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Celebrating Our Exceptional Faculty 2023

May 26, 2023

4 College Faculty Receive 2023 U Awards

Each year, the University of Utah recognizes the achievements of exceptional faculty members in teaching, research, mentorship and service. Below are the College of Science honorees for this year, with excerpts from their nomination letters.

 

 

Calvin S. and JeNeal N. Hatch Prize in Teaching

Kenneth Golden
Distinguished Professor of Mathematics

“Having more than 40 years of classroom experience to perfect the art of teaching, 80-plus publications in academic and scientific journals, more than 500 invited lectures and having presented three times in front of the United States Congress, Dr. Golden has amplified what it means to be a teacher by not only being at the top of his field but also by creating a safe and inclusive environment where students can be challenged to reach their full potential.”

 

 

Distinguished Professor

Michael Morse, professor
Department of Chemistry

“Professor Morse’s substantial work exemplifies the highest goals of scholarship and research and he is internationally viewed as a leading expert in the experimental study of small transition metal, lanthanide and actinide molecules. His most recent work is setting the standard for these species and is crucially needed for benchmarking computational chemistry. At the same time, he is dedicated to teaching, mentoring and providing service to the profession and the local community at the highest level.”

 

 

Early Career Teaching Award

Claudia De Grandi, associate professor (lecturer)
Department of Physics & Astronomy

“Dr. De Grandi is an outstanding educator because of her persistent aspiration to evolve her teaching practice. I know from experience that she gives students many opportunities throughout the semester to provide feedback regarding the class. Furthermore, I know that she uses this information to shape how she proceeds in the classroom. Her commitment to enhancing her classrooms is one of the many ways that she is able to accommodate a wide range of student needs. As a future educator myself, I admire her devotion to education and her perspective on education as a constantly developing process. Dr. De Grandi’s willingness to adapt is something that all educators could benefit from.”

 

 

 

Early Career Teaching Award

Sean Howe, assistant professor
Department of Mathematics

“During my undergraduate career, Dr. Howe has been instrumental in my success by advising my applications for scholarships, graduate schools and research experiences; and by providing individual instruction on an advanced research project and related topics. I am extremely fortunate and grateful for Dr. Howe’s constant support and the positive impact he has had on my life and academic career. The personal impact of his guidance truly cannot be understated—he has proven to be an outstanding mentor in every manner possible, exhibiting extraordinary character and compassion for his students.”

 

 

Celebrate all faculty awards given this year by the University of Utah here:

 

1U4U Initiative

April 24, 2023

Browse the College of Science’s Funded 1U4U Projects for 2023

 

IU4U is designed to seed multidisciplinary faculty/student collaborations in areas of mutual research interest and opportunity. The initiative seeks innovative projects aimed at campus, education, engagement, research and scholarship that are not subject to traditional peer review. In order to receive funding priority, the project must have the potential of leading to external funding, have societal impact, and be a collaboration between health sciences and main campus.

The College of Science is pleased to announce that four of our professors have received an 1U4U award. Congratulations!

Emerging Perovskite Dosimetry for In-Situ and High-Dose Radiotherapy

CONNOR BISCHAK, CHEMISTRY

Robust radiation detectors are essential in state-of-the-art radiotherapy and cancer treatment. This project exploits an innovative perovskite detector that meets the stringent requirements for such dosimeters. Our interdisciplinary team possesses complementary expertise in chemical synthesis (Bischak), semiconductor devices (Yoon), nuclear radiation (Sjoden), and clinical medical physics (Nelson).

Metal-halide perovskites are emerging semiconductors owing to their facile synthesis, tunable bandgap, long carrier diffusion length, and high defect tolerance. Researchers have demonstrated the feasibility of perovskite detectors where the performance is comparable to or exceeds established detectors. While exciting, the stability of perovskites under high radiation doses must be better understood. The detector architecture that optimizes the complex interactions between radioactive particles with semiconductors remains challenging. This research field faces limited experimental evaluation under irradiation by high-energy particles.

Our team is ideally positioned to tackle such challenges by maximizing our expertise and resources (TRIGA reactor [n-gamma], electron/proton sources). This project will be built on a solid partnership among experts, staff, and students, providing an excellent opportunity to promote diversity, educational training, and close collaborations. This project will enable us to pursue large external grants in medical, homeland security, and space research.

 

Surgery in the Pyrocene: Examining the Risk of Wildfire Smoke to Perioperative Patient Populations in the Mountain West

DEREK MALLIA, ATMOSPHERIC SCIENCES

Across the Western U.S., the number of large wildfires has been steadily increasing since the early 1980s leading to degraded air quality. Wildfire smoke is known to worsen cardiopulmonary and neurovascular outcomes, however its impact on surgical patients is unstudied. Surgical populations are especially vulnerable to wildfire smoke due to the surgical inflammatory response which can synergize with pollution related inflammation. We hypothesize that patients presenting for surgery during wildfire smoke events will experience worsened perioperative outcomes (e.g. stroke, MI) compared to clean air days.

To characterize the health risk of wildfire smoke, linkages are needed that can attribute specific elevated smoke components (e.g PAHs, PM2.5) to specific source regions. We will leverage a smoke transport model (STILT), developed by Co-I Mallia and Wilmot, which can trace the origin of elevated PM2.5 levels to specific wildfires and use this funding to extend model timeframes. The smoke model will then be combined with perioperative outcomes, patient addresses, and traffic pollution, building on prior work from Co-I’s Pearson and Wan from the Departments of Anesthesiology and Geography. Differentiating upstream smoke events from downstream pollution will enable better understanding of the pathophysiological mechanisms behind inflammatory responses to these varied sources. This non-traditional, cross-campus collaboration will enable us to characterize the risk to patients undergoing surgery and devise countermeasures, such as in-home filtration, PPE, and dynamic surgical scheduling, based on air quality.

This team will tackle a complex problem, the impact of wildfire smoke on perioperative health, and test the feasibility of this field of inquiry while supporting student researchers. If successful, we hope to build multi-institutional collaborations and obtain extramural funding from sources such as the NIH’s Climate Change and Health NOSI (NOT-ES-22-006).

 

The pathogenic potential of Great Salt Lake dust

KEVIN PERRY, ATMOSPHERIC SCIENCES

The Great Salt Lake (GSL) is rapidly shrinking, exposing a vast lake bed and emitting dust that affects the air quality for the 1.3 million people in the Salt Lake Valley (SLV) with a disproportionate impact on underserved communities. Dust from the GSL contains heavy metals, dangerous for human health. However, the pathogenic content of GSL dust has not been characterized, an urgent gap in our understanding of the health consequences of the drying lake.

To characterize the potential pathogens in the source of GSL dust, we will sample dust from a transect on the exposed lake bed. We will sieve dust and then re-aerosolize it to focus on the respirable fraction of dust that can penetrate deep into the lungs and that poses the most direct infection risk. To characterize the dust microbiome that may more proximally affect people and may contribute to increasing environmental health disparities in SLV, we will collect airborne dust using filter samplers across city transects. For both dust from the GSL lakebed and urban air, we will characterize the dust microbiome, identifying all known human bacterial and fungal pathogens, with next generation sequencing.
This proposal establishes a new multidisciplinary collaboration between researchers in the School of Pharmacy, School of Medicine, College of Mines and Earth Sciences, and College of Engineering, enabling us to collect preliminary data for an NIH proposal to study the epidemiology of GSL dust. By focusing on a major environmental and health justice challenge, our proposal advances the University of Utah’s strategic goals to develop and transfer new knowledge and to engage communities to improve health and the quality of life.

 

Understand and predict the severe drought events in the western United States and their influence on water resources and human health

ZHAOXIA PU, AYMOSPHERIC SCIENCES

 

 

 

PAUL BROOKS, GEOLOGY & GEOPHYSICS

The western United States has experienced drought in recent years. In 2022, drought conditions were most severe in the States of California, Texas, Oregon, Nevada, Utah, and New Mexico. As reported in July 2022, more than 32 percent of land in western states was classified as experiencing extreme or exceptional drought.
Drought can adversely reduce the quantity of snowpack and streamflow available, thus greatly influencing the ecosystem, human activities, and human health through environmental influence and social and economic impacts.

This project aims to better understand and predict the severe drought events in the western United States and their impacts on water resources and human health, especially in Northern Utah. We seek collaborations from climate, hydrological, ecosystem, and health science. Our objectives are to 1) develop improved drought metrics based on the historical records and current conditions of the atmosphere, land, and plant available water for an effective drought prediction method; and 2) assess the drought impacts on human health, such as lung health of toxic dust caused by a drought in Great Salt Lake. The ultimate goal of the research is to provide effective drought prediction methods for the western United States and identify significant issues, thus making suggestions for essential decision-making.

 

Development of a Science-Theater collaborative platform

SAVEEZ SAFFARIAN, PHYSICS & ASTRONOMY

“Of Serpents & Sea Spray” by Rachel Bublitz at Custom Made Theatre Co. photo by Jay Yamada.

Science and technology have transformed our lives and will disrupt and reshape jobs within our community. Yet, from genetic modifications to quantum computing, science remains enigmatic to the public. In recognition of this problem, the National Science Foundation has required every scientific proposal to incorporate elements of outreach. One way to reach wider communities is live theater. The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation supports production of plays about science. The creation of plays about science, however, remain challenging because it requires non-traditional, cross-disciplinary collaborations too elaborate for junior investigators or emerging playwrights.

Our project will develop a collaborative model that draws on the expertise of research faculty in Science, Theater and the Center for Health Ethics, Arts, and Humanities. We will test this approach by developing a play about retroviruses to be performed at the International Retrovirology Conference at Snowbird Utah in September of 2023. Our team has identified a local playwright, Rachel Bublitz, and director, Assistant Professor Alexandra Harbold (Theatre), who, will collaborate with Dr Anna Skalka (Fox Chase Medical Center in Philadelphia), Dr Saffarian’s lab, and health sciences faculty to explore the golden age of molecular biology and the ethical and social implications of retroviral research. This process will be documented to serve as a model for future investigators.
Opportunities for extramural funding include:

1- Allowing junior faculty to propose science-theater collaborations as outreach mechanisms in their NSF proposals. This retroviruses play will be directly incorporated into the next NSF proposal from Dr Saffarian’s lab.
2- Allowing playwrights to develop plays with the potential to seek additional development and production support from arts, cultural and science education foundations.

 

Overcoming Vaccine Hesitancy and Preventing Cancer ThroughAdaptive Learning Artificial Intelligence and Refinement of Reminder Interventions and Campaigns

NAINA PHADNIS, BIOLOGY

HPV is common (>80% of people), responsible for 36,000 cancer diagnoses each year in the U.S., and largely preventable. Vaccine hesitancy is a barrier to immunization and misinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated hesitancy, leading to sharp declines in adolescent immunizations, including HPV vaccination. Efforts focused on childhood vaccination, resulted in deprioritization of HPV and adolescent immunization. Patient reminder and recall (RR) strategies have been proven successful in immunization uptake; however, the effectiveness of these strategies varies by geographic and sociodemographic factors. The current study will be among the first to use state-level vaccination registry data to systematically examine missed opportunities and identify spatial and temporal trends of HPV vaccination. This project will inform the creation of an adaptive learning artificial intelligence for refinement of interactive RR strategies and interventions. Solutions arising from this study are scalable, can be tailored for diverse reminder campaigns, responsive to evolving landscapes, and designed to deliver cost-effective solutions. Both innovative and transformative, this cross-campus collaboration will address complex healthcare problems using precision public health strategies, optimized for decreasing vaccine hesitancy and increasing uptake, and provide preliminary results for high-impact NIH and NCI funding proposals.

 

Investigation of Polymer Functional Groups and Their Impact on Sperm Viability

 

NITIN PHADNIS, BIOLOGY

We have observed that the viability of sperm decreases depending on the polymer materials used in assisted reproductive technologies. We have done some preliminary studies and have determined that sperm can be negatively impacted by either the functional groups present on polymers, surface charge, surface morphology, and other polymer properties. We have further noted increased incidence in gamete toxicity in contact materials that were recently purchased after product substitutions became necessary due to supply chain issues. We believe this is due to the use of additives, mold release agents, and other contaminants that are present on the polymer surfaces. In this study, we propose to investigate the polymer properties of contact materials used in assisted reproductive techniques (ART) to determine their impact on the viability of sperm after exposure to different polymers over time. Following sperm exposure to various materials, we will test sperm function using the hamster egg penetration test. In addition, the Phadnis lab has developed a “sperm racetrack”, an optically clear counter-current microfluidic channel that can be used as a sensitive assay to measure other functional aspects of sperm including linear velocity, swim efficiency and longevity of motility. In this study, we aim to examine the material properties that may affect sperm viability, to determine whether there are negative impacts on sperm after exposure to specific polymer materials and to identify materials that are most compatible with gametes, with the ultimate goal of optimizing the composition of contact materials used in ART.

You can browse all of the awardees at the University of Utah here. 

2023 Goldwater Scholars

April 7, 2023

Goldwater Scholars 2023

Four College of Science students awarded a prestigious Goldwater Scholarship for 2023-24

As the result of an ongoing partnership with the Department of Defense's National Defense Education Programs (NDEP), Dr. John Yopp, Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Barry Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Foundation, announced that the Trustees of the Goldwater Board has again been able to increase the number of Goldwater scholarships it is awarding for the 2023-2024 academic year to 413 college students from across the U.S.

“The Department of Defense’s continued partnership with the Goldwater Foundation ensures we are supporting the development of scientific talent essential to maintaining our Nation’s competitive advantage,” said Dr. Jagadeesh Pamulapati, Acting Deputy Director of Research, Technology and Laboratories, who oversees the NDEP program, as he explained the partnership.

With the 2023 awards, this brings the number of scholarships awarded since 1989 by the Goldwater Foundation to 10,283.

Eliza Diggins
Physics & Astronomy
Applied Mathematics

A sophomore, Eliza Diggins participated as a freshman in the Science Research Initiative (SRI) program, sponsored by the College of Science. The SRI puts students in a lab to do research as soon as they arrive on campus. After Eliza was admitted to the program, she began working with Fred Adler, professor of mathematics and of biology in the Department of Mathematics and in the School of Biological Sciences. "Math and physics have both had a special place in my heart for most of my life. Even back in elementary school, math and science always held my attention more than other subjects. I began to actively study physics in middle school and never looked back."

Following graduation she hopes to pursue a Ph.D. in theoretical astrophysics to use innovative computational and analytical techniques to better understand the dynamical processes at play on all scales of the cosmos.You can read an interview of Eliza here.

 

Audrey Glende
Physics & Astronomy
Mathematics
Philosophy of Science

An honors student with a triple major, Audrey Glende is currently researching a crystal and mapping its electrical and magnetic properties at extreme conditions, such as pressures similar to that of the earth's core temperatures just above absolute zero. The crystal (EuCd2P2) has been labeled as a superconductive candidate among other characteristics. As with electronic parts or materials used in fuel/battery cells, "many of the materials with complex properties," she says, referring to her work with the crystal, "are discovered through both theory and experimentation within condensed matter physics." It is this area of inquiry in which her ambition lies, and she is hoping to complete a Ph.D. in physics  and eventually share her knowledge through teaching at the college level.

Among many influential family members in her life,  she says, "I probably see myself most in my dad and know that it is very much so because of him that I have been comfortably hand-held into my passion for STEM in a way many people aren’t." Her father encouraged her to participate in science fairs as a youth and she was eventually recognized by Business Insider as having conducted one of the 30 most impressive science fair projects in the U.S. in 2015. Glende's faculty mentor is Professor Shanti Deemyad.

 

Daniel Koizumi
Mathematics

After graduation, "I hope to pursue a Ph.D. in Mathematics [and] conduct research in pure mathematics and teach at university," says Daniel Koizumi. His faculty mentors include Professor Karim Adiprasito, a German mathematician working at the University of Copenhagen and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem who works in combinatorics; Professor Sean Howe, who works in arithmetic and algebraic geometry, representation theory, and number theory; and Professor Jon Chaika, whose research in the field of dynamical systems seeks to understand a space and a map by following individual points.

Recipient of the departmental Undergraduate Award for Excellence in Graduate Courses, Koizumi's  ambition is to continue doing research at the intersection of combinatorial topology and commutative algebra. He spent three months in 2022 as a research fellow at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. "On a lazy Saturday," he says, "I ... enjoy hiking, cooking, or running."

 

Nichols Crawford Taylor
Applied Mathematics Computer Engineering
Computer Science

"I love robotics, autonomous systems, and all the math and engineering surrounding them," says Nichols Crawford Taylor. "I'm excited for the future they'll create!" Taylor, a triple major, plans on pursuing a Ph.D. in robotics and then transferring to industry to teach and present his research.

"Right now," he says, "I’m working on skill sequencing for autonomous manipulation using partial views of objects. We don’t expect robots to have all encompassing knowledge, so we’re using human-like views of objects with color and depth. From there, my research is about how to put together different skills the robot has to achieve a goal, like re-arranging books on a shelf."

A presidential intern during the 2021-2022 academic year and, currently, the Residence Hall Association President at the U, Taylor has been on the Dean's List and is a member of Pi Mu Epsilon. He is also a member of the Jiu Jitsu club. His faculty mentors include Dr. Daniel Drew, Dr. Alan Kuntz and Dr. Tucker Hermans, the latter of whom he considers his hero. "His breadth of knowledge and experience is astounding," says the Orem native. "He knows so much about and surrounding the field, and has incredible insights on problems take a good bit of time to wrap my head around."

 

A.A.U. Membership

February 22, 2023

UTAH JOINS THE A.A.U.

 

"It is difficult to overstate the importance of AAU Membership. This elevates the U to an exceptional category of peer institutions."
- Dean Peter Trapa

 

The University of Utah is one of the newest members of the prestigious Association of American Universities, which for more than 100 years has recognized the most outstanding academic institutions in the nation.

Mary Sue Coleman, president of the Association of American Universities (AAU), announced Wednesday that University of Utah President Ruth V. Watkins has accepted an invitation to join the association, along with the University of California, Santa Cruz and Dartmouth College. The three new members bring the number of AAU institutions to 65.

AAU invitations are infrequent; this year’s invitations are the first since 2012.

 

 

“AAU’s membership is limited to institutions at the forefront of scientific inquiry and educational excellence,” said Coleman. “These world-class institutions are a welcome addition, and we look forward to working with them as we continue to shape policy for higher education, science, and innovation.” - Mary Sue Coleman

 

About the AAU
The AAU formed in 1900 to promote and raise standards for university research and education. Today its mission is to “provide a forum for the development and implementation of institutional and national policies promoting strong programs of academic research and scholarship and undergraduate, graduate and professional education.”

A current list of member institutions can be found here. The membership criteria are based on a university’s research funding (the U reached a milestone of $547 million in research funding in FY2019); the proportion of faculty elected to the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine; the impact of research and scholarship; and student outcomes. The U has 21 National Academies members, with some elected to more than one academy.

An AAU committee periodically reviews universities and recommends them to the full association for membership, where a three-fourths vote is required to confirm the invitation.

Leaders of AAU member universities meet to discuss common challenges and future directions in higher education. The U’s leaders will now join those meetings, which include the leaders of all the top 10 and 56 of the top 100 universities in the United States.

 

“We already knew that the U was one of the jewels of Utah and of the Intermountain West. This invitation shows that we are one of the jewels of the entire nation.” - H. David Burton

 

U on the rise
In FY2019 the U celebrated a historic high of $547 million in sponsored project funding, covering a wide range of research activities. These prestigious awards from organizations such as the U.S. Department of Energy, National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation are supporting work in geothermal energy, cross-cutting, interdisciplinary approaches to research that challenge existing paradigms and effects of cannabinoids on pain management.

They also are funding educational research programs with significant community engagement, such as the U’s STEM Ambassador Program and the Genetic Science Learning Center’s participation in the All of Us Research Program.

“AAU is a confirmation of the quality and caliber of our faculty and the innovative work they are doing to advance knowledge and address grand societal challenges. Our students and our community will be the ultimate beneficiaries of these endeavors. " - President Ruth Watkins

 

On Nov. 4, 2019, the U announced a $150 million gift, the largest single-project donation in its history, to establish the Huntsman Mental Health Institute. These gifts and awards are in addition to the ongoing support of the U from the Utah State Legislature.

This fall the university welcomed its most academically prepared class of first-year students. The freshman cohort includes 4,249 students boasting an impressive 3.66 average high school GPA and an average ACT composite score of 25.8. The incoming class also brings more diversity to campus with both a 54% increase in international students and more bilingual students than the previous year’s freshman class. Among our freshmen who are U.S. citizens, 30% are students of color.

The U’s focus on student success has led to an increased six-year graduation rate, which now sits at 70%—well above the national average for four-year schools. The rate has jumped 19 percentage points over the past decade, making it one of only two public higher education research institutions to achieve this success.

Spirit of Salam

February 16, 2023

Spirit of Salam

Tino Nyawelo

Tino Nyawelo Wins 2023 Spirit of Salam Award.

The family of International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) founder and Nobel Laureate Abdus Salam announced that Tino Nyawelo, associate professor of physics at the University of Utah, is a recipient of the 2023 Spirit of Salam Award. Revealed annually on Abdus Salam’s birthday, the award recognizes those who, like Salam himself, have worked tirelessly to promote the development of science and technology in disadvantaged parts of the world.

Nyawelo was recognized for founding Refugees Exploring the Foundations of Undergraduate Education in Science (REFUGES), a program to help historically excluded students to pursue STEM education at the university level. Nyawelo, who in 1997 left his home country of Sudan to complete a postgraduate program at the ICTP in Italy, considers the award a full circle moment.

“This award is very special to me because my time at the center put me directly on the path that I’m following today,” Nyawelo said.

Abdus Salem

Salam, a theoretical physicist from Punjab, Pakistan, received a bachelor’s and doctorate degree from the University of Cambridge due to Pakistan’s lack of scientific infrastructure at the time. Salam was a passionate advocate for boosting science in developing countries and lived by his conviction that science is the common heritage of humankind. In 1964, he founded the ICTP in Trieste, Italy, as an “international scientific hub of excellence linking scientists from developing countries with their colleagues worldwide, overcoming intellectual isolation and helping build a strong scientific base around the world so that all countries can play their rightful role in the global science community and in the family of nations,” according to the ICTP. He won the 1979 Nobel Prize in physics, becoming the first Pakistani and the first Muslim from an Islamic country to receive the prestigious prize in science.

In 1996, Nyawelo was unsure of his next move. He had completed a bachelor’s degree in physics from the Sudan University of Science and Technology in Khartoum, Sudan and was appointed as a teaching assistant. At the time, there were no Sudanese physics PhD programs, and he was considering switching to computer science. Luckily, Marten Durieux, a renowned Dutch physicist from the University of Leiden, Netherlands, intervened. Durieux, who passed away in 2011, traveled to Sudan every year to teach physics courses. His first-ever PhD student was a brilliant scholar from Sudan, and Durieux fell in love with the country. Over his career, Durieux mentored 11 Sudanese students through their PhDs. Nyawelo was admitted to a year-long intensive program at the ICTP.

Marten Durieux

“The ICTP diploma program was eye-opening, but difficult,” said Nyawelo. “It was the first time I’d left my country, the first time I’d learned science in a language other than Arabic, I didn’t know anybody, and Italy was a culture shock.”

Through Durieux, Nyawelo met Jan-Willem van Holten, a theoretical physicist at the Dutch the National Institute for Nuclear Physics and High Energy Physics (NIKHEF), with whom Nyawelo continues to collaborate to this day. After he completed his PhD in 2004, he returned to the ICTP for his postdoc. During his time in Europe, Nyawelo traveled frequently to Utah to visit his girlfriend, now wife. They started dating in Sudan, but she and her family were relocated to Salt Lake City after fleeing violence at the outbreak of the Sudanese civil war. Many of Nyawelo’s friends and classmates had also relocated—and the community felt like coming home.

“Durieux—that’s the connection that helped me, and motivated me to help others. I benefited a lot from support to pursue physics without paying a cent,” Nyawelo said. “I was planning on giving something back.”

While in Utah, colleagues in the Department of Physics & Astronomy gave Nyawelo a desk to continue his research, eventually offering him a post-doc position in 2007. By 2009, he and other members of the refugee community became alarmed at the high rates of school dropouts. They realized that many refugee youth come to Utah with little English and intermittent formal schooling. When they arrive in Utah, the school system places them in a grade based on their age, leaving many feeling overwhelmed and left behind. Nyawelo and partners founded REFUGES, an after-school program to help refugee students in middle and high school thrive in STEM subjects. The U has housed REFUGES since 2013 where it has expanded to include a summer bridge program for incoming first-year students at the U, and non-refugee students who are underrepresented in STEM fields.

Receiving the Salam Award in Trieste, December 2023

“I related to the Utah newcomers. It reminded me of when I went to Italy for the first time, science was taught in different language in a very different system,” said Nyawelo. “That’s how the whole afterschool program started. Because I remember the feeling of being that vulnerable.”

In 2020, the National Science Foundation awarded Nyawelo and collaborators $1.1 million over three years to study how refugee teenagers construct self-identities related to STEM across settings, such as physics research and creating digital stories, across relationships, such as peer, parent, and teacher, and across the languages they speak. Embedded in REFUGES, the first-of-its-kind project is titled “Investigating the development of STEM-positive identities of refugee teens in a physics out-of-school time experience.”

A cohort of teens learned the principles of physics and computer programming by building detectors for cosmic rays. The detector technology is adapted from HiSPARC (High School Project on Astrophysics Research with Cosmics), a program founded by Nyawelo’s former advisor, van Holton. van Holton and his students have flown to Utah several times to help Nyawelo adapt the program.

“I still have a big connection with the Netherlands— van Holten and his colleques at Nikhef has donated a lot of the equipment for free, to work and build cosmic ray detectors with high schools student here in Utah, and they handed me the project that they started more than 20 years ago,” said Nyawelo. “It’s been an exciting project that can serve as a model for other places who want to support students from these backgrounds succeed in STEM in higher education. Just like I was at ICTP and the Netherlands.”

Other Awardees
The two other Spirit of Salam awardees Hugo Celso Perez Rojas of the Instituto de Cybernetics Mathematics and Physics in Cuba, who has worked intensely to persuade Cuban policy makers that basic science is by no means a luxury but a crucial need for the development of third-world economies; and Federico Rosei, Institut National Recherche Scientifique in Montréal, Canada, has shown outstanding international leadership, spanning from research, to education to building capacity and mentoring.

“We are delighted to recognize the contribution of these three fine humanitarians, who have taken the spirit and example of Abdus Salam to serve humanity and promote education to the most deserving in the developing countries. They have worked tirelessly to support those, who purely by the accident of their birth do not have access to those born in the developed countries.”

by Lisa Potter, first published @ theU

 

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Groundbreaking

February 13, 2023

Applied Science Groundbreaking

Dean Peter Trapa

On Friday, Feb. 10, the University of Utah held a groundbreaking ceremony for the Applied Sciences Project, a $93.5 million endeavor that includes renovation of the historic William Stewart Building and a new 100,000-square-foot building with modern teaching labs and state-of-the-art research facilities. The completed spaces will house world-class scientists addressing the country’s most urgent issues, including energy, air quality, climate change and water management, and provide additional classrooms and experiential learning opportunities for crucial undergraduate STEM courses.

“Utah is growing, and we need to expand,” said U President Taylor Randall to the crowd at the Applied Sciences Project ceremony. “This project will help us increase capacity to educate new generations of STEM leaders and provide the expertise to sustain Utah’s STEM economy to keep Utah vital.”

Gary Crocker

The Wilkes Center for Climate Science & Policy and the Departments of Physics & Astronomy and Atmospheric Sciences will relocate to the new building upon its completion in late 2024. The researchers will use the facilities for a range of activities, such as forecasting hazardous weather, predicting the Wasatch Front’s winter particulates and summer ozone, developing new advances in semiconductors and quantum materials and managing the Willard Eccles Observatory telescope at Frisco Peak. The partnership between these departments is a component of the merger between the College of Science and the College of Mines and Earth Sciences, announced last year.

“In the end, when all is said and done, the core objective of philanthropy has always been the impact that a gift might have on individual lives. Ann and I know very personally that the College of Science is the pivotal portal in this state through which students wishing to enter the sciences and science-based profession must pass,” said Gary Crocker. “Ann and I have seen this virtuous cycle. Science leading to commercial innovation, leading to better jobs and better communities.”

President Taylor Randall

The project will boost the capacity for crucial undergraduate courses, allowing departments to address record STEM enrollment. Classes taught in the buildings are necessary for 37 different STEM degree programs and nine pre-professional programs, including all engineering, pre-medical and computer science majors. Along with access to modern experiential teaching spaces, students will avoid bottlenecks in high-demand courses, helping reduce graduation time.

“The collaborative and interdisciplinary nature of this project will bring together faculty and students who will work together to address the grand challenges of our day and make great advances in fundamental research,” said Peter Trapa, dean of the College of Science.

The Utah State Legislature approved the project in 2020 and the state appropriated $64.8 million in funding for the project. Both the university and the legislature consider the project a high priority because it supports the state’s STEM economy.

Dean Darryl Butt

“The Applied Sciences Building will be a home base, a catalyst for learning and innovation in the 21st century, and will touch thousands of lives,” said Darryl Butt, dean of the College of Mines and Earth Sciences.

When completed, the Crocker Science Center and the two buildings in the Applied Science Project will form the Crocker Science Complex. The complex, made possible by an $8.5 million gift from Gary and Ann Crocker, will form a dynamic interdisciplinary STEM hub on the east side of the U campus.

Visit our Applied Science Project pages for more information.

Visit our UGIVE page to make a donation in support of the Applied Science Project.

Renderings

 

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Space Sunscreen

February 9, 2023

Space Sunscreen

Ben Bromley

Dust launched from the moon’s surface or from a space station positioned between Earth and the sun could reduce enough solar radiation to mitigate the impacts of climate change.

On a cold winter day, the warmth of the sun is welcome. Yet as humanity emits more and more greenhouse gases, the Earth's atmosphere traps more and more of the sun's energy and steadily increases the Earth's temperature. One strategy for reversing this trend is to intercept a fraction of sunlight before it reaches our planet. For decades, scientists have considered using screens, objects or dust particles to block just enough of the sun’s radiation—between 1 or 2%—to mitigate the effects of global warming.

A University of Utah-led study explored the potential of using dust to shield sunlight. They analyzed different properties of dust particles, quantities of dust and the orbits that would be best suited for shading Earth. The authors found that launching dust from Earth to a way station at the “Lagrange Point” between Earth and the sun (L1) would be most effective but would require astronomical cost and effort. An alternative is to use moondust. The authors argue that launching lunar dust from the moon instead could be a cheap and effective way to shade the Earth.

The team of astronomers applied a technique used to study planet formation around distant stars, their usual research focus. Planet formation is a messy process that kicks up lots of astronomical dust that can form rings around the host star. These rings intercept light from the central star and re-radiate it in a way that we can detect it on Earth. One way to discover stars that are forming new planets is to look for these dusty rings.

“That was the seed of the idea; if we took a small amount of material and put it on a special orbit between the Earth and the sun and broke it up, we could block out a lot of sunlight with a little amount of mass,” said Ben Bromley, professor of physics and astronomy and lead author for the study.

"It is interesting to contemplate how moon dust—which took over four billion years to generate—might help to solve climate change, a problem that took us less than 300 years to produce,” said Scott Kenyon, co-author of the study from the Center for Astrophysics at Harvard + Smithsonian.

The paper  was published on Wednesday, Feb. 8, 2023, in the journal PLOS Climate.

A simulation from dust launched from the way station at Lagrange point 1. The shadow cast on Earth is exaggerated for clarity.

Casting a shadow

A shield’s overall effectiveness depends on its ability to sustain an orbit that casts a shadow on Earth. Sameer Khan, undergraduate student and the study’s co-author, led the initial exploration into which orbits could hold dust in position long enough to provide adequate shading. Khan’s work demonstrated the difficulty of keeping dust where you need it to be.

“Because we know the positions and masses of the major celestial bodies in our solar system, we can simply use the laws of gravity to track the position of a simulated sunshield over time for several different orbits,” said Khan.

Two scenarios were promising. In the first scenario, the authors positioned a space platform at the L1 Lagrange point, the closest point between Earth and the sun where the gravitational forces are balanced. Objects at Lagrange points tend to stay along a path between the two celestial bodies, which is why the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is located at L2, a Lagrange point on the opposite side of the Earth.

In computer simulations, the researchers shot test particles along the L1 orbit, including the position of Earth, the sun, the moon, and other solar system planets, and tracked where the particles scattered. The authors found that when launched precisely, the dust would follow a path between Earth and the sun, effectively creating shade, at least for a while. Unlike the 13,000-pound JWST, the dust was easily blown off course by the solar winds, radiation, and gravity within the solar system. Any L1 platform would need to create an endless supply of new dust batches to blast into orbit every few days after the initial spray dissipates.

“It was rather difficult to get the shield to stay at L1 long enough to cast a meaningful shadow. This shouldn’t come as a surprise, though, since L1 is an unstable equilibrium point. Even the slightest deviation in the sunshield’s orbit can cause it to rapidly drift out of place, so our simulations had to be extremely precise,” Khan said.

A simulation of dust launched from the moon’s surface as seen from Earth.

In the second scenario, the authors shot lunar dust from the surface of the moon towards the sun. They found that the inherent properties of lunar dust were just right to effectively work as a sun shield. The simulations tested how lunar dust scattered along various courses until they found excellent trajectories aimed toward L1 that served as an effective sun shield. These results are welcome news, because much less energy is needed to launch dust from the moon than from Earth. This is important because the amount of dust in a solar shield is large, comparable to the output of a big mining operation here on Earth. Furthermore, the discovery of the new sun-shielding trajectories means delivering the lunar dust to a separate platform at L1 may not be necessary.

Just a moonshot?

The authors stress that this study only explores the potential impact of this strategy, rather than evaluate whether these scenarios are logistically feasible.

“We aren’t experts in climate change, or the rocket science needed to move mass from one place to the other. We’re just exploring different kinds of dust on a variety of orbits to see how effective this approach might be. We do not want to miss a game changer for such a critical problem,” said Bromley.

One of the biggest logistical challenges—replenishing dust streams every few days—also has an advantage. Eventually, the sun’s radiation disperses the dust particles throughout the solar system; the sun shield is temporary and shield particles do not fall onto Earth. The authors assure that their approach would not create a permanently cold, uninhabitable planet, as in the science fiction story, “Snowpiercer.”

“Our strategy could be an option in addressing climate change,” said Bromley, “if what we need is more time.”

by Lisa Potter, first published @ theU Lead photo by aerolite.org

 

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Jamie Rankin

January 24, 2023

Jamie Rankin

Ed Stone, 1986

The Voyager spacecraft captured the public imagination in the 1970s and ’80s as Earth’s first ambassadors to the outer planets.

Early career Princeton astrophysicist Jamie Rankin, BS'11 Physics and BA'11 Music Composition, is now playing a leading role on the Voyager team that continues to track the aging probes, each more than 10 billion miles from Earth.

In many ways, the Voyager twins are time capsules of their era. They both carry an eight-track tape player for recording data, they have 3 million times less memory than modern cellphones, and they transmit data about 40,000 times slower than a 5G internet connection. They both have a Golden Record: a message from humanity to the cosmos with greetings in 55 languages, pictures of people and places on Earth, and music ranging from Beethoven to Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode.”

In recent decades, the missions have made few headlines, but the little spacecraft have continued voyaging outward under the leadership of Project Scientist - Ed Stone. Despite their now-archaic memory and transmission systems, the Voyagers remain on the cutting edge of space exploration as the only instruments to ever travel through interstellar space.

Linda Spilker

After Stone’s recent retirement, Linda Spilker, who has been involved with Voyager since 1977, stepped into Stone’s shoes, and Rankin was selected to be the Voyagers’ deputy project scientist.

Only 34 years old, Rankin is one of the youngest researchers ever to hold such an elevated title.

Nicola “Nicky” Fox, director of NASA’s Heliophysics Division, oversees all solar and heliosphere missions for NASA and participated in selecting Rankin as Voyager’s second-ever deputy project scientist.

“Jamie is an absolute rock star,” Fox said. “I think it’s really important that when you see somebody who’s got that much talent, that can do really amazing things, that you give them opportunities.”

Nicky Fox

“Voyager is an amazing mission, and I’m so grateful for this opportunity,” said Rankin, who is an associate research scientist at Princeton and an instructor of the space physics laboratory class. “I am only here because I had so many professors and mentors who believed in me; I never expected to make it to a place like Princeton.

I can’t overstate the importance of mentorship. I love teaching students, and giving them opportunities with NASA space flight instrumentation, because I’m so thankful for the opportunities I’ve been given.”

Rankin was Ed Stone’s last graduate student at Caltech. He had sworn some 25 years before that he wouldn’t take any more grad students, but Rankin lobbied him relentlessly until he took her on.

“I did the first thesis on Voyager’s data from interstellar space,” Rankin said. “I arrived at Caltech six days after Voyager 1 reached interstellar space, so I got to see that whole history unfold. I entered in thinking about Voyager completely from the interstellar perspective, which was very different than anybody else on the Voyager team, most of whom have been with the mission since the beginning.”

Ed Stone, 2019

Voyager’s next generation

“When I walked into the Voyager team room, my first day as a graduate student, I noticed there was at least a three-decade age difference between me and the youngest person in the room,” Rankin said. “And when I started as a graduate student, there was a 50-year age difference between me and Ed. We skipped a generation there."

"But what’s really neat about it is that for future space missions, if people want to send an instrument very far away, they absolutely have to have a multi-generational team. With the Voyagers, they just didn’t know; no one anticipated the mission surviving this long.”

Two years after their 1977 launch, the twin probes flew by Jupiter, beginning the planetary encounters for which Voyager is best known. Both spacecraft visited Jupiter and Saturn, then Voyager 1 headed out of the solar system while the slightly slower Voyager 2 headed on to Uranus and Neptune.

All the planetary encounters were over within 10 years, and on Jan. 1, 1990, the Voyager Interstellar Mission officially began — even though the Voyagers wouldn’t technically be in interstellar space until they exited the heliosphere, the bubble of space around our sun.

Jamie Rankin, 2020

Two quiet decades after leaving behind the outer planets, Voyager 1 crossed the heliopause in August 2012. Its slower twin crossed that boundary six years later, in November 2018.

Mapping the edge of the solar system

“This is just an incredible time to be studying the outer heliosphere,” said NASA’s Fox. “For the first time, we have a lot of assets focused on the outer heliosphere.”

Fox cited the IBEX mission, headed by McComas, which has spent years imaging the outer edge of the solar system; New Horizons, which has long passed Pluto and is closing in on the termination shock; IMAP, also headed by McComas, which will map the heliosphere in detail; and of course the Voyagers, the only spacecraft ever to venture so far away from our sun.

“The science still coming from the Voyagers is amazing — and underappreciated,” said Rankin. “Everything — everything — that we’ve measured in space gets filtered through the solar wind — through the sun and its plasma and magnetic fields. And everything measured from Earth-based telescopes is also filtered through our atmosphere.

The Voyager spacecraft

“The very first time that we could measure space directly, without being disturbed by the sun, was when Voyager crossed into the interstellar medium.”

One thing Voyager measured was the level of incoming radiation, which was almost 10 times higher outside the heliosphere than inside the bubble. That radiation could pose a deadly threat to astronauts, but the Voyagers showed that the sun, via the solar wind and heliosphere, is filtering out as much as 90% of the interstellar radiation.

“The solar wind is actually protecting us,” Rankin said. “Before the Voyagers got out here, nobody knew quite how much we were being shielded.”

The Voyagers also discovered that the sun interacts with its boundary differently than scientists had expected. “When two magnetized plasmas meet, it’s like north-north magnets — they can’t ever mix,” Rankin explained. “So the solar plasma, the solar wind, can’t mingle with the interstellar plasma. But there are also neutral particles out there that aren’t electrified, so they don’t care, they just pass straight through the heliospheric boundaries, unaware. Eventually those do have an influence on our solar environment, and our environment can have an influence on them.” Although the Voyagers are not equipped to measure these neutral particles directly, other missions, like IBEX and New Horizons have provided complementary insights about the nature of these unique interactions throughout the heliosphere.

When IMAP launches in 2025, it will map out that elusive boundary zone in great detail, providing a comprehensive picture to complement the deep but geographically limited data that the two Voyagers have collected.

What does a project scientist — or her deputy — do?

NASA’s enormous array of spacecraft missions generally fall into two categories: Smaller missions that are run by a single principal investigator (nearly always shortened to PI), and larger missions that have PIs for each of their instruments. David McComas, for example, in addition to being Princeton’s vice president for the Princeton Plasma Physics Lab and a professor of astrophysical sciences, is the PI for many missions and instruments, including both the IBEX and IMAP missions and the ISʘIS instrument suite on the Parker Solar Probe.

David McComas

The large missions have a project scientist (and sometimes a deputy) to coordinate the mission’s many-fold research endeavors, to make sure the different instrument PIs don’t become too siloed in their thinking, and to provide leadership.

“Currently on Voyager, what that looks like is making some tough calls,” said Rankin. “These are aging spacecraft, and we want to keep the mission running as long as possible. But they’re in completely new territory, both geographically and in the sense that these are the first spacecraft that have been operating for this long. They just celebrated their 45th launch anniversaries. So how they age, and how long can they keep going — that is all critical to prioritize the science that is left.”

The Voyagers are powered by plutonium-238, which has a half-life of 88 years. “That seemed like forever when they launched, but now we’re more than halfway through that half-life, and there’s not much base power to operate the spacecraft,” Rankin said. “The Voyager teams already shut down some of the instruments — they turned off the cameras with the end of the planetary mission — and I saw Ed lead the Voyager team to a consensus decision to start turning off the heaters to the remaining instruments. Nobody knew if the instruments could operate without the heaters, but the choice was either turn off more instruments, turn off the heaters, or lose the spacecraft. What do you do?”

Fortunately, the instruments have continued to generate and transmit data as the heaters have been shut down, one by one.

The aging spacecraft also have nowhere near the transmission power needed to send a clear signal across the billions of miles back to Earth, which means that Earth-based telescopes have had to work harder and harder to detect their faint signals.

“Ed once described it to me as a blinking refrigerator light bulb in space,” said Rankin. “That’s the kind of signal strength we’re talking about. So we have to have heroic efforts on the ground to communicate with them. If the advancements on Earth hadn’t happened — including building 70-meter dishes for the Deep Space Network — we wouldn’t have been able to keep communicating with the Voyagers as they got further and further away.”

Voyager’s continuing mission, to boldly go where no spacecraft has gone before — and look back

Voyager 1 is now billions of miles outside the heliopause, as far from that boundary as Neptune is from Earth, and speeding onward at about a million miles a day.

And it’s still making remarkable discoveries, said Rankin. “Even at that distance, it still sees effects from the sun. When solar flares or coronal mass ejections erupt from the sun, they travel through the solar system, and it turns out they can pile up and merge into giant events that actually reach all the way to the heliopause and then shove against that boundary — and then that sends ripples into interstellar space. And Voyager can see it.”

The Voyagers’ distance also gives them a completely different perspective on Earth and the sun. “Voyager allows us, for the first time, to look at our own star and our own planetary system from the outside,” Rankin said. “For decades, we’ve looked at other stars from the outside, and gathered remote data, but all that we knew about our own star was ‘from the inside,’ so to speak. So, what do we look like from the outside? The only way to know is to have a spacecraft out there — or, better yet, two spacecraft at different locations.”

by Liz Fuller-Wright, first published @ Princeton

 

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