homenews

Pace Yourself: Season 2 Episode 6

January 4, 2025

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Introduction

Ben Lewis

Benjamin Lewis, MD, Associate Professor (Clinical), practices inpatient adult psychiatry at the University of Utah Huntsman Mental Health Institute where his clinical interests involve the diagnosis and treatment of major psychiatric disorders. He has additional interests in medical ethics, the philosophy of psychiatry, and the emerging science and clinical applications of psychedelic medicine.

 

Resources:

University of Utah Psychedelic Science Initiative (U-PSI)

TEDTalkxSalt Lake City with Ben Lewis:

Could psychedelics help patients in therapy?

 

Transcript:

 

This podcast discusses trauma related to illness, including suicide. If you’re having suicidal thoughts, you can dial or text the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at nine, eight eight.  That’s 9-8-8.

 

David Pace 0:00

Hi, my name is David Pace and this is Pace Yourself, a podcast from the University of Utah College of Science on Wellness. Today, my guest is Dr. Ben Lewis, an associate professor of psychiatry in the Department of Psychiatry at the Huntsman Mental Health Institute here at the U. Dr. Lewis’s research focuses on psychedelic-assisted therapies and his clinical work focuses on adult inpatient psychiatry, as well as ketamine-assisted psychotherapy. He’s currently the clinical director of the Huntsman Mental Health Institute Ketamine Assisted Psychotherapy Clinic in Park City, Utah. Welcome, Ben. It’s so good to have you here. Great. 

 

Ben Lewis 1:51

Great to be here. Yeah, Thanks. Thanks for having me, David. 

 

David Pace 1:54

Yeah. So, as I mentioned in an email to you yesterday, my first introduction to psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy was in the prime video movie or series, legal drama on CBS titled “The Good Fight” with lead actress Christine Baranski. She plays an attorney who is having major anxiety over the run up to and the result of the 2016 presidential election. And I’m sure there are a lot of misconceptions about psychedelic-assisted therapies. And I’m sure Christine Baranski perhaps didn’t help that, but maybe she did. I don’t know. Can you give us a brief background on its history? Bring us up to date? 

 

Ben Lewis 2:36

Sure. Happy to. I’m not familiar with that show, so I’m not certain how psychedelic-assisted therapies were presented there. And I think you’re right. There’s a lot of media attention currently on this topic, and that is a mixed bag. Some of that is accurate, some of that is not-so-accurate. And also a time where there’s a lot of hype and perhaps some overpromising on this set of therapies as well. And so I do think it’s a nuanced, middle ground message in terms of kind of the state of the science and in many ways, nothing new. Psychedelics have been around for millennia and have been used in different ways by different indigenous groups for spiritual and ceremonial purposes, often in group settings. And there had been a really robust period of clinical research in the 1950s and through the 1960s in psychiatry, looking at psilocybin and mescaline and LSD, specifically for mental health purposes. And a lot of those studies were very promising for a range of conditions, studied for alcohol and substance use disorders, studied for depression, studied for existential distress associated with end-of-life for terminal illness at that period of time. And yeah, a lot of very promising results and all of that really came to an end in the early 1970s when these compounds were all rescheduled, put on schedule one during the Nixon administration, and effectively that shut down any clinical research for the next 40 years or so, 40 to 50 years. And really more recently in the last decade, and then more more significantly in the last five years, there has been a real resurgence in interest in clinical trials looking at a range of different classic psychedelics, including psilocybin and LSD. 

 

David Pace 4:49

So you’ve got two clinical trials going on right now. Is that correct? 

 

Ben Lewis 4:54

Well, let’s see. We have a number of them. Actually, we have we have. ..

 

David Pace 5:02

Well, let me tell you the first two that I think you’re doing based upon my research. One is, I think what you were just talking about, although it says that it’s in combination with mindfulness=based stress reduction to address burnout and depression in frontline health care providers. Is that clinical trial over? 

 

Ben Lewis 5:25

That’s correct. Yeah. We have finished that trial. We’re currently writing up the results. We ran that trial over a couple of years. And you’re right, that was a study looking at the combination of group psilocybin-assisted therapy and mindfulness based stress reduction – MBSR, which is annualized eight week mindfulness training program, and that’s run through our Resiliency Center. So we used those resources and enrolled physicians and nurses who were dealing with depression and burnout related to the COVID 19 pandemic. And yeah, really, really fun and challenging and interesting study. We randomized participants to either just receiving the mindfulness training. So people either did an eight-week mindfulness training protocol or they did that same program with a high-dose group psilocybin session and asking the question, are there differences between the groups in terms of, you know, severity of depressive symptoms, severity of burnout? We looked at a range of outcomes related to just mindfulness. Like, is this a helpful thing as far as mindfulness training? So yeah, we finished that study.

We did another group trial with psilocybin for patients dealing with depression associated with cancer. That was our first psilocybin trial here at the U. We finished that a few years ago. We’re running a few other studies, actually. We’re running a trial for treatment-resistant depression with psilocybin, and we’re running a study for postpartum depression. Also not using psilocybin, but using a sort of novel, short-acting psychedelic called 4-HO-DiPT. And then we have a couple studies with ketamine, assisted psychotherapy going on right now. 

 

Ketamine vs psyilocybin 

David Pace 7:24

So ketamine is, I understand, is FDA-approved in certain settings, but not necessarily for some of the stuff that you’re doing clinical trials in? 

 

Ben Lewis 7:36

Yeah, that’s correct. Ketamine is used clinically. Currently, it has an FDA approval in its Spravato®  formulation, which is a nasal spray, and that’s approved for treatment resistant depression. Ketamine is used in as an I.V. infusion, also for depression. This style of working with ketamine that I’ve been doing clinically in that we’re doing research with is ketamine, assisted psychotherapy. So a little bit of a different framework for using that medicine. And in also to be clear, ketamine is distinct from other classic psychedelics. It’s distinct pharmacologically. The risk profile with ketamine is pretty different than, say, psilocybin. Classic psychedelics, like psilocybin, are still on schedule one, so we can’t use them clinically. Really, we’re using them only for research purposes and you have to go through hurdles with the FDA and the DEA, whereas ketamine is clinically available. And so in certain respects, easier to to study, currently. 

 

David Pace 8:43

So I’m interested in this interface or how mindfulness might inform the use of these psychedelics, because I think a lot of us are familiar with mindfulness. 

David Pace 9:00

Is that is that designed to process the experience? Because we’re really talking about having an experience or what? Yeah, people used to call a trip, maybe they still do, right? And so is the mindfulness really to like in a guided way to try to process the experience, whatever that might have been for the individual. Is that the intent? 

 

Ben Lewis 9:23

Yeah, it’s a great question and I think there’s different angles for thinking about that. I think there are experiential elements of overlap between states that people can access through mindfulness meditation, in psychedelics. Certain kinds of non-dual experiences are overlapping with those practices. There’s also, to your point, questions about how to adequately prepare somebody for an experience with something like psilocybin where they maybe have some tools for navigating what can be a challenging or difficult or very unusual experience.

And then on the flip side, there are questions about how do we integrate or sustain those kinds of benefits that might happen. Right? And I think in a complementary way, there are questions: Are those kinds of experiences with the psychedelic? Are they helpful in sustaining or growing or developing a mindfulness practice? So many of those questions, we don’t really have great answers to right now. This is not super well studied, but most of those questions really inform the motivations for a study like this. 

 

David Pace 10:45

What are the group-based interventions that you’re talking about? 

 

Ben Lewis 10:49

So one real challenge with, say, the majority of psychedelic-assisted therapies in clinical trials is that they’re typically individual format, so they involve two therapists per participant. And it’s a long session, right? It’s an eight-hour dosing day typically with psilocybin. So a long, long day. And it’s bookended by preparatory sessions and then integration sessions on the flip side. So it’s very resource-intensive, and so like to move a single participant through that protocol that might be 20 hours times two, so 40 therapist hours. And there are just really significant questions how might we scale this or make this accessible for the ability to treat more people down the road? So there are research questions, there is a safe and feasible to do, and then there are there are questions just in terms of scalability when this rolls out is a form of clinical treatment.  

Ben Lewis 11:58

So the group models we’ve done and this has been novel in terms of the research we’ve done here has involved the full-group format. So we’ll have a group of say, five participants and we’ll do group preparation where, you know, people are engaging in a group format, kind of moving into the dosing-day session. And then we have a full group dosing session where everybody’s in the same room. We have music played over a speaker system to do that and then group integration, and that has not been done in the modern era. So we’ve done two trials with that model so far, and they’ve been small studies, but they’ve been feasible, they’ve been safe, they have seemed in certain ways to suggest some unique efficacy of that group environment for people with this kind of experience. 

 

David Pace 12:55

So it sounds to me like you’re talking that this is not like a one on one talk therapy thing, but there’s a kind of a social element to this kind of therapy that might inform or aid what results you’re maybe gunning for. 

 

Ben Lewis 13:14

Yeah, exactly. I think part of, for instance, depression and burnout can be a real sense of isolation, a real sense of disconnection. And so it has felt like that group format makes a lot of sense in a lot of ways as far as targeting those kinds of conditions. And insofar as that group format dosing session, it’s not especially interactive. It’s a pretty internal experience. People are wearing eyeshades. It’s, you know, there’s not a lot of interaction per se on that day apart from before and after the dosing sessions. 

 

David Pace 13:58

So it’s not like a group therapy scenario where you’re sharing stories. 

 

Ben Lewis 14:03

Not during the active drug effects, but certainly before during preparatory sessions and then subsequent integration sessions. Yeah, it really does have a group therapy feel to it. 

 

David Pace 14:17

So the brain chemical that we’re working with, at least in ketamine, is called glutamate. 

 

Ben Lewis 14:25

Yeah. 

 
classic psychedelics

 

David Pace 14:25

And is that different than what you’re using with the other psychedelics? 

 

Ben Lewis 14:29

Yeah. Good question. And ketamine is distinct. It works differently in the brain. It works on the glutamatergic system by targeting NMDA receptors. And that’s very different than something like psilocybin, which is considered a classic psychedelic, and classic psychedelics really refer to psilocybin, LSD, DMT, mescaline. So like a family of different compounds that all act on the serotonin 2A receptor, so a different receptor subtype, different certainly duration of effect with those compounds, different experiential effects, presumably different clinical effects, and some overlapping elements too. So there are overlapping elements in the kinds of therapeutic approaches that we might use. They’re overlapping effects for what people might experience on those different compounds with some distinctions. 

 

David Pace 15:31

And they’ve got to be extremely unique to each individual. Isn’t that part of the difficulty in measuring and assessing the value of these psychedelics? 

 

Ben Lewis 15:43

Yeah, exactly. Those experiences are really different for everybody. They tend to have a quality of ineffability, so people can’t really describe or characterize or put into words what that experience was like or meant to them. And are quite varied, unpredictable. And there are many questions as to what is the relationship between the experience itself and therapeutic outcomes. We don’t know the answer to a lot of those questions. Most studies to date have shown that certain kinds of experiences that people have — the higher the magnitude on those experiences — the more significant and sustained the therapeutic effects. And that’s been studied primarily in terms of this concept of mystical experience. And there’s a range of questionnaires that get used to, you know, imperfectly characterize what people might have experienced. And most of the studies to date have have really shown that the higher the magnitude of mystical experience that people experience during the session, which is really characterized by a sense of connection, a sense of ineffability, a sense of sacredness, a sense of deep personal meaning, those experiences seem to predict therapeutic response, which is like an interesting and like very unusual thing in psychiatry. 

 

spiritual enhancement

David Pace 17:24

So, yeah, you walked into your typical psychotherapist office and, maybe I’m speculating here, but I’ve had some therapy myself, and you start talking about spiritual matters, spiritual enhancement, which is what these drugs can can do, along with a whole list of other maladies that it can address. Although spirituality, I guess, is not a malady, but a condition, I guess is the better word. And you can’t get very far with a lot of psychotherapists if you start talking about religion or spirituality, in my experience. And so this is kind of like you were hinting at just now, it’s like, we’re not in Kansas anymore. That’s right. In some way. Is that must be kind of exhilarating. 

 

Ben Lewis 18:21

Yeah, well, exhilarating, scary, uncertain, right. Like, and it brings in all of these elements that science has historically been somewhat antithetical to. Right. And for new, really good, deep reasons, though, I would say, I mean, I don’t think there’s anything about spirituality that is not open to scientific study, and I don’t think it necessarily has to be woo-woo in ways that preclude thinking carefully about it and studying it and taking it seriously as an avenue, an important vein of human flourishing and well-being. 

 

Ben Lewis 19:06

There’s a there’s a philosopher, Thomas Metzinger, who wrote this great essay called “Spirituality and Intellectual Honesty,” which I always come back to, and this essay really argues that spirituality and science share this common underlying value of intellectual honesty, a sort of radical kind of honesty. And I sort of like that framing for spirituality. But yeah, I don’t think it’s very easy in the field of psychedelic science to strip out elements of spiritual experience for people. That’s an important part of what people experience, and it seems to be important as far as what happens for them therapeutically. 

 

David Pace 19:56

Yeah, well, I think it’s an opportunity to bridge a divide that maybe doesn’t really need to be there. Actually, there’s a lot of literature, I won’t say a lot of literature, but some literature now around the “spirituality of science.” And of course everybody just kind of around here, kind of ducks, ducks and covers when they hear that, you know, especially when you’re in an environment here where religion is very the civilizing force of the state. Right. In many ways, politics and otherwise. But yeah, I think it’s an opportunity, and I’m glad that you suggested human wellness because of course that’s what this podcast is about. So we’ve approached this, just as a little back story to this podcast, we’ve approached this with eight dimensions of wellness that the National Institutes of Health, have established, one of those of which is spirituality. So it’s kind of nice to see. And of course, the irony of all of that is that they’re all related, right? And so it’s kind of superficial in a way to break it out into components. And we found that out very quickly ast year, didn’t we Ross because every time we tried to talk about social wellness, we very quickly started talking about physical wellness, mental health. In a way we went. So maybe we should have all been taking a trip. I don’t know. Maybe that would have helped. 

 

Ben Lewis 21:27

I could see a utility in sort of dividing different categories because there are ways in which we might neglect certain aspects that, when framed in a certain way, maybe become a little bit more salient, right? 

 

David Pace 21:40

Well, and the notion of holistic health, you know, and wellness is huge right now, somewhat of a buzz term. But I think it’s worth unpacking really a lot because there are these segmented, siloed disciplines that we’ve had traditionally. And the modernist experiment, if you will, since the Enlightenment, we’ve kind of broken those up into silos, which is a danger. So again, it must be a bit exhilarating for you to kind of see these connections coming together and seeing opportunities to explore them. 

 

from Maine to Iowa Medical School

Ben Lewis 22:25

Absolutely. I mean, I went into psychiatry in the first place because it seemed to offer this broader way of thinking about humans and approaching various ways in which people suffer or struggle, and this for me has been a really wonderful way of kind of connecting with that original motivation for me.

 

David Pace 22:51

Tell us a little bit about your background. Where are you from and where did you go to school and and what was your journey into psychiatry? Did you decide you wanted to be a medical doctor to begin with, or did you decide that you wanted to be a psychiatrist right out of the gate? 

 

Ben Lewis 23:05

Yeah, I had a little bit of a yeah, and not a not a very direct path, I guess. I grew up in Maine mostly and went to undergrad in Cambridge at Harvard University and studied English and philosophy. So medicine was not really on my radar at that point in time, although my father was a physician. So it was it was on my radar to some extent. I met my now wife during undergrad and we subsequently moved to Iowa City when she got into medical school. And it seemed to me, Jeez, that doesn’t look so bad. It seems to be fine what you’re doing there. I think I could probably do that as well. And so I took pre-med classes and, and then eventually went to medical school at the University of Iowa with much less ease than my partner. 

 

David Pace 24:00

Well you were a Humanities guy. 

 

Ben Lewis 24:02

Humanities guy.

 

David Pace 24:03

The dangers of humanities.

 

Ben Lewis 24:05

You know, prior to that, I had been first volunteering and then working in a research lab at the University of Iowa that was at that time run by Antonio Damasio, and they were doing a whole range of really cool projects around emotion and consciousness and autobiographical memory. And I really liked that. I really liked the way we were engaging with study participants. I really liked thinking about the brain. I liked kind of all of the philosophy of mind stuff that went into that. So I was thinking, you know, in relation to medical school, something about the brain: neurology, psychiatry, and then just really liked psychiatry a lot more in school.

We finished. My wife did a public health degree, so we finished at the same time and then couples-matched here for residency back in 2008. So and then have been here since then a little, little while.

 

David Pace 25:08

Yeah. So let’s talk really quickly before we pivot to maybe what most of our listeners want to know. Like, am I a candidate for this? I’m interested in the conditions that it looks like PTSD is one of them. I wanted you to expand on those kind of hard core conditions that people are suffering from, that this therapy or therapies could could help. 

 

Ben Lewis 25:55

That answer is a little different depending on which compound you’re talking about. And so, for instance, starting with ketamine, really the bulk of the evidence for ketamine is in treatment-resistant depression and treatment-resistant anxiety disorders. And so that’s mainly what we treat in our clinic right now, looking at psychedelics like psilocybin or LSD. Again, these are still predominantly in sort of research phases and have been studied for depression, including treatment-resistant depression; have been studied for substance and alcohol use disorders; have been studied for anxiety. They have been studied for end of life, existential distress or anxiety and depressive symptoms surrounding fears around death and dying. You mentioned PTSD and that’s really referencing MDMA. So, again, a somewhat distinct chemical, not a classic psychedelic. 

 

David Pace 26:59

Tell me again what MDMA is. 

 

Ben Lewis 27:00

MDMA, the street name or the street drug name for MDMA is ecstasy or Adam. And, you know, has had a history in the club drug scene. And MDMA has been studied extensively at this point for PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder. And there have been two completed phase three trials for MDMA, assisted psychotherapy, for PTSD. And in fact, that compound was just reviewed by the FDA this past summer, this past July. And the FDA said, no. The FDA did not approve MDMA assisted therapy based on two phase three trials that had been sponsored by Mapp/Lycos now, which was a big deal and a disappointment and in many ways spurred a lot of discussion, a lot of strong feelings there. Certainly problems with the approach to certain elements of the approach to those trials. So the FDA and the preceding advisory committee meeting, they put their fingers on some very legitimate concerns and issues and came down pretty hard against approving that medicine, requesting that that company completes another phase three trial, really digging into some safety data prior to approving that medicine. So that was a was a pretty big deal for the field as a whole. And certainly pushes back the timeline of that style of treatment being available for people clinically. 

 

David Pace 28:49

Yeah. I was reading in the “Lancet” regional health journal out of Europe, but I guess it was just almost exactly a year ago when it came out. But they were talking about the, first of all, the need for new therapies in this way. They were talking about how many people suffer from mental illness in Europe. And I’m sure that it’s just as bad here. I’m trying to find that statistic readily. But they also were talking about how complex the treatment protocol is of these sorts of attempted therapies, and definitely that there needs to be more trials and so forth. They’re being obviously cautious, which is why I suppose we have these trials and these institutions that try to keep us on track. But I guess I was just struck by what a problem mental illness is. And I don’t know, maybe you could talk briefly about that and the kind of the broad picture of mental illness as we move forward through this technological age, which I think is being linked to some of the isolation that people are feeling and the despair and the confusion, maybe.

Yeah. Can you speak briefly about that broad picture of mental illness in the United States, maybe in particular? 

 

Ben Lewis 30:31

Sure yeah, I think you’re totally right. You know, there are certain things we can do in mental health fields and in psychiatry, and there is just an ocean that we’re not really able to effectively do a whole lot about. And for me, that has just taken an increasing toll as a psychiatrist over my career, where I’ve practiced predominantly inpatient, adult psychiatry. PTSD, for instance, our current treatments are inadequate, and there’s really no other way to to say that a huge fraction of people are not helped by the medicines that are available. A huge fraction of people are not able to really complete or adhere to the evidence-based psychotherapies for PTSD, and the impact of that condition over time — which is a chronic condition — hose impacts are just huge and growing. And to your point regarding the milieu we find ourselves in now, where we have sort of increasing sense of existential crisis; we have an increasing sense of disconnection in large part levied by our technological devices and the way we were living in modern society; many features of mental illness appear to be getting worse.

And so a huge motivation for me with this field is this hope surrounding a style of treatment and a way of engaging that, yeah, holds promise of being effective in a sustained way for people. And for sure, many, many questions still to be answered and still pretty early on and in understanding that. But I think enormous promise is there, especially for very difficult to treat conditions. 

 

David Pace 32:31

Yeah the single dose psilocybin is that what it’s called has been incredibly promising at least in the studies that they have done. Maybe not as big of the study as they need, but it’s apparently, according to The Lancet, it’s just striking at how those single dose experiences can shift, get people out of their “stuckness.” 

 

Ben Lewis 32:56

Yeah. Yeah. And I think it’s a different model than taking a medicine every day forever. Right. It’s a discrete number of sessions: one or several.  And again, like a lot of of questions still, there have been studies looking at, for instance, treatment-resistant depression. And there are still a number of questions in terms of how long are those benefits sustained and that differs for different patients. Right? But yeah, no, I think you’re totally right. There’s been a lot of like early, very, very promising results with this style of treatment. 

 

David Pace 33:36

So I found the statistics that I was referencing earlier from the Lancet article, almost 1 billion people, they estimate, have mental health conditions globally. And in the European Union alone, mental health problems affect more than one in six people and the economic cost exceeds 4% of the gross domestic product. So we’re talking about a major crisis or opportunity to rethink something. 

 

Ben Lewis 34:05

Exactly. 

 

David Pace 34:08

So there’s PTSD, there’s depression, there’s alcohol use disorders, addictions, social anxiety, like the kind that Christine Baranski was having in her show. And I think it’s very telling that we’re talking about this just weeks before the election, again, I’m sure a lot of that has happening. And again, enhancement of spirituality being another condition that this can deeply affect.

 

Is this for me?

So here’s a couple of questions for you. I think we’re kind of wrapping up here. If someone were to ask, am I a candidate for this kind of therapy, what would you first ask them? 

 

Ben Lewis 34:50

Yeah, I think as far as enrolling in a clinical trial, a lot of those parameters are very, very narrow. That’s a very limiting aspect right now for people who are interested in accessing this kind of treatment. It’s also a really interesting time and that there are legalization measures afoot in states where this is now clinically available: Oregon and Colorado. So there are a range of pathways and, you know, they’re not all aligned with similar thinking necessarily or similar models.

But engaging in clinical trials with classic psychedelics is hard. I mean, they’re very limited and they’re hard to get into and very specific and pretty narrow and also very intensive for participants. So that’s a real challenge. There’s many more people that are really interested in these kinds of treatments than we have availability for in trials or like in clinical avenues. And then it gets interesting as well because there’s a whole host of underground avenues that people people access this to. And those are heterogeneous in terms of what that looks like and in terms of safety.

So it’s tricky. It’s tricky to navigate in this, tricky to advise people on this topic.

Looking at ketamine, yeah, that that is much more accessible. So ketamine is available clinically. People are receiving ketamine infusions and ketamine treatments. Ketamine assisted psychotherapy is clinically available for certain conditions. So that’s much more of like a available clinical avenue for people right now. 

 

David Pace 36:44

So it really it’s it’s very individual, and it’s very just depends on the diagnosis of the psychiatrist which. I assume you have to have a prescription to get into these trials and to get some help. 

 

Ben Lewis 37:00

So yeah, to enroll in a trial. Basically, people just need to go through a screening process So  people can contact our study coordinator team to to be if they think they’re eligible for a trial on, say, postpartum depression or treatment resistant depression can either reach out to me. We have information for our study coordinator contact and that would put somebody on a list of people to be screened and that would include like reviewing medical records, sort of consulting with their outpatient providers, reviewing medications, reviewing other health conditions that might be like an exclusion criteria, making sure they’re not on any like conflicting medications. 

 

David Pace 37:51

So yeah, a lot of questions to answer. It’s very interesting to have this available to us in our backyard in a way.

So we are observing here at the University of Utah Mental Illness Awareness Week this week. So we want to thank Dr. Ben Lewis, professor of psychiatry here in the Department of Psychiatry at the Huntsman Mental Health Institute for joining us today. And we will put some of these resources in our transcript with some links that maybe you can share with us. 

 

Ben Lewis 38:35

Sounds great. 

 

David Pace 38:36

Yeah. So thank you again, Ben. Anything else you want to say before we sign off? 

 

Ben Lewis 38:40

Yeah. Thank you, David. Yeah, Pleasure talking with you. Thanks for the opportunity. 

 

David Pace 38:43

Thank you. 

FORGE Workshop with Alumna Anke Friedrich

December 23, 2024

FORGE Workshop with Alumna Anke Friedrich

December 23, 2024
Above: Members of the Utah FORGE workshop fronted by drone.

The good news for the Utah Frontier Observatory for Research in Geothermal Energy (FORGE) managed by the U is that with an additional $80 million in funding from the Department of Energy, the project is fully funded through 2028.

Anke Friedrich

Managing Principal Investigator Joseph Moore in the Department of Geology and Geophysics, says that “this next phase allows us to build on our important achievements and to further develop and de-risk the tools and technologies necessary to unlock the potential of next-generation geothermal power.”

That’s one hefty piece of good news. But there’s more, and it’s rooted largely in the form of one woman: G&G alumna Anke Friedrich. This past September Friedrich convened a 10-day workshop at Utah FORGE for students from the U and from her home base of Germany where she has an appointment as endowed professor of geology at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich. (She is also an adjunct in Geology & Geophysics at the U.) “It was extremely important to me to have this workshop authentically at the site where things are happening,” she says, “because it has this sense of urgency that really makes it special and different.”

A recent recipient of the U’s Founder’s Day Alumni Award, Friedrich says it was “priceless” to have the project’s two principal investigators on site—along with Moore, John McLennan, U professors with appointments at the Energy & Geoscience Institute. The setting too, is priceless: Milford Valley in Beaver County, Utah, a place of burgeoning alternative energy operations, including the two geo-thermal plants in operation along with windmill and solar farms running like giant stitches in the dry steppe at the foot of the Mineral Mountains. In the middle of it, to the west, is the FORGE site which includes the double-wide “container” classroom with internet, screens, a kitchen and—very important—air conditioning. 

 

'Liquid gold'

Ten students were the focus of the unique place-based workshop, but a total of twenty-seven participants threaded through the 10-day event, including imported faculty and experts for half-day visits. Additionally, there was a visit from a YellowScan drone and an opportunity to learn how to fly these devices and operate LIDAR to get high surface resolution for fractures wherein is found “liquid gold”—water at a piping hot temperature of at least 275 °C. 

Workshop cohort with Anke Friedrich, far right. The site for Utah FORGE is at the foot of the Mineral Mountains with most of the exploration going on, naturally, underground.

Some of that water is naturally circulating, a classic convection system in the earth. Other hot water used for generating turbines for electricity has to be recruited through fracking and inserting surface water underground where it is heated by natural forces, then re-surfaced. All of this has to be done using seismic monitoring via the U’s Seismograph Station where professor Kris Pankow, who helped organize the workshop, is associate director. The monitoring is in concert with geological data collected from drill cores at the geothermal site  as well as 3D models of fractures on the surface of  nearby mountains using the YellowScan drone. 

Giving back

Though a daunting task, it is a deeply calculated and calibrated one, and, happily, a recent benchmark test at Utah FORGE has proven successful. Students from both sides of the Atlantic are there, feeling the heat and doing hands-on research to better experience the process of hydro-fracking in the geothermal industry. For Friedrich this unique experience, which will be repeated, is also a way to give back to the community she encountered as an undergraduate when she came to the U in 1989 as a competitive skier. (Last year she was inducted into the Crimson Hall of Fame for winning three of the four NCAA Championship races she entered.) 

But this time she’s in the Beehive State to indelibly “give back” in a way that “is really worth sharing with students, young scientists, and even colleagues.”

by David Pace

 

 

 

SRI Stories

December 23, 2024

SRI Stories: Mutualistic Mentorship

 

Creating stepping stones for students and mentors alike

If there were a single word to describe the Science Research Initiative (SRI), “mutualistic” would rank among the best choices. Most are aware that the program uniquely allows undergraduate students to build a strong undergraduate resume, connect with expertise in the field, and ultimately learn if the career path is right for them far earlier and easier than what tradition entails. But did you know a similar benefit exists for the mentors? 

SRI mentors are able to build a resume of their own as they teach and foster their students’ growth, showing proof-positive results that they can help students thrive under their leadership. That’s useful in its own right, but they also get to “home-grow” a roster of assistants with tailor-made expertise to assist with their projects. These are assistants that then use that expertise as groundwork for projects of their own. It’s a system that benefits everyone involved

Kendra Autumn is a prime example.

Parasitic fungi adaptation

Kendra arrived at the U with a BA in Biology from Willamette University in tow and quickly became involved with SRI as a graduate student stream leader. Under the guidance of her PhD advisor Bryn Dentinger, she developed a research focus on how parasitic fungi adapt to their hosts and how they might adapt to switch to a new host. The study of parasitic relationships can lead to deeper understandings of the evolution and mechanism of parasitism and often leads to practical applications. 

“Say you’re trying to grow a crop plant and a pathogenic fungus attacks that plant,” Kendra explains, “you can get a different fungus that is a parasite of the crop-attacking fungus to deal with the issue, which is a potential pesticide-free approach to mitigating fungal crop pathogens.” She is currently studying the DNA of several mushroom specimens and their mold parasites, building evolutionary trees to better understand how these parasites have adapted to counter their hosts' defensive measures.

SRI's signature mutualism

This sort of adaptive specialization is a potential goldmine of breakthroughs as parasitism is all around us. Its utilization could affect everything from medicine to waste reduction. But as these parasitic studies built momentum, so, in tandem, did the new SRI with its signature mutualism. Now in its fifth year, the program for undergraduates is perfectly poised to place a handful of undergraduates under Kendra’s leadership, allowing them to adapt and grow together, often in ways you might not expect.

Kendra explains that “Many streams are able to create a lab culture, where fresh SRI students will go on to become learning assistants or TA’s in their stream to help mentor new students. There’s an actual sense of community. It’s something [where] I’m looking around and asking, ‘How do I develop this more in my stream?’” It becomes not just a project that students are invested in, but an environment, a place, where they feel comfortable enough to plant a few roots and start growing in turn. 

Even SRI's infancy, the benefits to both students and mentors, like Kendra, have been astounding. Now with her PhD in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology awarded last spring, she gets to lead her upcoming students as a fully fledged SRI Fellow, to ask more ambitious questions and find new ways to expand student’s horizons as the program continues to evolve. 

Kendra Autumn  has big plans, ranging from introducing genomic studies in an accessible way, to creating and involving her students with outreach programs to build their science communication skills. And all the while they will be helping her lift her own projects towards new heights. It truly is a mutualistic relationship, as the years continue to pass it's no longer a question of if SRI will benefit students. Instead, it’s a question of what kind of extraordinary new heights both mentor and students together will be able to reach.

By Michael Jacobsen

SRI Stories is a series by the College of Science, intended to share transformative experiences from students, alums, postdocs and faculty of the Science Research Initiative. To read more stories, visit the SRI Stories page.

Season’s Greetings from Dean Trapa

December 16, 2024

Season's Greetings FROM DEAN TRAPA

 

Dear Friends and Colleagues,


This past year has been marked by remarkable growth and achievement in the College of Science. Student enrollment has increased by nearly 10% year over year, reflecting the prominence and excellence of our academic programs. The Science Research Initiative continues to thrive, with undergraduate participation surging to over 550 students this fall—a testament to the curiosity and dedication of our students and faculty alike.

Looking ahead, next summer we will celebrate the dedication of the world-class Crocker Science Complex, a significant milestone in our commitment to cutting-edge research and innovation. This state-of-the-art facility—comprising the Crocker Science Center, the renovated Stewart Building, and the new L.S. Skaggs Applied Science Building—will solidify the College’s presence on campus and drive scientific and educational advancements for generations to come.

These achievements are made possible by the immense talent, passion, drive, and collaborative spirit that define our community. To our students, faculty, staff, alumni, and supporters: thank you for being an integral part of our continued success.

Wishing you a peaceful holiday season and a prosperous New Year.

Sincerely,


Dean Peter Trapa
College of Science
University of Utah

ACCESS Scholar: America Cox

December 15, 2024

ACCESS Scholar, America Cox

November 20, 2024
Above: America Cox

The start of college can be an uncertain time for many students, and the journey to discovering your passion is not always easy. America Cox, a senior at the U and an alumni of the ACCESS Scholars program, was no stranger to this feeling.

It was through the ACCESS’s supportive peer community, mentorship and unique research opportunities that she quickly found her footing and was off to the races. “I guess I always knew that I was going to go to college and that it was a big deal for me, and that science was my thing, but the ACCESS program really gave me the opportunity to affirm that for myself and to then be a part of a community of people that will support that,” she says.

America is pursuing an honors degree in biology with an emphasis in ecology, evolution and environment, alongside a second major in philosophy of science and minors in chemistry and media studies. Alongside her diverse collection of studies, she is also highly involved in research, thanks to her placement in the Dentinger Lab during her first year through ACCESS. There, she has been fascinated with the world of mycology, completing a nearly four-year study on the unique coevolutionary relationship of ant-fungus agricultural systems. “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,” she explains. “Being able to see that at the ground level, and seeing the field [of mycology] start to move in new ways is really cool.”

The global level

Amanda Cox, taking her studies to the global level.

For the last three summers, America has taken her experience to the global level, traveling far and wide with her research. She has presented at conferences for the Mycological Society of America, searched for new species of mushrooms in Mexico, explored ecology with the honors integrated minor at Mpala Research Center in Kenya, and completed an REU studying E. muscae, (also known as “zombie” parasitic fungus) in the Elya lab at Harvard University. 

Throughout her unique experiences, America has learned the importance of going back to the basics when she feels overwhelmed or out of place. “I am not a stranger to imposter syndrome. So it’s very easy for me to think, ‘Is this even good enough for what I’m doing?’” she explains. “But then I can look at my data when it comes together, and I realize that I am doing something for the scientific community, and it is contributing to a wider set of knowledge.” 

Reflecting on her journey so far, America describes how several elements of her identity intertwined with her experience: “I am a first-generation college student. I’m a woman in STEM, and I’m also Hispanic, so the things that overlap there are not always represented in STEM.” As a kid dreaming of entering a field that felt like unfamiliar territory in many ways, she emphasizes how crucial it was to find a community of like-minded people who could offer guidance and compassion: “As the first person to go into STEM my family, it was a really unknown field, and so being able to have them say, ‘hey, let’s see what you’re interested in, and let’s get you going’ — that support was unparalleled and for sure got me to where I am right now,” she states. 

That 'aha' moment

Looking forward, America plans to attend graduate school in biology, incorporating outreach and advocacy with her work and one day she hopes to become a professor and researcher. “Teaching is a big thing for me. I love helping someone find that ‘aha’ moment, and also paying it forward. I am who I am because of great teachers who have come before me and inspired me. So I would love to be that for someone else,” she says.

America Cox has already begun her teaching journey, giving back to the ACCESS Scholars Program as a teaching assistant and a mentor for younger students, working to provide them with the representation and support they need to see themselves flourish in STEM and to find their passion, just like she did. 

By Julia St. Andre

The hunt for the origins of the universe’s most energetic particles

December 12, 2024

The hunt for the origins of the universe's most energetic particles

Dec 10, 2024

The University of Utah’s Cosmic Ray Research program, along with partner institutions in the Telescope Array collaboration is looking to crack the case of exactly what the mysterious particles are that carry far more energy than an Earth-bound accelerator can deliver.

The researchers’ recent observation of the second-highest energy cosmic ray on record is providing important clues.

At a seminar on campus September 26, Jihyun Kim, senior research associate in the Department of Physics & Astronomy, presented the Cosmic Ray Research team’s findings from the Telescope Array, an international experiment based in the high desert of western Utah, where 850 detectors are arranged across half a million acres of public land, with 250 more on the way.

“We are hosting the experiment here in Utah,” Kim said. “We design, maintain, and operate everything. We go down with our students, and they learn how to operate all the systems, collect the data and analyze it by themselves. This is a really unique research experience [for our students].”

She shared the latest research and insights pertaining to cosmic rays, utilizing the largest cosmic ray observatory in the Northern Hemisphere. The research group’s mission is to achieve breakthroughs in the field of particle astrophysics. Funded by the National Science Foundation, the Cosmic Ray Research program is particularly interested in the properties of ultra-high energy cosmic rays, or UHECRs.

Read the full article by Ethan Hood in @TheU.

The Next Antibiotic Revolution: Viruses to the Rescue

December 10, 2024

The Next Antibiotic Revolution: Viruses to the Rescue

Dec 09, 2024
Above: Talia Backman – Ph.D. student, School of Biological Sciences, shares a micrograph of tailocins.

From multicellular organisms, like us humans, to single-cell bacteria, living things are subject to attack by viruses. Plants, animals and even bacteria have evolved strategies to combat pathogens, including viruses that can threaten health and life.

Talia Backman, a University of Utah doctoral candidate wrapping up her final year in the School of Biological Sciences, found her project and niche in studying bacteria and the viruses that infect them.

She studies how bacteria create and use weapons, called “tailocins,” by repurposing genes from viruses.

“I’m especially interested in how bacteria have taken this a step further,” Backman said, “using remnants of past viral infections as a novel defense mechanism.”

“Phage” is the word that refers to the viruses that infect bacterial cells. While phages do not attack human cells, a lot can be learned from the strategies used by bacteria to survive a viral infection. Working with Talia Karasov, the principal investigator and assistant professor of biology (yes, they share the same first name), Backman recently helped make an unexpected discovery.

Repurposing viruses

“The bacterial strains (Pseudomonas) that I am studying are essentially repurposing the viruses that infect them,” Backman said, “retaining features from the infectious particles that ultimately help them to kill or co-exist with other strains of bacteria. These repurposed phage parts are called ‘tailocins.’ Understanding the role tailocins may be playing in shaping the prevalence, survival, and evolutionary success of certain bacterial strains is not well understood and is a major focus of the research in the Karasov lab.

Research on bacteria, and their unique viral pathogens, might just offer a novel solution to the antibiotic crisis. Beyond revealing how microbial communities combat infection, compete and evolve is the adjacent opportunity and potential to discover a new class of antibiotics.

Read the full article in @School of Biological Sciences.

Two 2 Tango

December 9, 2024

TWO 2 Tango

October 25, 2024

​​Chemistry faculty & graduate student duos prove that two minds are better than one.

 

Unraveling Bacterial Genomes

At the University of Utah's Department of Chemistry, faculty member Aaron Puri and graduate student Delaney Beals are pioneering research to decode bacterial genomes by understanding their natural environments. Their project, which began with Puri's pilot experiments during his postdoctoral fellowship, focuses on linking methanotroph phenotypes to genotypes using a spatially resolved model ecosystem.

Graduate student Delaney Beals and faculty member Aaron Puri

Puri, who started his research group in 2019, brings a diverse and impressive background to the project. With triple bachelor's degrees from the University of Chicago, a PhD in chemical and systems biology from Stanford University, and postdoctoral research at the University of Washington, Puri's expertise spans chemical tools for host-pathogen interactions and genetic tools for methane-oxidizing bacteria. Now a faculty member in the Henry Eyring Center for Cell & Genome Science, his work centers on the biological chemistry of bacteria that grow on one-carbon compounds like methane and methanol.

Beals, a fifth-year PhD candidate, contributes vital expertise in the chemical ecology of methane-oxidizing bacterial communities. Originally from North Carolina with a bachelor's from UNC Asheville, Beals was drawn to Puri's lab due to its focus on bacterially derived natural products. "By studying how a particular microbe behaves in the natural environment versus in the lab,” she explains, “we can better understand the ecological context in which various compounds are produced, and thus improve efforts to capitalize on a naturally occurring process."

Their research aims to uncover how bacteria use natural products to interact with each other and the environment. Puri elucidates the challenge: "We live in a time where we have virtually unlimited access to bacterial DNA (genome) sequences. But we have a hard time making sense of the vast majority of this information in the lab." To address this, the team grows bacteria in conditions closer to their natural environment, which has revealed exciting insights. Puri notes, "We can use relatively simple materials to uncover new bacterial behaviors in the lab in a reproducible manner."

The Puri-Beals collaboration has yielded significant findings, showing that bacterial behavior varies depending on their location within the model ecosystem. This research has potential applications in alternative energy, agriculture, and health by optimizing the use of microbes for various purposes. Their work not only advances our understanding of bacterial genetics but also paves the way for practical applications with far-reaching societal impacts.

As Puri emphasizes, "This work underscores that it is critical to think about the environment the bacterium of interest came from to understand what the genes in bacterial DNA are doing, since that is where they evolved." This approach promises to enhance our ability to harness microbes as sources for new natural products and to optimize their use in diverse applications.

Decoding Human Milk Oligosaccharides

In the aftermath of the 2022-2023 infant formula shortage, the research of Professor Gabe Nagy and graduate student Sanaz Habibi (they/their) has taken on newfound significance. Their project, focused on characterizing human milk oligosaccharides (HMOs), addresses crucial sugars in human milk that play a vital role in infant development.

Gabe Nagy and graduate student Sanaz Habibi

The complexity of HMOs presents a significant challenge, with potentially over 200 different compounds, yet authentic references are currently available for only about 30 of them. Nagy and Habibi are at the forefront of developing new analytical techniques to enhance HMO characterization, which could have profound implications for improving infant formula and understanding infant nutrition.

Habibi, who joined Nagy's lab in 2021, brings expertise in analytical chemistry and instrumentation from their undergraduate studies at Virginia Commonwealth University. Their research utilizes high-resolution cyclic ion mobility spectrometry-mass spectrometry (cIMS-MS) to analyze HMOs. Habibi explains their journey: "I became very interested in the cIMS-MS instrument that was being used in his lab, despite having little to no background in IMS or MS. I realized that Gabe's lab was the best fit for me to learn a different type of separation technique and increase my knowledge of mass spectrometry for studying an important class of carbohydrates."

Further elaborating on their innovative approach Nagy says, "We aim to develop advanced methods using ion mobility separations and mass spectrometry. These methods aim to decipher the structures of all possible HMOs, addressing the gap in understanding caused by the lack of comprehensive reference materials." This work involves constructing collision cross section databases, which provide numerical descriptions of the size, shape, and charge of ions—crucial for accurately identifying both known and unknown HMOs in real human milk samples.

The team's work is particularly timely, as Nagy points out: "The world of sugar analysis has lagged behind other fields by 10-20 years, and we believe that our lab could develop new tools in order to bridge this gap." The duo’s research not only contributes to solving immediate challenges in infant nutrition but also has broader implications for analytical chemistry.

Nagy and Habibi are optimistic about the wider applicability of their tools and methods. They envision their advancements being adopted by laboratories worldwide across various molecule classes. Habibi emphasizes the potential of their work "to enhance the comprehensive profiling of human milk using our developed methods."

This pioneering research has the potential to empower other disciplines such as biology and medicine by providing access to advanced analytical tools. As infant nutrition continues to be a critical area of study, the work of Nagy and Habibi stands at the forefront of efforts to improve our understanding and application of human milk components in infant formula and beyond.

By Julia McNulty and David Pace

2024 Clarivate’s Most Cited

December 9, 2024

Bill Anderegg, Highly Cited Researcher 2024

December 9, 2024
Above: William Anderegg at the One-U Responsible AI inaugural symposium in September. Courtesy of @The U.

Highly Cited Researchers have demonstrated significant and broad influence in their field(s) of research.

William Anderegg, associate professor in the School of Biological Sciences and director of the Wilkes Center for Climate Science and Policy has again been selected as one of Clarivate's Highly Cited Researchers for 2024. Each researcher selected has authored multiple Highly Cited Papers™ which rank in the top 1% by citations for their field(s) and publication year in the Web of Science™ over the past decade.

Citation activity, however, is not the sole selection indicator. This list, based on citation activity is then refined using qualitative analysis and expert judgment as the global analytics company observes for evidence of community-wide recognition from an international and wide-ranging network of citing authors.

Of the world’s population of scientists and social scientists, Highly Cited Researchers are 1 in 1,000.

“As the need for high-quality data from rigorously selected sources is becoming ever more important,"  says David Pendlebury, Head of Research Analysis at the Institute for Scientific Information at Clarivate, "we have adapted and responded to technological advances and shifts in the publishing landscape. Just as we have applied stringent standards and transparent selection criteria to identify trusted journals in the Web of Science™, we continue to refine our evaluation and selection policies for our annual Highly Cited Researchers™ program to address the challenges of an increasingly complex and polluted scholarly record.”

According to the Clarivate's website, "The Highly Cited Researchers 2024 list identifies and celebrates individuals who have demonstrated significant and broad influence in their fields of research. Through rigorous selection criteria and comprehensive analysis, we recognize researchers whose exceptional and community-wide contributions shape the future of science, technology and academia globally."

"This program also emphasizes our commitment to research integrity. Our evaluation and selection process continues to evolve with filters to address hyper-authorship, excessive self-citation, anomalous citation patterns and more, ensuring that recognized researchers meet the benchmarks we require for this program."

Exploring the "global landscape of top-tier research talent," they continue, "provides us with insights on global research and innovation trends."

This year Clarivate™ awarded 6,886 Highly Cited Researcher designations to 6,636 individuals. Some researchers have been recognized in more than one Essential Science Indicators™ (ESI) field, resulting in more designations than individual awardees. This analysis, which includes the distribution of designations across nations and institutions, reflects the impact of these 6,886 appearances, distributed across fields, in accordance with the size of each.

While the sole researcher from the College of Science this year to be honored with the designation, Anderegg, one of three at the University of Utah, was the only one at the U to appear in two categories, Plant & Animal Science and Environment & Ecology.

This table summarizes the number of researcher designations by field of research and the cross-field category.

One-U Responsible AI

William-Anderegg

Anderegg is also the executive committee member who leads the One-U Responsible AI’s environmental working group. The group’s members bring their diverse expertise to establish ethical policy, explore AI’s impact on society and the environment, and develop responsible methods for using AI to improve climate research.

“Our goal of this working group is to put together a vision and a mission about responsibly developing and using AI to address human environmental challenges across scales to promote resilience and foster sustainable development,” said Anderegg at the group's inaugural symposium this past September. “AI could have an enormous negative impact on the environment itself. There are direct impacts for the cost of running AI—the power and water needed to run the massive data centers, and the greenhouse gas emissions that result. Then there are indirect challenges—misinformation, polarization, and increasing demands on the power grid. At the same time, there are another set of opportunities in using AI to tackle the marginal problems in forecasting and grid rewarding systems.”

The working group’s vision is to utilize AI to bolster our resilience to climate change with collaboration, training, technology, and ethical governance.

“The University of Utah is set to engage in these two focal areas of developing sustainable AI—how we use AI in a manner that minimizes environmental impact and maximizes long-term sustainability? Then, how do we harness AI for environmental resilience challenges?” Anderegg noted.

This is the second year in a row that Anderegg has made the Highly Cited Researcher list. With his mentor, biology professor emeritus John Sperry, the two were honored in the 2023 cohort. The two of them worked closely together, publishing multiple papers over the course of about six years in the areas of plant hydrology and forest stress. Their research is an auspicious example of how, in the tradition of peer-reviewed research, scientists routinely stand on the shoulders of others to move forward human understanding.

You can link to selected publications by Bill Anderegg here. 

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