University of Utah Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs Dan Reed announced that Peter Trapa has accepted an offer to serve as the next dean of the College of Science. Trapa is currently chair of the university’s Department of Physics & Astronomy and previously served as the chair of the Department of Mathematics and special […]

University of Utah President Ruth Watkins announced that Mary Ann Villarreal will join the university as the inaugural vice president for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion. Villarreal is currently associate vice president of strategic initiatives at California State University, Fullerton. She will assume her new role on July 1, 2019. “Mary Ann has extensive experience in […]

University of Utah senior Alisa Cloward came to Utah after living in Japan for 17 years with her parents and 11 siblings. She will graduate this year with a bachelor’s degree in business administration and as part of the Miller Enrichment Scholarship program. Cloward, along with 8,465 other U students, will celebrate achieving this milestone […]

It may not be too long before the skies of Salt Lake City will be buzzing with drones delivering packages, medical supplies, performing mountain rescues or shuttling passengers. When that happens, the last thing anyone wants is an airborne version of Los Angeles traffic jams. So a group of University of Utah students from the […]

Christopher Hacon, McMinn Presidential Endowed Chair and Distinguished Professor of Mathematics, can now add another honor of a lifetime to his already stellar resume: Election to the Royal Society of London. Hacon, born in England, is one of 50 eminent scientists elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society, along with 10 Foreign Members, in […]

April 29, 2019 — Over 11 field seasons, between 1999 and 2010, ornithologist Çağan Şekercioğlu trekked through the forests and coffee farms of Costa Rica to study how tropical birds were faring in a changing agricultural landscape. Through painstaking banding of individual birds, Şekercioğlu asked whether the expansion of coffee plantations is reducing tropical bird […]

University of Utah President Ruth V. Watkins and Director of Athletics Mark Harlan announced the largest gift in Utah athletics history today in a press conference held prior to the annual Red-White game. The Ken Garff family has pledged $17.5 million for the Rice-Eccles Stadium renovation and expansion. The Garff family’s record-setting donation will help […]

Contrary to what you may have been taught, water doesn’t always freeze to ice at 32 degrees F (zero degrees C). Knowing, or controlling, at what temperature water will freeze (starting with a process called nucleation) is critically important to answering questions such as whether or not there will be enough snow on the ski […]

Heidi Woodbury, vice president for institutional advancement at the University of Utah, is pleased to announce that Sarah B. George will join her office as campus chief advancement officer. George is currently the executive director of the Natural History Museum of Utah. “We are delighted to have Sarah join the university’s advancement team in a […]

All air-breathing vertebrates have a larynx—a structure of muscles and folds that protects the trachea and, in many animals, vibrates and modulates to produce a stunning array of sounds. But birds, although they have larynges (plural of larynx), use a different organ to sing. It’s low in the airway, down where the trachea branches to […]