This past April, the University of Arizona sent Crew 117 to experience the Red Planet – without leaving our own. During the mission, which took place at the Mars Desert Research Station in southern Utah, five crew members spent two weeks testing a camera they designed for NASA as their College of Engineering senior capstone project.
Matt Adamson lives within Biosphere 1 – our Earth – just like all of us. But he also has the privilege and the responsibility of serving as the associate director of K-12 education at Biosphere 2, one of Time-Life Books' Top 50 Wonders of the World. Join Matt on a brief tour of a place where University of Arizona researchers do some very, very big science.
Binoculars are so last century. But that’s how you watch a horse race, scanning the rail as thoroughbreds thunder around the track. Imagine instead a jockey’s eye view of the race – brought to you by UA students who developed the “jockey cam,” a smart helmet that streams real-time video. Their invention is changing the horseracing experience, and has potential for other sports, even the military.
As crowds cheer on the Arizona Wildcats football team, something amazing is happening within the stadium below. Here in the Steward Observatory Mirror Lab, teams of scientists use a great oven to spin-cast molten glass into the largest, most perfect telescope mirrors in the world.
How does the brain produce conscious experience – feelings, awareness, thought? Physician, author and Eastern spirituality explorer Deepak Chopra joins 29 other experts – scientists, philosophers, mathematicians and skeptics – for a provocative exploration of consciousness at the UA’s 10th Biennial “Toward a Science of Consciousness."
In his free time, Dr. Joseph Sheppard is a sculptor of hands, making sure that every detail of his art is perfect. As an orthopaedic surgeon specializing in the hand and upper extremity, he does much the same thing. A talented surgeon and exacting educator, Sheppard attends to the smallest of details to deliver the greatest good for his patients as well as the residents training under him.
With 11 published books, Dr. Andrew Weil is known worldwide for his expertise in health and wellness. Here at the UA, he started the Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine, which focuses on three domains: education, clinical care and research. With an emphasis on education, the Fellowship in Integrative Medicine trains hundreds of physicians each year, teaching them to heal the whole person.
Erica Corral, Ph.D., professor of materials science and engineering, uses a special furnace to study how nanoengineered materials perform at ultra-high temperatures. For Corral, the work is as much about the students as it is about the science. In her lab, she combines high-tech ideas with raw student talent to forge the innovations – and the professionals – who are fueling the industries of the future.
As the Earth gets hotter and dustier, ensuring that humanity has dependable sources of clean air and water will be essential. Distinguished Professor Eduardo Saez, Ph.D., a chemical engineer to the core, has a passion for tracking down such solutions. But with the heart of a teacher, he sees every challenge as an opportunity to instill that passion in the next generation of problem-solvers.
Want to know how they make drugs like Erythromycin? Or Tetracycline? Or Viagra? Learning about the art and science behind these processes is what organic chemistry is all about. According to Jon Njardarson, Ph.D., any effort to teach the subject must be engaging and artful. That vision comes through in his group’s new website and app launched in 2011.
Human papilloma virus: not a popular topic around the dinner table. But HPV, a sexually transmitted disease, causes multiple cancers, including most cases of cervical cancer. But now there is a vaccine. Should the states mandate its use? Or should the decision be kept inside the family? Maggie Pitts, Ph.D., is studying this uneasy and fascinating discussion.
Asteroid 1999 RQ36 passes near Earth every six years. Not only does it potentially house organic compounds that may have been the precursors to life; it could impact us in 2182. The OSIRIS-REx mission, sponsored by NASA and led by Dante Lauretta, Ph.D., aims to pay RQ36 a visit to learn more – and bring a sample back to Earth. Watch video.>>
Molly Hunter, Ph.D., professor of entomology, describes the subjects of her study as "elaborate and colorful and beautiful." Focusing her microscope lens on the sweet potato whitefly, Molly and her students explore enthralling worlds while creating knowledge that is contributing to more environmentally sound pest control. Watch video.>>
Brian Schmidt, Ph.D., class of 1989, has secured one of the top scientific honors on the planet as one of three recipients of the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics. The award honors a discovery that has rocked our understanding of the cosmos: The universe is expanding at an ever-faster pace.
From the day he joined the UA planetary sciences faculty in 1973, Regents' Professor Michael Drake was a driving force in the world of space sciences. Today, we recognize his passing and honor his achievements, which include serving as principal investigator on the OSIRIS-REx mission, an $800 million effort now underway to retrieve a sample of an asteroid and return it to Earth.
Emily Lea Connally, who graduated in May 2011 with her master’s degree in psychology from the University of Arizona, has an endless fascination with the brain that reaches back to her memories of growing up in rural New Mexico. After Harvard and the UA, she is now off to Oxford, where, as a Clarendon Scholar, she will pursue her Ph.D.
It was a tight 10-week timeline, but they did it. Through their one-semester course, ENGR 450/550, autonomous vehicle systems, 23 undergraduate and graduate students took two 7,500-pound trucks that didn't even run, and transformed them into autonomous robotic vehicles. Talk about industrious.
What if we had a better understanding of the North American monsoon and how it affected the soil, invasive and native plants and fire cycles? The powerful winds that give rise to spectacular late summer storms in the desert southwest also drive changes in the region’s ecology. A team of UA researchers has won an NSF grant for almost $3 million to study the phenomenon.
The Native American experience in Arizona is rich with history and tradition. Tribal libraries have long been capturing histories of elders and community members, and these collections represent valuable resources for their communities as well as the public. Now, Sandy Littletree and Jamie A. Lee of the UA Knowledge River program aim to use technology to better understand the value of these tribal resources.
After graduating from the University of Arizona with a degree in astronomy and physics in the 1990s, Adam Block became one of the world’s foremost astrophotographers. He captures spectacular images of distant galaxies, nebulae and dying stars and brings astronomy into terms laypeople can understand at the UA's Mt. Lemmon SkyCenter.