News

CU Boulder scholars elected members of the National Academy of Sciences

Rachel Sauer — Fri, 01 May 2026 20:47:49 +0000

CU Boulder scholars elected members of the National Academy of Sciences Rachel Sauer Fri, 05/01/2026 - 14:47

Lee Niswander and Bethany Ehlmann recognized ‘for their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research’

Two University of Colorado Boulder scientists have been elected members of the National Academy of Sciences, joining a cohort of more than 140 scholars around the world who are recognized for their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research.

Lee Niswander, a distinguished professor of molecular, cellular and developmental biology, and Bethany Ehlmann, a professor of geological sciences and director of the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics.

The National Academy of Sciences is a private, nonprofit institution that was established under a congressional charter signed by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863.

It recognizes achievement in science by election to membership, and—with the National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Medicine—provides science, engineering and health policy advice to the federal government and other organizations.

Lee Niswander is a distinguished professor of molecular, cellular and developmental biology.

Pursuing clinical therapies

Niswander is head of the Niswander Lab, where she and her group investigate mouse models of embryonic development to provide insights into fundamental developmental processes, major human birth defects and potential clinical therapies. Her studies have revealed the molecular mechanisms that control formation of the central and peripheral nervous system, as well as lung, limb and neuromuscular development.

Niswander’s current focus is on early brain formation and birth defects that arise when normal brain formation goes awry, like failure of neural tube closure or maintenance of neural progenitor cells, resulting in spina bifida or microcephaly.

The Niswander Lab uses the mouse embryo and human-induced pluripotent stem cells as models of human development. The lab’s studies encompass genetics, epigenetics, environmental factors and live imaging to couple molecular insights to cell behaviors. Through collaborative efforts, Niswander Lab researchers are also exploring the genetic causes of neural tube defects in humans.

Niswander recently received the Hazel Barnes Prize, which celebrates the enriching interrelationship between teaching and research. It is the largest and most prestigious award funded by the university. This summer she will be honored with an Edwin G. Conklin Medal, which is awarded annually by the Society for Developmental Biology (SDB) to recognize a developmental biologist who has made and is continuing to make extraordinary research contributions to the field and is an excellent mentor, helping train the next generation of outstanding scientists.

Niswander received her bachelor’s degree in chemistry from CU Boulder, her master’s degree in biochemistry and genetics from University of Colorado Health Sciences Center (now CU Anschutz) and her doctorate in genetics from Case Western University. She performed her postdoctoral training in developmental biology at the University of California San Francisco.

“I am deeply honored to become a member of the National Academy of Sciences,” Niswander says. “I am grateful to the numerous trainees and their research discoveries that provided the foundation of this honor. I am excited to join the Academy in their mission to advise on scientific matters important for human health.”

Bethany Ehlmann is a professor of geological sciences and director of the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics.

Studying space

Ehlmann is a planetary scientist who holds the faculty roles of Provost’s Chair in the Research and Innovation Office and affiliate professor in the Department of Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences. Her research focuses on water in the solar system, the evolution of habitable worlds and remote sensing techniques and instruments for planetary missions.

Ehlmann is a science team member of multiple missions, including the Jupiter-bound Europa Clipper; the Earth-orbiting EMIT imaging spectrometer; the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover; the Mars2020 Perseverance rover; the ExoMars rover; and orbiting and landed spectrometers for the Artemis lunar program. Previously, she was a science team member for the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter CRISM instrument, the Dawn mission during its exploration of the asteroid Ceres, the Mars Exploration Rovers Spirit and Opportunity and principal investigator of Lunar Trailblazer.

Active in science policy and outreach, Ehlmann is president of the board of directors of The Planetary Society. She served as a member of the National Academies Planetary Science and Astrobiology Decadal Survey and the National Academies Committee on Astrobiology and Planetary Science. She is a fellow of both the American Geophysical Union and the Mineralogical Society of America, and has authored a children's book, “Dr. E's Super Stellar Solar System,” with National Geographic.

Ehlmann earned a bachelor’s degree from Washington University, where she double majored in earth and planetary sciences and environmental studies with a minor in math; two master’s degrees from the University of Oxford, in environmental change and management and geography; and master’s and doctoral degrees in geological sciences from Brown University.

Did you enjoy this article? Subscribe to our newsletter. Passionate about arts and sciences? Show your support.

Lee Niswander and Bethany Ehlmann recognized ‘for their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research.’

Traditional

White

Grad ponders the past and considers the future

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 22:54:29 +0000

Grad ponders the past and considers the future Rachel Sauer Thu, 04/30/2026 - 16:54

Rachel Sauer

Abigail Verneuille, who is earning a BA in anthropology along with a GIS certificate, is honored as the Spring 2026 College of Arts and Sciences outstanding graduate

In the summer of 2024, following her sophomore year as a University of Colorado Boulder anthropology major, Abigail Verneuille signed up for archaeological field school in the Velarde Valley of northern New Mexico.

The area is stunning with its boundless sky and mosaic of mesas, but summers there are intense—arid and scorchingly hot, plus dusty and buggy.

“We were sleeping on the floor for a month, and despite that and the heat, all the dirt, the bugs, everything, I just had the best time of my life,” she says. “I loved everything about it.”

Abigail Verneuille (third from left), the Spring 2026 College of Arts and Sciences outstanding graduate, with (left to right) Dean of Arts and Humanities John-Michael Rivera, Dean of Social Sciences Sarah Jackson, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences Daryl Maeda, Dean of Natural Sciences Irene Blair and Interim Associate Dean for Student Success Jennifer Fitzgerald.

Before that summer, she had indistinct ideas about her path following college, but after it she knew that she wanted a career in archaeology and directed the rest of her undergraduate education toward that goal—earning a certificate in geographic information systems (GIS) and computational science and writing a thesis aiming to predict past streamflow heights of the Rio Grande River to identify years of agricultural instability.

In recognition of her innovative research, academic excellence and dedicated work, Verneuille has been named the Spring 2026 College of Arts and Sciences outstanding graduate.

“Verneuille’s perfect academic record tells only part of the story, as she has taken courses ranging from humanities to women and gender studies to biological anthropology to math to astronomy to geographic information systems to computational science, and she has received straight A’s in all of them!” wrote Scott Ortman, professor of anthropology, in recommending her. “She has also conducted archaeological field research in North Macedonia and participated in the anthropology department’s archaeology field school in northern New Mexico. Her honors thesis project emerged from that experience.

“What stands out about Abby’s thesis is not just its organization, clarity and technical sophistication, but the fact that the work is of such significance in its field.”

Hiking into the backcountry

Because the kind of archaeology she wants to do is outdoors and sometimes miles down a dirt road, it helps that Verneuille has always loved to be outside. Growing up in Tennessee, she spent a lot of time hiking and exploring—activities she continued when she moved to Boulder for college.

She majored in anthropology and minored in women and gender studies, which allowed her to study themes of religion and ritual that dovetailed with her archaeological research. She discovered her academic passion, though, near the tiny community of Estaca, New Mexico, where she and her research colleagues opened four two-meter by one-meter rectangles in which they found artifacts that helped describe the people who lived in that area before and after Spanish colonialism.

Another project on which she worked was documenting petroglyphs with the Mesa Prieta Petroglyph Project. “There would be days where we’d like an hour and a half into the backcountry and spend eight hours recording petroglyphs, then hike an hour and a half back up this mesa, and that was just the most fun I’ve ever had in my life,” Verneuille says.

In talking with archaeologists from other universities, though, she realized at field school that she would need technical expertise to accompany her hands-in-the-dirt skills, so in fall 2024 she began pursuing her GIS and computational science certificate. “For that, you’re required to take a semester of statistics in R Studio and then two semesters of coding in Python, and I’d never really thought of myself as a computer kind of person, but I got thrown straight into it,” she says.

“But once I got into the actual mapping classes, the spatial analytics, all the remote sensing, that’s when I thought, ‘Wow, this is amazing, I love this.’”

Abigail Verneuille working at an archaeological field site in northern New Mexico. (Photo: Abigail Verneuille)

Amazing work, amazing people

For her thesis, Verneuille sought to tackle a 100-year-old mystery in U.S. Southwest archaeology: When Pueblo ancestors migrated from the Four Corners region into the Rio Grande Valley in the 13th century, why did they initially settle away from the main courses of the Rio Grande and Rio Chama, where most of the water was, only to gravitate toward the rivers about 100 years later?

Verneuille combined river flow data from the Embudo gauge, the oldest river gauge in the United States, with weather station data and tree ring data reflecting precipitation and temperature from the headwaters of the Rio Grande to essentially “predict the past” and understand June flood risk from the present back to 1200 C.E.

Abigail Verneuille conducts land surveys in northern New Mexico for her archaeological research. (Photo: Abigail Verneuille)

Transitions visible in her model corresponded with the end of a phenomenon called the Medieval Climate Anomaly, an unusually warm and wet period worldwide.

“In a final stroke of brilliance, Verneuille not only showed that this reduction in June flood risk corresponds in time to the concentration of population along the main river channels, but she also considers how Pueblo ancestors would have interpreted this change in the environment by considering depictions of water serpent beings in rock art of the area,” Ortman wrote. “Her work shows that climate change can improve local environments for humans in counterintuitive ways, and that there is a connection between the practical and the spiritual with regard to human adaptation to the environment.”

She notes that while the physical work of archaeology was fascinating, she equally loved the community-building aspect of it, working with people who live in the area and whose ancestors are the Tewa-speaking people she was studying. In March, she and several colleagues gave a presentation to residents in the area on what their research had revealed about things like diet and socioeconomic differences of the people who lived in that area hundreds of years ago.

“They were gracious enough to welcome us into their some, so everyone sat around the dining room table and we had a little projector,” Verneuille says. “This is their livelihood, their community, so they had a lot of questions, and it was such a rewarding experience so see how the technical side of academic work has real-life impacts.”

It’s work that she hopes to continue doing after she graduates Saturday, and she has applied for field technician position with cultural resource management firms. She also is aiming for graduate school in the next five years to continue her archaeology studies.

“It’s amazing work and the most amazing community of people,” she says, “and one that I’d love to continue being a part of.”

Did you enjoy this article? Subscribe to our newsletter. Passionate about anthropology? Show your support.

Abigail Verneuille, who is earning a BA in anthropology along with a GIS certificate, is honored as the Spring 2026 College of Arts and Sciences outstanding graduate.

Traditional

White

As a new space race takes shape, a CU Boulder class asks: Do we understand China?

Rachel Sauer — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 17:16:14 +0000

As a new space race takes shape, a CU Boulder class asks: Do we understand China? Rachel Sauer Wed, 04/29/2026 - 11:16

'China's Space Dream,' ASIA 4100, brings aerospace engineers, Chinese language students and international affairs majors into one room—and a visiting journalist from the South China Morning Post into the conversation

Days after Artemis II splashed down in the Pacific, returning four astronauts from the first crewed voyage beyond low Earth orbit in more than half a century, a science journalist who has spent years reporting on China's space program from inside its scientific institutions sat down with a CU Boulder classroom full of students who had been tracking the same story from the outside.

The conversation that followed put the American triumph in a wider frame. When the International Space Station was being designed in the 1990s, China had little to offer a partnership even if one had been on the table. Three decades later, the country operates its own permanently crewed space station, has returned the first-ever samples from the far side of the Moon, and is on track to bring back the first Martian soil before the United States does. The students, aerospace engineering majors sitting next to Chinese language and civilizations majors, history students alongside international affairs specialists, already knew these facts. What they wanted from Ling Xin was something harder to find out, what does this moment look like from the other side of the space race?

ASIA 4100, “China’s Space Dream: Long March to the Moon and Beyond,” is a course developed through the support of CU Boulder’s interdisciplinary Space Minor and taught by Lauren Collins, a teaching assistant professor and director of the Asian Studies program in the Center for Asian Studies. Now in its second iteration, the class will be offered again in spring 2027.

Collins designed the course around an observation that kept surfacing in her own work. US-China space competition is one of the defining dynamics of a shifting world order, but the people who understand the engineering often lack the cultural and historical context, and the people who study China often aren’t following the technical developments.

Four astronauts aboard NASA’s Orion spacecraft atop the SLS (Space Launch System) rocket launch on the agency’s Artemis II test flight, Wednesday, April 1, from Launch Complex 39B at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. (Photo: NASA)

“The mix in the classroom is the whole point,” Collins said. “Aerospace and astronomy students know something about orbital mechanics and mission design. Chinese language and civilizations students know something about political culture and history. International affairs students understand geopolitics. But the interconnectedness across all of those domains is what surprises everyone, including me.”

The course weaves together Chinese culture, history, geopolitical contexts, and the race to the Moon as it unfolds in real time. �鶹��Ժ study the origins of China’s space program, the role of the “space dream” in Chinese national identity, the Wolf Amendment that bars NASA from bilateral cooperation with China, the military dimensions of space technology, and the case for collaboration.

“Warfare and military applications are clearly an issue,” Collins said. “But the need to collaborate is so key, too. We’re talking about planetary challenges that affect all of us like climate monitoring, asteroid deflection, space debris, deep-space science. These issues don’t respect national borders.”

Learning from a visiting journalist

Ling Xin’s visit to the class came through the Conference on World Affairs classroom visit program, which pairs CWA speakers with CU Boulder courses during conference week. The 78th annual CWA, running April 13–16, featured more than 60 speakers across 50 panels at the Limelight Hotel Boulder and across campus.

For Collins, the match was ideal. Ling Xin is one of a small number of journalists working in English who can draw on firsthand access to Chinese scientific institutions, fluency in Mandarin, and formal journalism training in the United States. A former writer for the Chinese Academy of Sciences, she holds a master’s degree in journalism from Ohio University and has published in Science, Scientific American, Nature, and MIT Technology Review. She has reported extensively on China’s Chang’e lunar missions, the Tiangong space station, and the movement of Chinese scientists between US and Chinese institutions, a phenomenon known as the “reverse brain drain”.

“Having a journalist like Ling Xin in the classroom is a different experience from reading an article,” Collins said. “She can tell students what Chinese space scientists actually say when a reporter asks them about the competition with NASA”.

The timing of the visit was perfect. Artemis II had splashed down on April 10 after a successful nine-day circumlunar flight, making astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Canadian Space Agency mission specialist Jeremy Hansen the first humans to fly past the Moon since Apollo 17 in 1972. Koch became the first woman to travel beyond low Earth orbit. The mission was a triumph (and a relief) after many delays.

But even as the Artemis II crew was being celebrated, the competitive landscape was shifting beneath the surface. NASA announced in February that the first crewed lunar landing has been pushed from Artemis III to Artemis IV, now targeted for 2028. The Lunar Gateway station was cancelled. And Congress effectively killed NASA’s Mars Sample Return program in the FY2026 spending bill, leaving nearly 30 carefully collected sample tubes sitting in Mars’s Jezero Crater with no funded plan to bring them home.

"Let's Go to the Moon!" by Yuko Shimizu

Accelerating push to space

China, meanwhile, is accelerating. Its Tianwen-3 Mars sample return mission is targeted for launch in 2028, with samples expected back on Earth around 2031. If NASA doesn’t revive its own program, China will likely become the first nation to return Martian soil, a milestone with enormous scientific and symbolic weight. These debates are a key substance of class discussion.

“When you put an aerospace engineering student and a Chinese civilizations student in the same conversation about whether or not space should be treated as a global commons, you get an analysis that neither of them could produce alone,” Collins said. “Knowledge is co-created.”

The Wolf Amendment, a congressional provision renewed annually since 2011 that bars NASA from bilateral activities with Chinese space agencies, is a recurring thread in the course. The policy, which effectively excluded China from the International Space Station partnership, is widely credited with accelerating China’s independent development of the Tiangong station, the Long March 5 rocket family, and the full suite of crewed spaceflight technology that now positions the country as NASA’s primary competitor.

In 2026 alone, China plans to launch two crewed missions to Tiangong, including its first year-long stay, and host a Pakistani astronaut, the station’s first international crew member. The Chang’e-7 lunar probe, targeting the Moon’s south pole to search for water ice, is scheduled to launch later this year. A crewed lunar landing is targeted before 2030.

Collins also brings science fiction into the classroom to explore the cultural dimensions of space ambition. The global success of Liu Cixin’s “Three-Body Problem” trilogy has made Chinese science fiction a shared cultural reference point that crosses national and disciplinary boundaries. “Science fiction adds a layer that unites all of us,” Collins said. “These are universal concerns about what technology is doing to human civilization, especially now in the age of AI.”

The course is one of several electives offered through CU Boulder’s Space Minor, a campus-wide program open to students regardless of major that provides an interdisciplinary foundation in all aspects of space. The minor, part of CU Boulder’s Grand Challenge initiative, requires five courses: the foundational “Pathway to Space” and four electives drawn from departments across the university, ranging from aerospace engineering to music to environmental design.

CU Boulder has a singular claim on the subject. The university is the only academic institution in the world to have sent instruments to every planet in the solar system and Pluto, and the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics has been a leader in space research since 1948.

“This university has extraordinary depth in the technical side of space,” Collins said. “What the Space Minor makes possible is courses like mine that bring the human dimensions like culture, history, geopolitics, and collaboration into the same conversation. That’s what students will need to navigate a world where the US and China are building competing lunar bases and competing for leadership in the space economy.”

ASIA 4100, “China’s Space Dream: Long March to the Moon and Beyond,” will next be offered in spring 2027. The course is open to all CU Boulder students and counts toward the Space Minor.

Did you enjoy this article? Subscribe to our newsletter. Passionate about Asian studies? Show your support.

Traditional

White

Top illustration: A Chinese flag added to famed photo of astronaut James Irwin on the moon. (Original photo: NASA)

Wildfire’s toll on animals went largely unreported, researchers show

Rachel Sauer — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 18:10:13 +0000

Wildfire’s toll on animals went largely unreported, researchers show Rachel Sauer Mon, 04/27/2026 - 12:10

Clint Talbott

After the Marshall Fire, researchers at CU Boulder and Western Washington University muse on why animals disappear from disaster stories and suggest a remedy

When the Marshall Fire swept through Boulder County on Dec. 30, 2021, it killed two people and destroyed 1,084 homes. Colorado’s governor called the relatively modest loss of human life a “New Year’s miracle.”

As University of Colorado Boulder sociologist Leslie Irvine later found, however, the wildfire also killed more than 1,000 companion animals who were trapped in homes that rapidly incinerated while their people were at work, traveling or stuck in evacuation traffic.

New research from Irvine and Cameron Whitley, a sociology professor at Western Washington University, quantifies the extent to which the loss of sentient animal life was overlooked by public officials and the news media.

In recently published research, CU Boulder sociologist Leslie Irvine and colleague Cameron Whitely quantify the extent to which the loss of sentient animal life was overlooked by public officials and the news media following the Marshall Fire.

For many residents, the toll was devastating but largely invisible.

Out of 981 news stories published in the two months after the fire, only 16% mentioned animals at all. Fewer than 5% focused on animals in their coverage. Government officials mentioned animal loss in less than 1% of public statements.

“What surprised me most wasn’t just what showed up in the media,” Whitley says of the research, which was recently published in the journal Anthrozoös. “It was what didn’t—especially considering how many people think of their animals as family.”

For Irvine, now retired from CU Boulder but still deeply engaged with the work, the Marshall Fire reopened questions she had hoped never to revisit.

Two decades earlier, after Hurricane Katrina, Irvine wrote Filling the Ark: Animal Welfare in Disasters, a groundbreaking book documenting how disaster-response systems failed people with pets—and how those failures increased human risk as well. After Katrina, Congress passed the PETS Act, requiring emergency plans to account for companion animals.

“I said I would never study disasters and animals again,” Irvine recalls. “It was too devastating.”

Then the Marshall Fire struck Boulder County “right in my backyard,” she says. Whitley, who grew up in nearby Lafayette and earned his BA from CU Boulder, came to the project with both scholarly training and knowledge of personal loss.

“As people were grieving animals—pets, wildlife, livestock—they kept telling me the same thing,” Whitley says. “They weren’t seeing that grief reflected anywhere.”

Using systematic content analysis, Whitley and his co-authors coded every Marshall Fire news story published by local, state and national outlets in the fire’s immediate aftermath. They tracked when animals appeared, how they were framed, and—critically—when entire categories of loss vanished.

Domestic pets received the most attention, but usually as side notes to evacuation instructions or “feel‑good” reunion stories. Agricultural animals were typically counted collectively—horses evacuated, livestock lost—rarely described as individuals. Wildlife barely appeared at all.

“The default hierarchy is still very clear,” Irvine says. “Humans first. Then property. Animals come after—if at all.”

When the ‘hierarchy’ obscures the truth

“The only thing some families have left of their animals is a burned‑out food bowl. That alone should tell us something about what we’re failing to see,” says CU Boulder researcher Leslie Irvine. (Photo: Patti Benninghoff-Lawson)

That hierarchy persists despite decades of research showing that people routinely risk their lives for animals during disasters. Some refuse to evacuate without them. Others re‑enter burn zones to try to rescue them—sometimes requiring rescue themselves.

In fact, one of the two human fatalities in the Marshall fire was Edna Turnbull, who died while trying to rescue her dogs. “Turnbull’s refusal to leave without making sure her companion animals were safe is not unique,” Whitley and Irvine write.

From an economic or safety standpoint alone, Irvine argues, ignoring animals is irrational. She contends: “If government officials took animals seriously in disasters, they would reduce risks to first responders, reduce chaos and improve outcomes for everyone.”

One consequence of invisibility is what Whitley calls unrecognized grief. He cites research showing that losing a companion animal can provoke grief comparable to losing a human family member. But when that loss is absent from public discourse, grieving people also feel isolated, he observes, adding:

“In the LA County fires we’re studying now, people talk about losing their home as something they could move past. Losing their animal, or being forced to give that animal up months later because of housing instability, that’s what they say they’ll never recover from.”

That secondary grief rarely appears in disaster coverage. Nor do the long‑term consequences that follow fires even after humans rebuild.

Irvine points to toxic exposure as an underreported crisis. Dogs in burn zones may now need booties and paw decontamination. Outdoor cats may carry contaminants inside. Veterinarians report increases in respiratory illness and unexplained deaths among animal patients months or years later.

Merlin, a cat injured during the Marshall Fire, has since recovered. (Photo: Shelby Davis/Soul Dog Rescue)

“These aren’t dramatic images,” Irvine says. “They don’t fit into breaking news. But they shape everyday life for years.”

“We tend to act as though a disaster ends once people rebuild their homes. But for people with animals, the disaster often continues for the rest of those animals’ lives—through toxic exposure, long‑term illness and ongoing grief.”

Why journalism struggles with animals

The researchers note the challenges facing journalists. Disaster coverage focuses on what can be confirmed quickly, counted easily and tied to economic loss.

“Homes and infrastructure are quantifiable,” Whitley says. “Animals aren’t, unless they’re agricultural, and even then, they’re usually listed as numbers, not lives.”

The media also gravitate toward redemptive narratives—pets reunited with families, miraculous survivals—rather than mass loss without resolution.

“There’s a kind of collective discomfort with stories that don’t offer closure,” Irvine says.

Whitley notes that journalists are reporting statements of public officials, whose focus is on humans and property. “Less than 1% of official government statements mentioned animals at all. That’s not just a media problem; that’s a policy failure.”

But when animals disappear from disaster coverage, so do the people who love them.

The study offers a suggestion on disaster reporting: prioritize sentient life—human and nonhuman alike—before property loss.

“This isn’t about placing animals above people,” Whitley says. “It’s about telling the whole story.”

As climate‑driven disasters become more frequent, these questions will arise more frequently, the researchers note.

“The Marshall Fire taught us that firestorms are no longer remote or rare,” Irvine says. “And it showed us something else—that we are still failing to see whole parts of our communities when disaster strikes.”

Whitley adds: “When we talk about disasters, we celebrate the minimal loss of human life—while thousands of animals die without acknowledgement. For the people who lost them, that silence matters.”

Did you enjoy this article? Subscribe to our newsletter. Passionate about sociology? Show your support.

After the Marshall Fire, researchers at CU Boulder and Western Washington University muse on why animals disappear from disaster stories and suggest a remedy.

Traditional

White

A new (and not extinct) moth emerges from the Florida Scrub

Rachel Sauer — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 14:20:20 +0000

A new (and not extinct) moth emerges from the Florida Scrub Rachel Sauer Fri, 04/24/2026 - 08:20

Rachel Sauer

After publishing about a moth he’d only seen in collections, CU Boulder researcher Ryan St Laurent travels to Florida and spots the elusive—and previously thought extinct—Cicinnus albarenicolus

On the second of two nights he spent deep in central Florida forests last week—dripping sweat, shrouded in swarms of flying ants and June beetles, well into the 20 kilometers he’d eventually walk monitoring his four traps—Ryan St Laurent saw the thing he’d come, but didn’t really expect, to see.

To anyone who hadn’t spent a dozen years studying it, the sandy brown wisp might have looked like a fragment of autumn leaf or a shred of bark, but St Laurent immediately recognized Cicinnus albarenicolus. He’d just never seen the moth alive before, let alone in the wild.

In fact, until November, St Laurent thought this new species of Mimallonidae, or sack-bearer moth, might be extinct (DNA barcoding of moth specimens in collections had identified it as a new species). Before November, it hadn’t been seen in its extremely limited Florida habitat since the 1960s.

Ryan St Laurent, a CU Boulder assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and CU Museum curator of entomology, traveled to Florida last week to try finding the elusive Cicinnus albarenicolus moth.

When news came that a collector had found one of the presumed-extinct moths in a sliver of white sand scrub in the Florida peninsula, St Laurent, a University of Colorado Boulder assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and CU Museum curator of entomology, had just finished writing a recently published paper describing the new C. albarenicolus, comparing it with other Mimallonidae species.

“I had written that it might be extinct, so I had to revise the paper and bring in some additional co-authors,” St Laurent says. Then he learned about an upcoming scheduled burn in one of the very few areas where C. albarenicolus conceivably could be found, so he booked a flight to Florida.

“I don’t think this is the only population in existence, and I don’t think it’s going to get burned up and go extinct,” St Laurent said several days before flying to Florida. “But I want to go out there and at least try to get a couple of tissue samples in the event we can’t find it again.”

Needles and haystacks don’t adequately encompass his aim; he was trying to find a small brown moth in a 450,000-acre forest.

‘These look really cool’

But how does a scientist first steer his scholarship to a little-known and barely studied family of moths, a member of which may or may not have been extinct? For St Laurent, the path began during undergrad at Cornell, where he studied entomology and worked with museum insect collections. The collections manager encouraged him to find something that nobody else was working on, “but there was a lot of competition in butterflies and moths—it’s a popular group as far as insects go,” he explains.

“I remember going through the collection, asking, ‘What am I going to work on?’ when I came across this particular family (of moth). I was like, ‘Well, these look really cool,’ but when I went to try to curate them, I realized there were no resources, no books, no field guides, nothing.”

Perfect, he thought. If nobody was working on that family, he would. He wrote his undergraduate honors thesis then pursued his PhD in charting the phylogeny, or tree of life, of this small group of moths. “Once you have a tree of life, you can start talking about them and you can contextualize them as a member of bigger butterfly and moth groups,” he says.

It wasn’t until St Laurent got to the Smithsonian for his postdoc that he had a chance to order mitochondrial sequencing on one of the Mimallonidae specimens that he’d identified as different from its family members. That sequencing showed it was genetically different from anything else in its family, so when St Laurent came to CU Boulder, he continued the project of sequencing specimens from various collections.

The female Cicinnus albarenicolus moth (left) that flew out of the darkness of Seminole State Forest in Florida last week, and Ryan St Laurent (right) holding the twig on which it perched.

Most of the specimens were many decades old, compounding the challenges of genetic sequencing. St Laurent worked with a Canadian lab that specializes in barcode sequencing—a technique that focuses on short sequences of genes—sending them prepared samples for testing. In one instance, St Laurent sampled the leg of one of the few recent specimens, which he put on a sequencing plate and sent to Canada in January, looking for further evidence that this was, in fact, a new species of moth.

The genes didn’t lie: It was.

A moth flies out of the darkness

As if discovering a new species isn’t a big enough deal, discovering that it’s not extinct after all is enough to drive any researcher from the lab and straight into the Florida thickets.

Among the things that make Mimallonidae interesting, St Laurent says, is they belong to a superfamily with ancient lineage—more than 100 million years old—99% of which live in Central and South America. Only a handful of species in the family occur in North America, but the ones that do are (mostly) quite common.

Ryan St Laurent set up four insect traps with moth-attractant LED lights.

Except, of course, for C. albarenicolus—endemic to small patches of Florida Scrub, made rarer still by habitat loss. “Only 10% of Florida Scrub is left,” St Laurent said before leaving for Florida, “and the scrub that does still exist is super isolated. We don’t know if those little pockets can support this moth at all.”

Through some scientific sleuthing and mapping the locations where collection specimens had been found, St Laurent narrowed possible C. albarenicolus habitat to six sites in the Florida peninsula: eastern Ocala National Forest, Weeki Wachee north of Tampa, Cassia and Cassadaga northeast of Orlando, the Archbold Biological Station on the Lake Wales Ridge in Central Florida and coastal southeast Florida in Port Sewall. Each location has or had the rare Florida Scrub habitat—specifically white sand, open canopy scrub, which C. albarenicolus seemed to favor.

“This particular family of moths, there’s a reason nobody studies them,” St Laurent said before leaving for Florida. “They’re really hard to find and really hard to raise in captivity. I’ve done field work all over the Americas, and I’m lucky if I see one or two a night in Central or South America. I’m very used to not being able to find these things, which is why I do a lot of work in collections.”

Still, he had to try. He flew to Orlando and then drove to the township of Cassia. He had previously seen a specimen in the American Museum of Natural History in New York City that had been found near Cassia in 1964. “I knew about that specimen, I knew the scrub in that area because I went hiking there years ago in grad school and found caterpillars, but I didn’t rear them,” St Laurent says, so that’s where he started.

The first night, he set up four traps resembling tall, narrow tents with a specialized moth-attractive LED inside—the aim being to lure insects to the light. Other insects arrived in the thousands, but no C. albarenicolus.

The second night, he set up at a spot in the nearby Seminole State Forest where the trees open to an expanse of sandy soil and scrubby plants. At 8:49 p.m., “I’m standing there and this kind of pinkish moth comes out of the darkness, and it was very recognizable. Nothing else really looks like that, moth-wise.”

After that first moth, two more came. St Laurent knew he was seeing females, which fly right after sunset, so he collected them and raced them to his colleagues at the University of Florida in Gainesville. Collecting live females means collecting eggs, with the attendant potential of rearing them in the lab. If his colleagues are able to rear them, he says, he will receive progenitors and offspring.

As for seeing a moth that he’d only previously seen as a collection specimen, “I was just like, ‘Wow, I was right! It is here!’ My suspicion is the moth is all over the place in Ocala, but it’s rare and diffuse there. It’s a much more concentrated site in Seminole, surrounded by hardwood hammocks and the St. Johns and Wekiva rivers, so you have a better chance of finding something there.”

The site in the Ocala National Forest is scheduled for a controlled burn associated with Florida scrub jay management, “which is probably good in the overall grand scheme of things,” St Laurent says, “but since we don’t know what the moth eats or when it’s active or its annual lifecycle or habitat requirements, I don’t know if the burning regime is appropriate.

“(The moth is) part of Florida’s multimillion-year history, and Florida is the only place in the world where it occurs. It may not be some top-down species that’s controlling the habitat, but it’s still a very important representative of the one-sixth of its family that’s found in North America, and this one is the only species endemic to the U.S. in this family. It’s a part of Florida heritage and U.S. heritage, and we need to protect it.”

Did you enjoy this article? Subscribe to our newsletter. Passionate about ecology and evolutionary biology? Show your support.

After publishing about a moth he’d only seen in collections, CU Boulder researcher Ryan St Laurent travels to Florida and spots the elusive—and previously thought extinct—Cicinnus albarenicolus.

Traditional

White

CU Boulder turns stop-out success initiative into permanent program

Rachel Sauer — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:15:11 +0000

CU Boulder turns stop-out success initiative into permanent program Rachel Sauer Thu, 04/23/2026 - 18:15

Bradley Worrell

Designed for students whose lives interrupted college, CU Complete offers a renewed path to graduation, building on the success of Finish What You Started

When a student leaves college before finishing their degree, the reasons are rarely simple. Health crises, family emergencies, financial difficulties, academic setbacks or other major life circumstances can interrupt even the most determined plans.

At the University of Colorado Boulder, students who once left college before completing their degree now have a structured pathway back—one built on a successful federal initiative and reimagined as a permanent program.

For the past four years, the CU Boulder Division of Continuing Education, in partnership with the Office of Undergraduate Education, has overseen the Finish What You Started (FWYS) program, which was designed to help former students who demonstrate financial need complete their degree. The $3.1 million in four-year grant funding for that program was made possible by federal COVID-era relief dollars and distributed throughout the state of Colorado.

Michelle Pagnani (left), Blazey Heier (center) and Ann Herrmann (right) with the Division of Continuing Education.

Now, as Finish What You Started winds down, its success is informing a redesigned and expanded effort: CU Complete. This successor program aims to carry forward the most effective elements of FWYS while creating a longer-term, institutionally funded model for degree completion, says Blazey Heier, director of student services in the Division of Continuing Education, who has been involved with both FWYS and CU Complete.

FWYS proved its worth

From the beginning, Heier says, FWYS targeted a student population that higher education often struggles to serve: stop-out students.

“�鶹��Ժ who stop out have a pattern of stopping out multiple times. They re-engage and then stop out again,” she says. “Finish What You Started was designed to interrupt that cycle.”

The results were striking.

By Fall 2025, 117 students had graduated through FWYS, with nine additional students expected to graduate in May, out of 182 students admitted overall, says Michelle Pagnani, program manager for CU Complete and a senior academic and career coach. She notes that this figure represents a 69% graduation rate—which is especially significant given the many challenges students faced upon returning, she says, such as family caregiving responsibilities, managing full-time jobs and dealing with serious health issues.

“Given the obstacles that this student population faces, we’re really proud of that number,” Pagnani says. She also notes that some of the students who were a few credits short of finishing their degree through FWYS will have the opportunity to do so with the new CU Complete program.

Why FWYS worked

While the scholarships provided through FWYS were substantial, Continuing Education staff emphasized that funding alone was not the primary driver of success.

Finishing what she started

For Valeria Mendoza Frutos, the road to graduation didn’t follow a traditional, linear route. Instead, by her own account, it’s been a journey marked by stops and starts, academic setbacks and personal loss, but also one ultimately shaped by resilience and the realization that it’s OK to ask for help.

Read her story

�鶹��Ժ in the program received coordinated support that included academic and career advising, academic and career coaching, financial aid consulting and assistance coordinating with other campus offices and advisors. For many students, FWYS was the first time they had experienced such a personalized, sustained engagement from the university, says Ann Herrmann, a program manager and academic advisor in Continuing Education who conducted outreach and advising for the FWYS program.

“For many of the students, their stop-out may have been a real turning point for them—a traumatic event like a death in the family or a financial catastrophe that prevented them from continuing their education,” she says. “Back then, they may not have known about support and resources that were available. When they came back (as a result of FWYS), they’ve talked about how helpful the wrap-around support was and how vital it’s been for them to finish.”

Herrmann notes FWYS graduates have completed degrees across a wide range of disciplines, including computer science, molecular biology, psychology, economics and geography. Multiple FWYS graduates have gone on to graduate school, while others have used their degrees to move up in their organizations or start new careers.

CU Complete gets rejuvenated

As a successor to FWYS, CU Complete is not entirely new. The program initially launched in 2009 as a limited scholarship initiative offering one-time awards of $500 or $1,000, depending upon the recipient’s credit load. Over time, however, rising tuition costs and staff changes reduced its impact.

“If someone found us, we would tell them about the scholarship, but we weren’t doing outreach and we didn’t have dedicated support staff,” Heier explains.

Heier says Finish What You Started changed that trajectory. Seeing the results of intensive advising and coaching and sustained financial support, Continuing Education leaders made the case for reimagining CU Complete as a comprehensive, high-touch program modeled on the best features of FWYS.

Beginning in Fall 2026, the redesigned CU Complete program will offer semester-over-semester scholarships for up to six semesters total, paired with structured support services. Pagnani says the program will provide $1,000 per semester, with the opportunity to earn an additional $250 per term, after the student’s first semester, based upon academic performance.

Funding for CU Complete comes directly from Continuing Education revenue, making it a long-term institutional commitment rather than a time-limited grant, Heier notes. Meanwhile, unlike FWYS, CU Complete is open to both in-state and out-of-state students and does not require students to demonstrate financial need—recognizing that many students face challenges that are not captured by traditional aid metrics.

“That piece is really important,” Heier says. “A lot of times people may not fall into traditional financial-need thresholds, but that doesn’t mean they can just pay for classes—especially when paying for classes means working fewer hours.”

Eligibility is intentionally focused on students who are close to finishing. Pagnani says eligible students must have 90 or more total credits, including at least 45 from CU Boulder; have been away from CU for at least two consecutive years; must be pursuing their first bachelor’s degree; and must be able to graduate within six semesters.

Herrmann says CU Complete is currently accepting applications for the revamped CU Complete program, with eight students thus far who are eligible to participate in the fall semester.

Measuring what comes next

CU Complete is launching with clear metrics in mind, Heier says. Leaders plan to track completion within the six-consecutive-semester window, compare outcomes to both FWYS and the earlier version of CU Complete and assess return on investment.

At the same time, Pagnani emphasizes that qualitative outcomes—student confidence, persistence and sense of belonging—remain central to the program’s mission.

Pagnani says CU Complete reflects a broader shift in how educational institutions think about adult learners and degree completion. The program recognizes them as individuals whose lives changed—and who still want to finish what they started, she says.

Expanding services and building community

While CU Complete mirrors FWYS in many ways, it also aims to expand beyond it.

Pagnani says plans include a one-credit onboarding course for returning students, planned for Fall 2027, as well as expanded access to career assessments such as the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, Strong Interest Inventory and Clifton Strengths.

“We’ve been able to offer those for free and it’s been a really meaningful benefit,” she says.

CU Complete students also will have access to a neurodiversity support group and shared resource space for adult learners who identify as having ADHD, dyslexia or autism. As the group’s facilitator, Pagnani describes it as a way for students to build community, share their stories, give and receive advice and, in some cases, normalize experiences that may have contributed to them stopping-out previously.

Along these lines, a major area of focus for CU Complete administrators is community building.

“At our graduation party last year, students were saying, ‘Why didn’t I know these people before?’” Heier says. Administrative demands had limited opportunities for peer connection under the grant, but CU Complete is being designed with more space for that work, she adds.

Meanwhile, Herrmann says she foresees CU Complete as strengthening the bonds between returning students and the university, as happened previously with Finish What You Started graduates. She notes several of those graduates shared how completing their degrees allowed them to fully claim their identity as CU alumni—attending campus events, participating in the community and seeing themselves as part of the university in a way they never could before.

“�鶹��Ժ tell us they finally feel like they belong at CU,” she says.

Did you enjoy this article? Subscribe to our newsletter. Passionate about arts and sciences? Show your support.

Designed for students whose lives interrupted college, CU Complete offers a renewed path to graduation, building on the success of Finish What You Started.

Traditional

White

Finishing what she started

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 23:20:41 +0000

Finishing what she started Rachel Sauer Thu, 04/23/2026 - 17:20

Bradley Worrell

Against the odds, CU Boulder student Valeria Mendoza Frutos prepares to graduate in May, thanks in part to the Division of Continuing Education’s Finish What You Started program

As Valeria Mendoza Frutos approaches graduation day in May, excitement mixes with a twinge of uncertainty.

“It’s a little scary,” she admits. “Actually facing the reality that I’m going to be done with school in a month—I don’t know what’s going to happen after.”

It’s a feeling many graduating college students likely share, but for Mendoza Frutos, getting to the finish line didn’t follow a traditional, linear route. Instead, by her own account, it’s been a journey marked by stops and starts, academic setbacks and personal loss, but also one ultimately shaped by resilience and the realization that it’s OK to ask for help.

For Valeria Mendoza Frutos, the road to graduation next month had been a journey marked by stops and starts, academic setbacks and personal loss, but also one ultimately shaped by resilience and the realization that it’s OK to ask for help.

Feeling out of place: college, COVID and self-doubt

Mendoza Frutos first arrived at the University of Colorado Boulder in Fall 2020—during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Her introduction to college life was different than what she had imagined. Most classes were taught remotely, she and other students were housed in hotel rooms rather than dorms and the sense of community she hoped to find was largely absent.

“It was a very weird semester,” she recalls. “Most of my classes were online and everything just felt off.”

What’s more, after graduating from KIPP Northeast Leadership Academy, a small, tightknit high school in northeast Denver with a graduating class of about 80 students—many of whom were Hispanic—the transition to a large, predominantly white institution felt overwhelming at times.

“I felt like I didn’t belong,” she says. “Being Hispanic and surrounded by mostly white students was a huge change for me. There was that voice in my head telling me, ‘You don’t belong here.’”

That sense of not belonging followed her into the classroom. Even when professors encouraged participation, Mendoza Frutos says she struggled with self-confidence. “They would always say ‘there is no such thing as a dumb question,’ but I never believed that,” she says.

Outside of school, Mendoza Frutos’s life was equally complicated. After her first year at CU Boulder, she decided to move back home and commute to college. A self-described “mom’s girl,” she was deeply involved in helping raise her younger siblings while her mother worked.

“People laugh,” she says, “but I tell my mom I see her more like my partner, because I was the one at home helping raise my brother and sister.”

Family demands, financial pressures, the challenges of balancing work and school and the stress of commuting all weighed heavily upon her, and her grades suffered, leading to academic probation. Then came a devastating personal loss: the death of her beloved grandmother in 2022.

“I just lost it,” she says. “I was going through a lot and that was the semester I had all Fs.”

As grief took its toll, Mendoza Frutos stepped away from college altogether. For nearly a year, she wasn’t sure she would ever return.

“I think in my head I was like, ‘I’ll go back one day,’” she says, ‘but it took a lot for me to understand that I needed help.”

‘It’s OK to accept help’

That help arrived unexpectedly in early 2024, when Mendoza Frutos received an email from Ann Herrmann, program manager and advisor for Finish What You Started, a federal initiative designed to support students who paused their education and wanted to return that was administered at CU Boulder by the Division of Continuing Education. Herrmann had reviewed Mendoza Frutos’s academic profile and reached out with a simple but powerful message: Help was available.

Valeria Mendoza Frutos (center, white dress) with her family.

“At first, I wasn’t sure,” Mendoza Frutos recalls. “But we met and I told her everything I had been through. She didn’t judge me; she just helped me figure out a path forward.”

Herrmann helped Mendoza Frutos withdraw from classes she previously started but had not completed, which were hurting her GPA, and worked with her to rebuild a realistic academic plan. Soon after, Mendoza Frutos was paired with Michelle Pagnani, a senior academic and career coach for Finish What You Started.

Although hesitant at first—“I kind of ghosted her a few times,” Mendoza Frutos admits, but adds that Pagnani’s persistence made the difference. “She was always calling me, like, ‘Hey, when do you want to reschedule?’”

Over time, the relationship grew into one of trust and encouragement. “Now me and Michelle and me and Ann have a really good bond,” she adds.

With their guidance, Mendoza Frutos returned to school step by step—starting with summer classes, then fall, then continuing forward. If coursework ever became overwhelming or life intervened, she says Pagnani and Herrmann were there to offer assistance. And for the first time, she says, she felt supported not just academically, but personally.

“I realized it’s OK to accept help,” she says. “It doesn’t make you less than; it just makes your journey easier. That’s what the program did for me.

“Being a first-generation college student made it harder. I didn’t really have anyone guiding me before, but Ann and Michelle gave me the support I needed.”

Advancing in school and at work

While rebuilding her academic life, Mendoza Frutos was also building her career. In February 2024, she began working as an intake specialist for the Frank Azar law practice, fielding calls from clients and potential clients, after connecting with the company at a LinkedIn job fair.

Mendoza Frutos says the work required accuracy, empathy and strong communication skills. She says her bilingual skills became an asset almost immediately, as being able to connect with Spanish-speaking clients helped the firm respond faster and build trust.

CU Complete

As Finish What You Started winds down, its success is informing a redesigned and expanded effort: CU Complete. This successor program aims to carry forward the most effective elements of FWYS while creating a longer-term, institutionally funded model for degree completion.

Learn more

Despite juggling a full-time job with a demanding courseload, her dedication stood out. The firm closely tracks performance metrics including contracts sent, follow-through and client satisfaction—all of which she excelled in. As a result, after about a year on the job, Mendoza Frutos was promoted to the role of investigator, which she attributes to her strong work ethic.

“I’m very dedicated and passionate when I like something—and I really enjoy my job. I like learning and there’s always something new to learn at work,” she says. “This job feels very fulfilling.”

Equally important was how her employer supported her as a student—something she had not experienced before. Mendoza Frutos says she left a previous job after it would not accommodate her schedule once she planned to return to campus to complete her degree.

When she asked her current employer if they could temporarily reduce her work hours so she could concentrate on finishing college, they accommodated her, she says, adding that flexibility has allowed her to succeed in both school and work.

Today, Mendoza Frutos is completing a degree in Spanish for health professions, with a certificate in health resilience. For now, she plans to continue working for the law firm after graduation, where she sees opportunity for growth and advancement.

At the same time, the idea of attending law school—once unimaginable—now feels possible. That shift came during a quiet moment with Pagnani, who once casually guided Mendoza Frutos into the Wolf Law Building under the guise of taking a campus walk.

“I didn’t finish alone. And now I know—I don’t have to do everything by myself.”

“She didn’t tell me her plan,” Mendoza Frutos says, laughing. “But standing there, getting information, I realized that someone outside my family believes I could do this.”

For a first-generation student who once felt invisible, that belief mattered.

“It made me very emotional,” she says. “It was like, damn—you really do care about me.”

Looking ahead: moving forward

In May, Mendoza Frutos will walk across the graduation stage with family in attendance, including relatives traveling from Texas. Her mother is even planning a graduation party. It will mark not just the completion of a degree, but a journey defined by resilience, growth and the power of support.

Looking back, Mendoza Frutos is clear about one thing: Without Finish What You Started, she would not be graduating. “If it wasn’t for that email, I wouldn’t be here.”

There are many beneficial programs on campus, Mendoza Frutos notes, but it’s the people behind them that make the difference. “I’m very lucky to have Ann and Michelle,” she says. “They really care.”

As she looks toward the future—continuing in her career and possibly pursuing law school one day—Mendoza Frutos carries a hard-won lesson.

“I didn’t finish alone,” she says. “And now I know—I don’t have to do everything by myself.”

Did you enjoy this article? Subscribe to our newsletter. Passionate about arts and sciences? Show your support.

Against the odds, CU Boulder student Valeria Mendoza Frutos prepares to graduate in May, thanks in part to the Division of Continuing Education’s Finish What You Started program.

Traditional

White

All photos courtesy Valeria Mendoza Frutos

Jun Ye elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 18:14:01 +0000

Jun Ye elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Rachel Sauer Thu, 04/23/2026 - 12:14

Election recognizes Ye's extraordinary contributions to physics and quantum science, including pioneering advances in optical atomic clocks, precision measurement and quantum many-body physics

University of Colorado Boulder scientist Jun Ye has been named a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Ye is a professor of physics at CU Boulder and physicist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). He holds the Monroe Endowed Professorship in Physics and is a fellow at JILA.

Learn more about Ye's honor

Election recognizes Ye's extraordinary contributions to physics and quantum science, including pioneering advances in optical atomic clocks, precision measurement and quantum many-body physics.

Traditional

White

Colorado AG advises Quantum Scholars to be curious in changing times

Rachel Sauer — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 19:31:40 +0000

Colorado AG advises Quantum Scholars to be curious in changing times Rachel Sauer Wed, 04/22/2026 - 13:31

Rachel Sauer

Attorney General Phil Weiser spoke to Quantum Scholars Tuesday, emphasizing the need for critical thinking in a time when ‘our capacity to govern ourselves is now being undermined by the technologies that we need to govern’

In a roomful of Quantum Scholars, Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser began his remarks in the 1860s.

As the students in the room are now, people living then passed through a time of world-changing technological advancement. Then, it was the railroad and telegraph, which fundamentally altered people’s conception of distance, Weiser said.

Today, “we're too close to it to have a full grasp of the changes that are happening in our society, in our economy, but they are profound,” he said. “We're coming off of this transformation of the internet that all of you have grown up with, swimming in the water, whereas Noah (Finkelstein) and I lived in a pre-internet world.

Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser speaks to Quantum Scholars Tuesday afternoon.

“We know how this world is different, but none of us fully knows how quantum and AI and other emerging technologies will pose yet another transformation. And one of the challenges of this moment that's a little different than even 1860 is our capacity to govern ourselves is now being undermined by the technologies that we need to govern.”

Weiser’s remarks came during a guest lecture Tuesday afternoon to members of Quantum Scholars, a program conceived in the University of Colorado Boulder Department of Physics and the College of Engineering and Applied Science (CEAS) that offers undergraduate students opportunities to learn about the quantum field, including connections with local industry leaders and introduction to new quantum technology.

The Quantum Scholars program includes undergraduates studying physics, mathematics, engineering and computer science and aims to advance quantum education and workforce development through professional development, co-curricular activities and industrial engagement.

Finkelstein, a distinguished professor of physics who co-directs Quantum Scholars with Professor of Distinction Michael Ritzwoller, noted in his introduction of Weiser that while researchers and innovators in the quantum field have studied its past and keenly look toward the future, “we haven't had folks on policy yet. It turns out that's going to be the third leg of advancing quantum sciences and sciences in general.”

‘How do I know this is true?’

Weiser, who is dean emeritus of the CU Boulder Law School and an adjunct faculty member, noted that “one of the embarrassments of this moment is how deeply dysfunctional and non-responsive national public policy-making institutions are. When you think about social media, when you think about AI, when you think about quantum, there are all sorts of opportunities, there are all sorts of challenges, and we don't have the institutions to meet them.”

He gave as an example Anthropic’s Mythos AI model, which can both detect and exploit software vulnerabilities, and which the company hasn’t released because of threats it could pose to global cybersecurity.

“There are a couple of possible scenarios there,” Weiser said. “One is that they're really good at marketing, and they want to make sure that every single bank and other institution uses the product first to protect it from the product. Could be.

“Or, they're actually trying to be socially responsible, knowing that there's no national governing framework or body that can help manage cybersecurity harms.”

When Weiser worked in the Obama White House in 2009-2010, he and his colleagues were beginning to talk about the challenges of cybersecurity, and how the challenges of technology governance are quite different than the challenges of rural agriculture governance or urban industrialization governance “because technology of the age we're now living in moves so fast,” he said.

Distinguished Professor Noah Finkelstein (right) greets Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser (left) before Weiser's talk to Quantum Scholars Tuesday afternoon.

“And sadly, we have a government that's unable to come to terms with this, raising the question, ‘How are we going to govern ourselves in this age?’ You've heard lots of people say things like AI can be as dangerous as nuclear weapons, and we came up with international governing institutions to deal with the threat of nuclear weapons. We may well need some to deal with the challenges and threats of AI. Are we up to that challenge right now?”

In that vein, Saksham Hassanandani, a first-year student majoring in mathematics, asked what he can do to “help and advocate for such changes? And especially if I end up in an industry . . . that may not care for the ethics. What can we do as people to fight for this change?”

Weiser mentioned that he and his team are currently suing Meta for the design of social media—"they designed a product in a way that they knew was harming people,” he said—but nevertheless encouraged Hassanandani and his fellow Quantum Scholars not to “take as a steady state that the company you're going to work for is acting in a way that's unethical. I would start with an aspiration that you're going to be working for a company who cares about its customers, who treats its workers fairly and who thinks about society.”

Should that not be the case, Weiser advised them to be clear on their own ethical boundaries and whether they are willing to advocate internally for change and “ethical capitalism.”

Related to concerns about technology ethics, Grace Kallberg, a third-year student majoring in aerospace engineering, mentioned the growing threat of AI generating misinformation. She asked, “Is there anything that we can do as individuals to kind of help combat that?”

“Everyone here has an extraordinary opportunity as a citizen to think long and hard, and to help others think long and hard, on the following question: How do I know this is true?” Weiser replied. “You are swimming in information that is shared or, as you put it, AI generated in ways that we may not know whether it's true or not. And that is a fundamentally different position than the world that I grew up in. I grew up in a world that had editors who reviewed information before I got to it. You're not in that world.

“And so, what you can all do is wrestle with the challenge that you and others have: How do I know this is true? And then make that discipline part of your habits of mind.”

Did you enjoy this article? Subscribe to our newsletter. Passionate about Quantum Scholars? Show your support.

Traditional

White

All photos by Patrick Campbell/CU Boulder

Drinking alone is a risky business

Rachel Sauer — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 19:56:36 +0000

Drinking alone is a risky business Rachel Sauer Tue, 04/21/2026 - 13:56

Clay Bonnyman Evans

Solitary alcohol consumption is connected to poorer cognitive function among older adults, CU Boulder researcher Carillon Skrzynski finds

Studies regarding the potential risks—and benefits—of alcohol use have reached widely differing conclusions, from suggesting that moderate alcohol use may have benefits for health to arguing that any amount of alcohol consumption ultimately puts drinkers’ health at risk.

But researchers seem to agree on at least one thing: Drinking alone is a red flag.

“Solitary drinking is associated with many different negative consequences and correlates,” says Carillon Skrzynski, an assistant research professor at the University of Colorado Boulder’s Center for Health and Neuroscience, Genes, and Environment, or CU Change. “It’s a very risky drinking pattern.”

Carillon Skrzynski, an assistant research professor in the CU Boulder Center for Health and Neuroscience, Genes, and Environment (CU Change), and her research colleagues studied solitary drinking in older adulthood, connecting it to poorer objective and subjective cognitive function.

She should know. She wrote her dissertation at Carnegie Mellon University on solitary alcohol consumption and has published two meta-analyses on the subject.

But to date, little research has examined solitary drinking specifically among older people. Despite that, Skrzynski says “there is a higher prevalence of drinking alone the older you get.”

Using a dataset collected to study cannabis and common complaints in older adults compiled by Angela Bryan, professor of psychology and neuroscience and co-director at CU Change, Skrzynski was able to analyze how solitary drinking affects cognitive function.

She and Bryan published the results of the study in the journal Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience.

“Our results expand knowledge of solitary drinking in older adulthood by connecting it to poorer objective and subjective cognitive function,” the authors concluded.

Skrzynski analyzed 342 individuals aged 60 or older who completed the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test—an objective measure of verbal memory involving word recall—and subjective cognition via the Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy-Cognitive Function questionnaire, on which subjects self-assess their cognitive function.

The study compared these outcomes among older adults who drank alone, those who drank only socially and those who did not drink alcohol at all, among other aims. (Subjects who engaged in hazardous alcohol use were precluded from the study.)

“Those who drank only socially had better cognitive functioning than both those who drank solitarily and the non-drinking group,” she says. As noted in the paper, this may suggest a potential inverted U-shaped curve wherein both solitary drinking and non-drinking may be associated with poorer cognitive function compared to social-only drinking and therefore signal risk in this domain.

The research did not examine reasons why older adults may choose to consume alcohol alone.

“That’s a crucial point—what is motivating their behavior? Often people are using (alcohol) to cope with negative emotions,” she says. “The self-medication hypothesis suggests that using substances to heal oneself can be maladaptive.”

“People drink all kinds of ways for all kinds of reasons. Not every older person who is drinking alone is doing it in a harmful way. One person may have an occasional glass of wine by themselves with their dinner while another may drink an entire bottle of wine alone every night. These are very different scenarios,” says CU Boulder scientist Carillon Skrzynski.

However, she emphasizes that solitary drinking does not necessarily imply that a person is engaged in problematic drinking or has an alcohol use disorder, especially among older adults.

“People drink all kinds of ways for all kinds of reasons. Not every older person who is drinking alone is doing it in a harmful way,” she says. “One person may have an occasional glass of wine by themselves with their dinner while another may drink an entire bottle of wine alone every night. These are very different scenarios.”

But Skrzynski notes that even if moderate social consumption of alcohol may have benefits for cognition, other research suggests any alcohol consumption at all may increase risks for cancer and other diseases.

“It’s a mixed bag,” she says.

Future research on the subject can be refined and expanded, the paper suggests, including examinations of data samples “with varied patterns of alcohol consumption, and cognitive functioning utilizing diverse subjective and objective measures over longer periods of time.”

“For example, the Rey (test) is objective, but it only measures one domain of objective cognition, verbal memory,” Skrzynski says. Another avenue of research is polysubstance use, or use of multiple substances, and how that is related to social context and outcomes. “How does co-use of alcohol and cannabis in solitary settings affect people?” Skrzynski wonders.

Overall, she says, solitary drinking seems to be a risky drinking pattern, even for older individuals who may be more likely to engage in it. Thus, further research on this population is necessary to continue to understand and ultimately mitigate any harm of alcohol consumption in this context.

Did you enjoy this article? Subscribe to our newsletter. Passionate about psychology and neuroscience? Show your support.

Solitary alcohol consumption is connected to poorer cognitive function among older adults, CU Boulder researcher Carillon Skrzynski finds.

Traditional

White

News

CU Boulder scholars elected members of the National Academy of Sciences

Related Articles

Grad ponders the past and considers the future

Related Articles

As a new space race takes shape, a CU Boulder class asks: Do we understand China?

Related Articles

Wildfire’s toll on animals went largely unreported, researchers show

Related Articles

A new (and not extinct) moth emerges from the Florida Scrub

Related Articles

CU Boulder turns stop-out success initiative into permanent program

Related Articles

Finishing what she started

Related Articles

Jun Ye elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences

Related Articles

Colorado AG advises Quantum Scholars to be curious in changing times

Related Articles

Drinking alone is a risky business

Related Articles