under Obama, the president praised Chu for moving the U.S. toward “real energy independence … doubling the use of renewable energy” and putting “our country on a path to win the global race for clean energy jobs.”

Ironically, the most dramatic moment of his tenure as secretary was not with renewables and the technologies for carbon sequestration but with oil. Three weeks after British Petroleum’s (BP’s) Horizon Deepwater offshore oil rig exploded in April, 2010, killing eleven and sending crude oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico, Chu was in a cabinet meeting. He recounts the story this way: “President Obama says, ‘Chu, go down there and help them clean it up.’ He didn’t say form a committee. He said, you go down there and help them because he knew I was a practicing scientist, or used to be, which is kind of amazing.”

Initially, Chu and his team were there only to assist BP as it struggled to regain control of its well on the seafloor. Getting accurate data from BP scientists and engineers proved to be a challenge. Chu’s own back-of-the-envelope math quickly determined that at least 40,000 barrels of oil per day were surging from the well head, and during his lecture at the museum, Chu admitted that he threw a “temper tantrum,” at one point to ensure that the scientific process he was accustomed to of “making a plan and following the plan” actually happened.

The government team found themselves intervening in various ways. They required BP to provide more accurate, even truthful measurements of the well’s pressure. In late May, they rejected BP's attempted “top kill” procedure. Once they secured the necessary data from BP, they approved the "top hat" approach to capping the well, a strategy of circulating methanol to prevent methane-filled ice from forming.

It was complicated, technical work that required many physicists who Chu helped assemble from his vast network, including important scientists from Los Alamos National Lab. What finally worked on July 12, according to a story in Scientific American, was the installation of a smaller blowout preventer installed atop the failed blowout preventer at the well's head on the seafloor, replacing the failed “top hat” approach.

Even so the risks to this “capping stack” were great, with concerns that the procedure might create a subsurface “blowout” that would end up draining all the estimated 110 million barrels of oil in the entire formation. Chu’s calculations, along with those of other government scientists, determined that the flow would have to be twice what it was for that to happen. Still, before deployment of the successful solution to the problem, they required BP to monitor the well's pressure continuously for 48 hours.

On July 15 at 2:25 P.M. Houston time, the test began. An ROV arm turned the handle on the capping stack 10 times, cranking it closed. For the first time since April 20, no oil flowed into the Gulf of Mexico.

Titanic Oil Age

Credit: Todd Anderson

Before being faced with what seemed like an unstoppable crude oil gusher, Chu had established a group called ARPA-E and its energy innovations hubs. With funding from the American Recovery Act — the more than $800 billion economic stimulus legislation Obama signed in early 2009 — ARPA-E funded a number of cutting-edge technologies. Its competitive grants were meant to kick-start promising projects that would attract the interest of private investors like those working with microbes engineered to turn hydrogen and carbon dioxide into liquid fuel.

Chu’s tenure at DOE ended in 2013 and he returned to Stanford where he helped establish Bio-X which linked the physical and biological sciences with engineering and medicine. Now the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Physics and Professor of Molecular and Cellular Physiology, he is still known as an advocate for conservation and the development of new renewable energy to save the planet and sequestration of carbon dioxide.

First attributed to Ahmed Zaki Yamani, the former Saudi Arabian Oil Minister, is a quote that Chu is most famous for using: "The Stone Age did not end for lack of stones, and the Oil Age will end, but not for lack of oil." At the Natural History Museum of Utah, Chu echoed these words to an enraptured crowd overlooking the valley and its vaulted sky, arguing that the Oil Age will come to an end not because we will run out of oil, but because new, more efficient energy sources will replace it.

At the end of his lecture Steven Chu, a self-proclaimed optimist, ominously screened the moment-before-striking-the-iceberg scene from the James Cameron film “Titanic” as an analogue to where civilization is today vis-à-vis a warming globe.

“That doesn't mean you shouldn't <turn> harder, right?” Chu announced referring to the decision by the captain and crew to turn the giant ocean liner even if it would take too long to avoid impact. “Okay, but it's going to take a long time,” he continued, “and so with that, I'm hoping that a little support in science in science technology grows.”

Astronomy teams win Scialog funding

February 21, 2025

Tanmoy Laskar with his mentees at a radio astronomy workshop at the U in summer 2024.

The three-year initiative aims to advance the foundational science needed to realize the full potential of the Vera C. Rubin Observatory’s upcoming Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST).

Funded by the Research Corporation for Science Advancement (RCSA), the 21 separate awards of $60,000 in direct costs each will support a total of 20 scientists from colleges, universities, and research institutions in the United States and Canada. Laskar's team includes Igor Andreoni, Physics and Astronomy, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Mathew Madhavacheril, Physics and Astronomy, University of Pennsylvania. Their research focus is titled Rubin LSST as a Multi-Wavelength Discovery Engine for Relativistic Transients.

Scialog is short for “science + dialog.” Created in 2010 by RCSA, the Scialog format aims to accelerate breakthroughs by building a creative network of scientists that crosses disciplinary silos and stimulating intensive conversation around a scientific theme of global importance. The initiative represents a fulfilling new chapter in the story of RCSA’s long-term support of the Rubin Observatory, located in north-central Chile.

exploiting a novel synergy

With his team, Laskar studies the most energetic explosions in the Universe that hurl matter in fast jets close to the speed of light. This includes gamma-ray bursts from the deaths of massive stars, merging stars that make gravitational waves and provide the Universe with its supply of heavy elements, and tidal disruption events from stars getting ripped apart by black holes. "The rarity of these extreme explosions has made them difficult to find and understand in detail," says Laskar who explains that LSST, which operates at visible wavelengths of light, will discover thousands of these every year. "Unfortunately," he continues, the rarest and most interesting events will be buried in the millions of new alerts the survey will generate every night!. Our Scialog LSST project aims to solve this problem by exploiting a novel synergy of LSST with telescope surveys built for an entirely different purpose: to study the relict microwave light from the Big Bang."

Energetic explosions produce a lot of microwaves, providing an excellent test that can distinguish them from other classes of transients. "Our team will develop tools to search for millimeter emission from candidates found by LSST in data taken by concurrently running CMB surveys in real time. Not only will this help us find the most exciting events, but knowing the millimeter brightness and polarization of these events will be essential in testing our theoretical models about how nature makes these explosions and how physics behaves under the associated extreme conditions of temperature, density, and magnetization."

The team includes members with access to precursor surveys, which will help them quickly develop and test the tools they will need on data already on hand. "

"My expertise," says Laskar, "is on modeling these explosions and extracting physics from the data."

'Taking great data'

In November, at the initiative's inaugural conference held in Tucson, Arizona, Bob Blum, Rubin Observatory’s Director of Operations, discussed the recent successful use of the commissioning camera, which came online in October 2024.

“There's lots of challenges,” he said. “The system isn't reliable yet, but when it works, we're taking great data.”

With technical first light on the Rubin Observatory LSST Camera (the world’s largest digital camera) expected by early June 2025, full operations could start in September or October 2025. He said the first data preview should be available to researchers in March 2025, and the second in March 2026.

In time, the observatory will be able to survey the entire sky in only three nights and is expected to generate more than 20 terabytes of data each night, amassing a set of data and images that could address some of the deepest questions about the universe, its evolution, and the objects within it.

The Laskar group not only promises to help develop tools to find the most exciting events from those data made available each night, they will lead the modeling and data interpretation efforts. "I am looking forward to discovering and studying new and unusual events that will further our understanding of how physics behaves in some of the most extreme environments in the universe," says Laskar.

The Heising-Simons Foundation, The Brinson Foundation, the Leinweber Foundation, and independent philanthropist Kevin Wells are providing support to RCSA to fund the work of the eight cross-disciplinary teams.

by David Pace

Trapa to lead as inaugural vice provost at U

February 21, 2025

As the first to hold this newly created position, Trapa will provide strategic advancement and management of the College of Humanities, College of Science, College of Social and Behavioral Science and the School for Cultural & Social Transformation. Together, these units form the cornerstone of enrollment at the U, positioning Trapa to play a pivotal role in shaping the educational experience of students across disciplines.

Trapa has been a dedicated member of the U community for more than two decades, building a strong record of leadership experience and research excellence. Before serving as dean of the College of Science, he chaired both the Department of Mathematics and the Department of Physics & Astronomy. He has also served as a presidential fellow under former U President David Pershing and was named Fellow of the American Mathematical Society.

During his tenure as dean, Trapa led the merging of the College of Science and the College of Mines and Earth Sciences, a move designed to elevate research and create innovative new degrees in strategic areas of growth. Since the merger, the college has made strides toward advancing student success by implementing programs such as the Science Research Initiative, which provides experiential learning opportunities to majors. He also designed and implemented a robust shared-services model across the merged college, streamlining administrative support while enhancing academic resources. In addition, Trapa spearheaded efforts to secure $99 million in funding for the Applied Science Project, set to open in July 2025. The buildings will house the Department of Physics & Astronomy, the Department of Atmospheric Sciences and the Wilkes Center for Climate Science & Policy.

“Dr. Trapa is a strategic leader who deeply understands how the liberal arts and sciences advance student success and the university’s research enterprise,” Montoya said. “His leadership in the merger of the College of Science and the College of Mines and Earth Sciences demonstrates his ability to drive complex institutional change with vision and inclusivity. I look forward to working with him as he collaborates with the LAS deans to advance interdisciplinary education, strengthen research opportunities and amplify the university’s impact in alignment with the Impact 2030 strategic plan.”

Trapa was selected after an internal search chaired by Keith Diaz Moore, associate provost for institutional design and strategy.

“I’m grateful for the strong pool of internal candidates who applied for this new role,” Montoya said. “I was impressed by their ideas and their desire to help direct meaningful change.”

As the university continues to elevate its national profile, Trapa’s leadership will be essential in shaping the future of the liberal arts and sciences and advancing its role in fulfilling the university’s mission to drive unsurpassed societal impact. As vice provost and senior dean, Trapa will work closely with the LAS deans to develop a shared vision for the liberal arts and sciences at the U. He will also play a key role in optimizing resources, fostering interdisciplinary collaboration and ensuring that students and faculty in these units have the support they need to thrive.

“I am deeply honored to step into this new role at such a pivotal time for the University of Utah,” said Trapa. “The liberal arts and sciences provide an essential foundation for innovation, critical thinking and societal progress. I am committed to leading this effort in partnership with our exceptional students, staff and faculty, whose talents and dedication are vital to our education and research missions. Together, with the LAS deans, we will strengthen our academic programs and advance student success at the U.”

Maybe Earth’s inner core is not so solid after all

February 20, 2025

Keith Koper, University of Utah

The surface of Earth’s inner core may be changing, as shown by a new study led by University of Southern California and University of Utah scientists that detected structural changes near the planet’s center, published Monday in Nature Geoscience.

The changes of the inner core have long been a topic of debate for scientists. However, most research has been focused on assessing rotation. John Vidale, Dean’s Professor of Earth Sciences at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences and principal investigator of the study, said the researchers “didn’t set out to define the physical nature of the inner core.”

“What we ended up discovering is evidence that the near surface of Earth’s inner core undergoes structural change,” Vidale said. The finding sheds light on the role topographical activity plays in rotational changes in the inner core that have minutely altered the length of a day and may relate to the ongoing slowing of the inner core.

Redefining the inner core

Located 3,000 miles below the Earth’s surface, the inner core is anchored by gravity within the molten liquid outer core. Until now the inner core was widely thought of as a solid sphere.

The original aim of the research team, which included U seismologist Keith Koper, was to further chart the slowing of the inner core. Their previous findings used seismic data to document how the solid core’s rotation has sped up and slowed in relation to Earth’s rotation, which may be slightly altering the length of a day.

“We found that there were some very subtle differences in these seismic waves interacting with the boundary of the inner core that are pretty shallow, that sample just the top of the inner core,” said Koper, a professor in Utah’s Department of Geology & Geophysics. “Because we had established already that the inner core is librating and then we found it back in the same spot, then these differences couldn’t be due to just the change in rotation. It must be a new thing.”

That new thing appears to be alterations in the core’s shape, according to the new study.

Math’s Kurt Vinhage is ’25 Sloan Fellow

February 18, 2025

Awarded this year to 126 of the most innovative young scientists across the U.S. and Canada, the Sloan Research Fellowships are one of the most competitive and prestigious awards available to early-career scholars. They are also often seen as a marker of the quality of an institution’s faculty and proof of an institution’s success in attracting the most promising early-career researchers to its ranks. Since the first Sloan Research Fellowships were awarded in 1955, 73 faculty from the U have received a Sloan Research Fellowship which includes Vinhage.

“I am honored and humbled to be named as a Sloan Fellow,” said Vinhage upon hearing the news, “and look forward to continuing my work toward understanding classification questions in dynamical systems. Any progress I have made is thanks to many hours of collaborative effort, and I would like to thank my co-authors and mentors, especially Anatole Katok and Ralf Spatzier, for their advice and encouragement throughout my journey. I look forward to continuing my mathematical journey with the help of this fellowship.”

Vinhage’s research in part answers questions about when two flows commute with one another. “Suppose we have a flow A and a flow B,” explained Vinhage. “One could follow flow A for an amount of time, then flow B for an amount of time, or do it in the opposite order, B then A. The flows commute when we end up at the same place.” This special situation is not common and Vinhage’s work aims to describe under what conditions such flows belong to a limited family of constructions, or when they can be more “exotic.”

“There are several seemingly innocuous conditions one can put on the flows which force them to belong to a well-described and well-studied class,” he continued. “This works fit into research programs called "higher-rank rigidity," "the Katok-Spatzier conjecture," or "the Zimmer program."

Said Jon Chaika, a colleague who nominated Vinhage for the Sloan Fellowship, "Kurt shows how some natural assumptions on a system automatically imply it arises from a single family of beautiful constructions. Beyond this, he showed that if one weakens these restrictions there are more examples. Kurt was granted this award on the merits of his outstanding research, but in the time he has been at the U he has made an impact on the department, sharing his enthusiasm for mathematics with undergraduates and graduate students.” Chaika detailed some of Vinhage’s activities in this area, including a summer program Vinhage runs to introduce students to advanced mathematics immediately after calculus, a once-a-semester mini workshop with colleagues at nearby Brigham Young University and Utah Valley University, and multiple successful student seminars, one of which led to a paper. “He is a fantastic colleague, and I am very happy that he has won this much-deserved award."

Vinhage earned his Ph.D. from Pennsylvania State University in 2010 followed by postdoctoral studies at the University of Chicago and Pennsylvania State before arriving at the U in 2021.

“We are thrilled that Kurt Vinhage has received the prestigious Sloan Fellowship,” said Tommaso de Fernex, chair of the Department of Mathematics at the U. “This award recognizes research accomplishments of the highest-caliber by early-career scientists. Kurt’s contributions to Ergodic Theory exemplify the excellence of his scholarship and his potential as a future leader in the field. His dedication to advancing mathematical research, along with his mentorship and collaboration within our department, made him an outstanding nominee. This well-deserved recognition highlights his impact, and we look forward to the continued growth of his work.”

by David Pace

Finding Climate-Water solutions

February 13, 2025

Pearl Kling, international cooperation officer from Université Côte d’Azur, speaking with Dr. William Anderegg, director of the Wilkes Center for Climate Science & Policy.

The event fulfilled a newly formed U partnership with Université Côte d’Azur in Nice, France. France’s Région Provence-Alpes-Côte-d’Azur will host the 2030 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games. Salt Lake City, Utah, will host them in 2034.

The climate solutions hackathon challenges undergraduate and graduate students from any discipline to team-up and develop proposals in a slide deck within 24 hours.

This year, the teams worked from Friday Jan. 31st until Saturday morning, Feb 1st.

The teams of three to five had a day to propose a solution via a slide deck and short presentation promptly due the next morning. The challenge was to propose an innovative, data-driven solution in one of five categories:s surrounding the water resiliency theme.

Municipal Water Supply
Inland and Coastal Flooding
Agriculture
Drought
Water and Energy Infrastructure

Gathered in a bustling event hall in Crocker Science Center, the students engaged with expert faculty from both universities and drew inspiration from a video mentoring space of adept researchers. Mentors touched on important topics; for example, the U’s Marian Rice, associate director of Peak Water Sustainability Engine, spoke on topics such as partnering to protect watersheds and opportunities for green infrastructure. With approximately 88 students participating, 17 total slide decks were ultimately submitted.

On Saturday morning the teams reassembled to pitch their ideas to their peers at the Crocker Science Center, after which the group voted for the most impressive presentations. Two teams tied for this “People’s Choice Award.”

A panel of Wilkes Center staff and faculty, along with Professor Isabelle La Jeunesse from Université Côte d’Azur, deliberated over the weekend to officially select the top three proposals. Teams were evaluated according to four criteria:

Problem definition and analysis
Uniqueness and innovation
Idea feasibility
Implementation and scalability

“The ideas developed, particularly those of the finalists in this Hackathon, are realistic projects and thus potentially feasible,” said La Jeunesse. “It is therefore entirely possible that some of them will decide to get involved in developing their project, which would be fantastic given the great need in this field.”

Meeting of the Mines

February 6, 2025

Pratt Rogers

His term, which began in January replaces Charles Kocsis who saw the department through the pandemic, a merger and a resurgence in recruitment of undergraduates to the department now in the College of Science. But the issues surrounding the shortage of mined critical minerals and materials (CMM) required for society’s vaulting demand for technological devices and the power to run them persist.

To meet the demand, humans will need to mine the same amount of copper between now and 2030/40 as we have in all of humanity. And, in terms of power transmission and distribution, the need for which will only continue to exponentially grow —whether from coal or a green energy source—copper will continue to be required along with a whole host of other critical minerals. To put a finer point on it: More than half of the periodic table goes into producing and running a smartphone, and anything in the periodic table must be extracted from the Earth.

Meeting that demand through mining is something Rogers calls our generation’s “moon shot” referring to NASA’s Apollo 11 program in the 1960s to get humans from the Earth to the moon and back safely. The technology around safe mining and mineral extraction has been the bread-and-butter of the department since it was first established in 1901, and that work continues. But today there are more cooks in the kitchen, not just mining professionals but environmentalists, government and tribal officials and other policy-makers … even cultural anthropologists who look at social and cultural impacts of mineral development.

These stakeholders, many in non-governmental organizations (NGOs, often referred to as “non-profits”), have traditionally been left to their own insulated silos which can turn into an echo-chamber. The result: hard conversations about pressing issues like the permitting of mines either don’t happen or are at intractable cross-purposes. In short, building consensus about how to move forward securing our energy and mineral future responsibly is a daunting task. Moon shot, indeed.

Three 'D's

“In the United States,” says Rogers from his office in the William Browning Building, “we have strong institutions with great environmental and human protections. And that’s phenomenal; it’s a mark of progress. But with institutions that strong, when trying to create industrial projects [new and retrofitted historical mines], the easy path to a 'no' is usually taken and the much more difficult path to a conditional 'yes' is passed over in litigation.”

U mining students (Aaron Young, Ethan Johnson, Trey Robison) with Pratt Rogers (far right) at the Oyu Tolgoi Mine, Mongolia, a joint venture between the Government of Mongolia, Rio Tinto Group, and Turquoise Hill Resources.

The hard conversations about complex issues society needs to have, Rogers believes, are not just about traditional mining. While they include extraction work, more broadly they involve the “three D’s” of this energy future moonshot: density — “a lot of output from little input, like nuclear power”; development and processing of CMM for purer, more concentrated material; and distribution — renewable energy sources like a wind and solar that require larger inputs, or “more stuff connecting all those things together.”

Finding consensus among various stakeholders is essential. “There are different paths you can take to get to carbon-free/neutral future and each of those paths break down minerals differently.”

Wider optimization algorithms

As department chair, Rogers knows that these conversations are not just between the three D’s but among stakeholders who need to arrive at a consensus — sooner rather than later. “It’s hard to break them [different constituents] out of being [animated by] a single issue. It’s hard for anyone to be able to appreciate that there are wider optimization algorithms that society has to take on when you're trying to solve for some sort of equilibrium for development or distribution.”

The university setting, he believes, is the best place for these formal debates in place of the silo-ed arguments staged on social media or even traditional media. As a first-generation college student from Arizona , Rogers remembers as a student working on a proposal with someone from anthropology. “I just went over to his office, and we had such a phenomenal discussion. The conversation was so cool. He was working on some stuff down in Mexico… and I realized that there were so many ways his perspectives could benefit, say, complex mineral development projects impacts on changing social cohesion and power dynamics.”

For mining engineers, there’s also collaboration to be done at the college level with mineral processing, and metallurgy and geological characterization all while making sure that students get full access to these educational moments, either formally or informally around shared social spaces. Sustaining this kind of educational nexus with a premium on student success is a priority for Rogers.

Recruitment

Speaking of students, recruitment has been up year-over-year for the past several years, especially since Covid restrictions have lifted. The department’s import of pit mining into the popular Minecraft sandbox video game has helped in that area. So too have recent open houses for high school students who not only need to know that a mining department exists but that mining has played and will continue to play an important if not critical role in deploying a sustainable green economy for future generations, including their own. So too has recent funding for student experiences. The Wallie Rasmussen Student Experience endowment supports international field trips for mining engineering students. (See picture from Oyu Tolgoi/Rio Tinto mine in Mongolia)

As for administrative work, Rogers hopes to grow the faculty endowed chairs, funding from industry, government and individual donors, especially the departments’ valued alumni. Students will always be at the center of these growth opportunities as the mining contribution to a more sustainable and growth-oriented future. “It’s a great time to work on growing the mining engineering department,” says Rogers. “There is significant interest from the state and federal governments along with university leadership and our industrial stakeholders on the importance of critical minerals. The time is now to focus and grow this strategic workforce for a more sustainable future.”

In all, Rogers says, “working with folks from different backgrounds and trying to solve complex problems . . . I think we just need to not lose sight of that.” Moonshots, after all, are by definition aspirational, but how we actualize a decidedly Earth-bound “program” this ambitious is left to visionaries, technicians and consensus-builders like Pratt Rogers.

And a higher education setting like that at the U is quite literally ground zero.

Dmitry Bedrov, new Chair of the Materials Science & Engineering

February 6, 2025

MSE, with two ABET accreditations, is seated in two colleges: the College of Science (Metallurgical Engineering program) and the College of Engineering (Materials Science & Engineering program).

The merger of metallurgical and material science departments in 2018 was designed to streamline operations for faculty and students with significant funding from the Department of Energy for critical materials research. Metallurgical engineering faculty collaborate extensively with material science faculty. Many MSE students enroll in classes from chemistry and physics, bridging science and engineering.

Bedrov earned his BS with honors in 1995 from Odessa State Academy of Refrigeration in Odessa, Ukraine, followed by a PhD (1999) and postdoctoral work (1999-2002) in Chemical & Fuels Engineering and Computational Modeling of Materials at the University of Utah, respectively. His research interest lies in the area of multiscale modeling of soft-condensed matter systems that exhibit complex, multiscale structure often arising from molecular and super-molecular self-assembly.

New lab, new equipment

Metallurgical engineer and scientist Jiaqi Jin in front of the XRM-900 in the William Browning building. Credit: Todd Anderson

Bedrov’s arrival as chair is happening at an auspicious time for the department which has recently acquired a new, state-of-the-art additive manufacturing research center featuring a multi-million-dollar titanium 3D printing machine. The lab will serve as a hub for the collaboration between Metallurgical Engineering Professor Zak Fang's powder metallurgy research team and the company IperionX as they work to advance metallurgical technologies for producing primary metals focused on titanium.

Other new equipment includes an X-ray Instrument to keep pace with the global-leading high-resolution 3D imaging research in metallurgical engineering at the U.

The X-ray Computed Tomography (CT) in 3D characterization of particulate systems significantly strengthens researcher capability in mineral processing studies. Together, these new acquisitions have helped maintain the U's metallurgical engineering program as arguably the best in the country. Bedrov will lead MSE at a time when extensive collaboration is occurring on campus in the areas of materials informatics, additive manufacturing, and biomaterials and interfaces..

A key project emblematic of the department’s interdisciplinary research involves collaborating with the U’s School of Dentistry to use machine learning to optimize dental materials, like filler composites. Currently the evaluation of dental materials is predominantly qualitative, relying heavily on the experience and subjective judgment. Imaging of extracted teeth with deployed polymers followed by machine learning analysis in MSE can help clinicians, like dentists, understand the best formulations and application practices at work.

Attracting new students

Fronting the interdisciplinary research like that in collaboration with the School of Dentistry, the department aims to attract students who often only learn about what the department offers after they’ve arrived at the U and sometimes after they’ve already declared a major. High school outreach and competitions, highlighting MSE’s small, diverse student body and interdisciplinary research will be a priority for Bedrov along with enhancing faculty support and increasing collaboration with other departments.

“It is an exciting time to lead the department to address new research challenges, e.g. in critical materials, quantum materials, and biomedical applications, and new learning opportunities for students, e.g. incorporation of AI and machine learning tools into the education process,” said Bedrov.

"I am delighted to welcome Dmitry Bedrov as a new department chair," said Trapa. "Dmitry's extensive expertise in materials modeling and commitment to interdisciplinary research positions him perfectly to lead Materials Science and Engineering as the department continues to expand its cutting-edge research capabilities and educational programs."

Trapa continued, "I want to express my deep gratitude to past chair Mike Free for his outstanding leadership. His collaboration between metallurgical engineering and materials science has created a stronger, more integrated department. His contributions have laid a strong foundation for our continued growth and excellence."

by David Pace

Widening Our Cosmic View

February 6, 2025

Gail Zasowski

Teams are valued within scientific communities, but when it comes to broader public recognition it’s rare for anything more than an organization or singular leader to step into the spotlight.

But times are changing at breakneck speeds, the value of these enablers of science becoming more and more apparent as the spotlight grows to encompass them. With the upcoming launch of the Roman Space Telescope we are seeing a shift towards broader perspectives, bringing more voices into decision-making processes to optimize the pursuit of scientific advancement.

Taking a novel approach for NASA’s missions, where observations with telescopes like Hubble and James Webb were largely proposal-based (scientists writing competing proposals to win time using the telescopes’ instruments), Roman will be predominantly driven by surveys designed by the astronomical community as a whole. That community is made up of an extensive structure of committees involving hundreds (if not thousands) of astronomers who have spent years analyzing which observational designs would be the most useful for their community at large. This will create an archive of data which anyone in the world can access to do science.

A wider range of expertise

An undertaking like this requires organizational expertise which is where Gail Zasowski, an associate professor in the Department of Physics & Astronomy, comes into play. Co-chairing the Roman Observations Time Allocation Committee (ROTAC) alongside Saurabh Jha (Rutgers University), she and the committee of 13 scientists are tasked with taking all of these proposed survey designs and constructing a plan that best balances the scientific goals of the astronomical community. For example, some time will be spent studying black holes and stellar explosions dating back to the early universe, while other observations will focus closer to home, on stars and planets in our own Milky Way and even asteroids in our Solar System. Thus the ROTAC is faced with the challenge (or opportunity) to plan a multi-year observing program that includes everything from solar system formation to dark matter and dark energy.

“Our committee was deliberately chosen to span a wide range of science expertise,” Zasowski explains. “It’s our job to evaluate from a scientific perspective how to maximize the observational output of the telescope. Is there somewhere everybody wants to look, where an observation could kill two birds with one stone? Given other telescope missions around the world, where can Roman have the largest unique impact?”

It’s an impressive task to keep all these plates spinning at once, but that’s the beauty of moving these decisions to a communal level. By enabling collaboration, the community can plan far more efficiently than any one individual team or project could do on its own.

A wider range of voices

Yerkes Observatory Roman Workshop. Zasowski is pictured center left. Credit: Yerkes Observatory. Inset: Nancy Roman.

Zasowski was chosen for her background in ground-based astronomy surveys, a priority shared by the U’s Department of Physics and Astronomy. She explains that “Where many larger institutions will devote their time and money buying into one large telescope, we have elected to spend our time and energy participating in surveys. We feel it gets more bang for your buck, more photons per dollar, as being in these surveys not only grants access to data, but also access to the scientific community who makes the survey happen.”

This pattern repeats across campus, investing in building core skills and wider networking to get a foot into every door, rather than definitively propping only one open. Everything from the Science Research Initiative which builds research connections for students far earlier than most; to the Early Exploration Scholars which broadens those connections for all campus students; and to the ACCESS Scholars program working to eliminate social barriers that have traditionally existed in STEM.

By investing in the community aspect of science so early, the U’s students and faculty are perfectly suited to fill these organizational roles, bring people together and lay the groundwork that enables future science to be conducted.

Zasowski describes an inspiring experience at Yerkes Observatory last year. “We were at the observatory where Nancy Grace Roman [the telescope’s namesake] did her Ph.D.” she describes. ”We were in the rooms where she worked, talking about designing a survey to study the science she was interested in while using a space telescope named after her.”

As a woman in astronomy starting in the 1940s, Roman had faced significant uphill battles in securing her place in the astronomical community. For the “Mother of Hubble” to be honored in such a way — for the first telescope named after a woman to be so organized around working together — it's a beautiful full-circle moment. It's a symbol of progress, of our expanding view of the night sky mirrored in a scientific field expanding to include and celebrate those who historically struggled to find their place within it.

The Roman Telescope is scheduled to be launched in October of next year, to journey around the Sun for at least five years and provide the astronomical community with data to study for many more years to follow.

by Michael Jacobsen

College of Science Student Research on Capitol Hill

Below are College of Science majors who presented at this year’s Research on Capitol Hill

Steven Chu's Random Walk in Science

Deepwater Horizon Explosion

Titanic Oil Age

Tanmoy Laskar & Team Awarded inaugural Scialog Award

University of Utah astronomer Tanmoy Laskar and his team have been awarded $60,000 in direct costs to support research through the first year of the Scialog: Early Science with LSST.

exploiting a novel synergy

'Taking great data'

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Trapa to lead as inaugural vice provost at U

Maybe Earth’s inner core is not so solid after all

New research suggests the surface of the inner core is deformed from contact with turbulent liquid outer core.

Redefining the inner core

Math's Kurt Vinhage, 2025 Sloan Fellow

The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation today announced the winners of the 2025 Sloan Research Fellows which includes Kurt Vinhage, assistant professor in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Utah.

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Finding Climate-Water Solutions

Meeting of the MINES

For Pratt Rogers, the new chair of the Mining Engineering Department at the University of Utah, the future of our technological and information-driven society as we are living it now and imagining it in the future is going to require a meeting of the minds.

Three 'D's

Wider optimization algorithms

Recruitment

Dmitry Bedrov, new Chair of Materials Science and Engineering

New lab, new equipment

Attracting new students

Widening our Cosmic View

A wider range of expertise

A wider range of voices