Accomplishments: College of Sciences

Esther Herrera (Urban Affairs) and Kevin McVay (Sciences) presented a poster at the 2018 National Academic Advising Association (NACADA) Region 9 Conference in Santa Rosa, California. It was titled, "You Are Graduating Soon. Now What?" Their presentation focused on graduation being an exciting time for many students; however, it can also be…
Mira Han (Life Sciences) was awarded a National Science Foundation Career Award for her research project, “Using Indel Rate Variation to Understand Evolutionary Constraints on Distances Between Functional Elements in the Genome.” Han will use the five-year, $574,068 award to study how insertion and deletion mutations impact the evolution…
Jenifer Utz (Life Sciences) gave a research presentation entitled, "Voluntary Self-Assessment Quiz Use Improves Exam Performance, Especially for Learners with Low Prior Knowledge" at the Intermountain Teaching for Learning Conference. This research was a collaborative project with Matt Bernacki (Educational Psychology and Higher Education).
Eugene Smith and Minghua Ren (both Geoscience) and a team of researchers, including Arizona State University archeologist Curtis Marean recently published a study, “Humans Thrived in South Africa through the Toba Eruption about 74,000 Years ago,” in the journal Nature. The study counters previously held beliefs that the eruption of…
Qiang Zhu (Physics and Astronomy) published an article, Predicting Phase Behavior of Grain Boundaries with Evolutionary Search and Machine Learning, in Nature Communications. The study of grain boundary phase transitions is an emerging field until recently dominated by experiments. Zhu, along with collaborators at Lawrence Livermore National…
Scott Abella (Life Sciences) has partnered with University Libraries to showcase his research on conservation in America's national parks system in the digital exhibit space in the Leisure Reading Zone on the second floor of Lied Library. "Conserving America's National Parks" pulls images and information from Abella's 2015 book of the same name,…
Zhaohuan Zhu (Physics and Astronomy) has been awarded a National Science Foundation Early Career Award, which recognizes and supports the early career development activities of teach-scholars who are considered most likely to become future academic leaders. The five-year, $593,489 grant was awarded to Zhu for his research on understanding how the…
Lawrence Walker and Fred Landau (both School of Life Sciences) recently published a book,  A Natural History of the Mojave Desert. In it, the authors explore how a combination of complex geology, varied geography, and changing climate has given rise to intriguing flora and fauna — including almost 3,000 plant species and about 380…
Matthew Le Claire (Liberal Arts), Erdogan Kaya (Education), and Michael Isaacs (Life Sciences) are this year's recipients of the Graduate College's Outstanding Graduate Student Teaching Awards. 1st Place - Matthew Le Claire (College of Liberal Arts) 2nd Place - Erdogan Kaya (College of Education) 3rd Place - Michael Isaacs (School of Life…
Oliver Tschauner and Shichun Huang (both Geoscience) recently published an article titled,  “Ice-VII Inclusions in Diamonds: Evidence for Aqueous Fluid in Earth’s deep Mantle,” in Science magazine. The research team discovered the first direct evidence that fluid water pockets may exist as far as 500 miles deep into the Earth’…
Jeremy Smallwood (Astronomy), Sara Black (History), Tyler Stalbaum (Mechanical Engineering), and Cheryl Anderson (Anthropology) are the recipients of this year's Graduate College Outstanding Thesis & Dissertation Awards. Each year the college gives four awards — within each category, one for STEM and one for non-STEM. This year’s winners are…
Hokwon Cho (Math) has been selected as this year's winner of the Graduate College's Outstanding Graduate Faculty Leadership Award. The award recognizes graduate faculty who demonstrate leadership by, for example, serving on committees; mentoring graduate students; and engaging in, leading, or significantly advancing efforts that help move the…