Division of Natural Sciences

One photo, many whales: scholar captures research above the Arctic Circle

Rachel Sauer — Mon, 02 Feb 2026 21:31:55 +0000

One photo, many whales: scholar captures research above the Arctic Circle Rachel Sauer Mon, 02/02/2026 - 14:31

Cody DeBos

For CU Boulder ecology and evolutionary biology alumna Emma Vogel, an award-winning photo captured a vital moment of research and science

Soft light slanted across the gray Norwegian sky, bouncing off the frigid water where Emma Vogel sat in a research boat. She had just helped her team tag a whale and was scanning the waves for the next group. It was a rare reprieve in what otherwise tends to be a chaotic venture.

She lifted her camera, but not for data collection this time. The scene was simply too vivid not to capture.

“I was super surprised about catching the little whale in the background of it, framed in the platform,” Vogel recalls. “That was a very, very nice surprise. I’m not often using my camera to take pictures of people, but the lighting was so atmospheric, I thought it would be a good shot.”

Emma Vogel, a 2016 CU Boulder graduate in ecology and evolutionary biology, is a postdoctoral researcher at The Arctic �Թ�� of Norway.

The photo, showing a researcher poised to launch a tracking tag set against a backdrop of swarming seabirds, went on to win Nature’s 2025 Scientist at Work photo competition.

For Vogel, a 2016 CU Boulder graduate, the image is more than an award-winner. It’s a snapshot of her life spent tracking giants of the ocean through the shifting currents of science and sustainability.

A path north

Vogel’s journey to the coast of Northern Norway, firmly situated in the Arctic Circle, began in Washington, D.C., but when it was time to go to college, the mountains of Colorado called.

“I thought Colorado looked beautiful. And I kind of always knew I wanted to do science or ecology, so it seemed like a perfect place for that,” she says.

During her time at CU Boulder, Vogel studied ecology and evolutionary biology, exploring the impact of forest fires and regrowth. A semester abroad in Sweden opened her eyes to marine science.

“I got to take some more aquatic and ocean marine-based courses and I fell in love with the field.”

After graduation, Vogel spent two years working in animal welfare policy with the Humane Society of the United States. However, she felt drawn to do hands-on research.

That led her to Tromsø, Norway, where she earned her master’s and PhD and now works as a postdoctoral researcher at the Arctic �Թ�� of Norway’s Arctic Sustainability Lab.

Fieldwork at the edge of the world

As one might imagine, life and research in the Arctic come with their own rhythms.

“Some of the unique, really wonderful things that maybe people wouldn't expect, is that it's such a diverse place, both the people and the ecosystems, the organisms that live here,” Vogel says. “We have a beautiful combination of mountains and ocean right in the same space.”

Fieldwork in this environment is both harsh and intimate. Vogel and her team spend weeks tracking and tagging humpback and killer whales in the fjords during the winter herring season. She says the process can be logistically easier than in other places because the whales stay close to the coast.

But the conditions are punishing.

“In the morning, we often need to shovel snow out of our boats before we can get started, and it’s cold enough where the seawater is freezing onto the boat. Temperatures are often well below zero while we’re out doing research.”

Luckily, Vogel has discovered something of a superpower.

“The thing that changed it for me was when I discovered battery-powered socks that you can put on a little cycle to heat up every 30 minutes,” she says with a grin. “They really make all the difference.”

Those socks come in handy during long days on the water when Vogel and her team are using air-powered tracking equipment to attach satellite transmitters to whales. The tags allow researchers to track their movements long after they disappear from the coast.

“Normally, once the whales get enough of the herring, we don’t know where they go. With the tags, we can see their movement patterns for a month to six months, depending on the species and tag,” she says.

From there, Vogel and her team can interpret the data to paint a clearer picture of what these oceanic giants do when they slip below the waves.

“We can figure out their behavior based on the data. If they’re slowing down and turning a lot in one area, we can say they’re possibly looking for food and foraging. If they’re traveling in a straight line really fast, then it’s kind of transiting behavior. For humpbacks, we’ve tracked them through a full migration. So, going down to the Caribbean and then back up to Norway and even up into the Barents Sea.

“These tags let us track them through the entire ocean and see things we otherwise wouldn’t be able to, which is, I think, really exciting.”

Emma Vogel's award-winning photo shows biologist Audun Rikardsen, her PhD advisor at The Arctic �Թ�� of Norway, battling waves in a northern Norwegian fjord, aided by the glow from a nearby fishing trawler.

Data-informed decisions

Part of Vogel’s work in the Arctic Sustainability Lab involves turning movement data into better marine policy.

“We are working to create ways to use tracking data to help spatial planners consider these migratory animals when designing local marine protected areas,” she says.

It’s a tricky challenge. Protected zones often prioritize stationary habitats for sea grasses and corals (and the animals that rely on them), not animals that travel hundreds or thousands of miles every year. Vogel and her team hope to change that by giving planners reliable data to inform their policy decisions.

But her work isn’t solely focused on marine life. She’s also part of a project called the Coastal Barometer, which helps quantify the health and sustainability of Northern Norway’s seaside communities.

“We developed a website called the Coastal Barometer to offer different ways of looking at and considering sustainability. It lets people from different municipalities click on where they’re from and see where they’re performing well and where there needs to be improvement,” Vogel says.

The project includes metrics for biodiversity, water quality, carbon storage, tourism, economic resilience and even a unique measure called “sense of place” that considers how much people value their connection to the local land and sea.

The latter is more urgent than ever. While Vogel doesn’t want to attribute all changes in her community to climate change, she’s already seen worrying signs.

“This last summer and the summer before we had about a month of days that you were able to go hiking in shorts in the Arctic. That’s been rare since I came here in 2018. For now, they’re nice, but you don’t want it much warmer.”

Those summer days may be rare enough to feel like a novelty today. But for researchers like Vogel, they are a quiet warning that even in the planet’s most rugged corners, change is underway. Thanks to valuable data collected by humans who care, communities and conservationists can be equipped with tools to adapt to those changes.

Boulder foundation, global reach

Despite her current home being thousands of miles away, Vogel still sees her time at CU Boulder as a defining chapter.

“It really set me up so well, I think, to be an interdisciplinary researcher. Not only taking science courses, but also exploring literature, communication, human geography. I even took a course about Vikings, which was quite fun,” she recalls.

That foundation has served her well in a career that now sprawls across ecology, community engagement and policy innovation. For students hoping to follow in her footsteps, Vogel has one piece of advice: “Genuine curiosity.”

“You need to really want to understand and be inquisitive,” she says. “To understand for the sake of understanding—not just taking your courses. Asking questions and not taking things at surface value, just always wondering, ‘Why? Why? Why?’ can really get you far.”

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For CU Boulder ecology and evolutionary biology alumna Emma Vogel, an award-winning photo captured a vital moment of research and science.

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Karolin Luger wins Vilcek Prize in Biomedical Science

Rachel Sauer — Mon, 02 Feb 2026 18:01:29 +0000

Karolin Luger wins Vilcek Prize in Biomedical Science Rachel Sauer Mon, 02/02/2026 - 11:01

The award recognizes CU Boulder biochemist’s career dedication to the study of nucleosomes and groundbreaking discoveries

Karolin Luger, a distinguished professor of biochemistry and the Jennie Smoly Caruthers Endowed Chair of Biochemistry, has been awarded the 2026 Vilcek Prize in Biomedical Science.

The $100,000 award recognizes her career dedication to the study of nucleosomes—research that led to the groundbreaking capture of a high-resolution image of chromatin and resulted in the development of novel drug treatments for diseases including cancer.

The Vilcek Foundation Prizes in Biomedical Science honor immigrants who are leading advancements in biomedical research in the United States. Prize co-founder Jan Vilcek—whose research led to the development of the drug Remicade—established prizes to support distinct ingenuity in scientific inquiry.

Karolin Luger, a distinguished professor of biochemistry and the Jennie Smoly Caruthers Endowed Chair of Biochemistry, has been awarded the 2026 Vilcek Prize in Biomedical Science. (Photo: Vilcek Foundation)

Presented annually since 2006, the Vilcek Foundation prizes honor immigrant contributions to societal advancement in the United States and recognize excellence in the arts and sciences. Since the prizes program began 20 years ago, the Vilcek Foundation has awarded $9.6 million to individuals “whose perspectives, creativity and vision have enriched the United States.”

“The Vilcek Foundation community are unwavering champions of the immigrants and leaders who advance every facet of our culture,” said Vilcek Foundation President Rick Kinsel. “The United States is a nation defined by freedom of expression, imagination and opportunity. This 20th group of prizewinners demonstrates our unshakeable commitment to honor those who embody the spirit of resiliency that defines our country and society.”

Luger, who is an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, became interested in science at an early age, using a microscope to study the plants and soil in her garden at the microscopic level. She earned Bachelor and Master of Science degrees in biochemistry from the �Թ�� of Innsbruck in Austria and a PhD in biochemistry and biophysics from the �Թ�� of Basel in Switzerland before immigrating to the United States in 1990.

“I came (to the United States) to join this amazing scientific enterprise that is the envy of the entire world,” Luger said.

As an immigrant from Austria who has participated in international research collaborations throughout her career, Luger notes that cross-cultural perspectives are essential to continued scientific advancement.

“Diversity is key because everything becomes clearer and more three-dimensional when illuminated from all sides,” said Luger. “To borrow a concept from structural biology: You need to see ‘all orientations!’ This can only be achieved with a diverse workforce where people constantly question each other’s assumptions.”

‘The central dogma’

In her postdoctoral studies at ETH Zürich in Switzerland, Luger focused on the atomic structure of nucleosomes, the discovery of which would help scientists understand fundamental aspects of the human genome. After eight years of research, Luger and her colleague, Tim Richmond at ETH Zürich, published a groundbreaking paper that has influenced innumerable studies and changed how researchers understand the interactions of proteins within the nucleosome, how proteins are modified and how this controls gene activity.

Since its publication 28 years ago, the paper has been cited more than 12,000 times and is included in biology textbooks and classes as part of “the central dogma.”

Because of Luger’s discovery, many diseases have since been found to stem from mutations in the nucleosome, resulting in the development of successful drug treatments. Luger continues to study nucleosomes in her laboratory work.

“Like many others, my lab has built on this original discovery, and we continue to be surprised by the elegant and complicated ways in which DNA access is regulated by nucleosomes,” Luger said. “I am proud to have contributed a bit of beauty and knowledge to the world.”

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The award recognizes CU Boulder biochemist’s career dedication to the study of nucleosomes and groundbreaking discoveries.

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Researcher addresses the challenges of species survival

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 29 Jan 2026 23:13:58 +0000

Researcher addresses the challenges of species survival Rachel Sauer Thu, 01/29/2026 - 16:13

In his Feb. 17 Distinguished Research Lecture, CU Boulder Professor Dan Doak will address the question, ‘What can we do that will actually help species survive?’

Anyone who’s ever encountered a fly or a housecat might be surprised to learn that most species on Earth are naturally rare, and that truly widespread, common species are, in fact, the exception rather than the rule. Because of this, understanding and helping species persist is a bigger challenge than most people realize.

New pressures from human activity have pushed many species closer to extinction, and many now need active management to survive. However, effective conservation isn’t just about understanding a species' biology; it also depends on management choices and political decisions that shape what’s possible and how scientific information is used.

Dan Doak, a CU Boulder professor of environmental studies and Byers Family Chair in Environmental Studies, has studied species survival and climate change throughout his research career.

This will be the focus of Dan Doak’s Feb. 17 Distinguished Research Lecture “Saving Species with Science: 30 Years of Conservation Setbacks and Successes.”

Throughout his career, Doak, a �Թ�� of Colorado Boulder professor of environmental studies, and his collaborators have worked with endangered species worldwide—from sea otters and spotted owls to gorgonian corals and alpine plants—asking a simple but urgent question: How do we better understand endangerment and what can we do to help endangered species survive?

While Doak was committed to conservation from a young age, it was toward the end of graduate school that he realized that combining an appreciation of species’ biological intricacies with mathematical modeling approaches could yield important insights into the analysis of conservation problems and the formulation of solutions that can direct species management. Since then, a major part of his research has focused on rare species management, including the development of general approaches and addressing the needs of specific species.

In his Distinguished Research Lecture, Doak will share three stories showing how conservation science works in the real world, where ecological research meets human values, policies and tough choices. Through the California condor, a rare Rocky Mountain wildflower and the island fox, he will explore how our understanding of extinction risk has improved even as challenges facing wildlife mount.

�Թ�� Dan Doak

Dan Doak is a professor and the Byers Family Chair in the Department of Environmental Studies.

Distinguished Research Lecture

What: 127th Distinguished Research Lecture, Saving Species with Science: 30 Years of Conservation Setbacks and Successes

Who: Professor Dan Doak of the Department of Environmental Studies

When: 4-5 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 17, followed by a Q&A and reception

Where: �Թ��'s Hall and Auditorium, Center for Academic Success and Engagement (CASE)

Learn more

He earned his PhD at the �Թ�� of Washington and was a professor at both the �Թ�� of California Santa Cruz and the �Թ�� of Wyoming before joining CU Boulder in 2012.

His research features the development and use of modeling methods to better understand ecological patterns and processes and field work that investigates the ecological dynamics of multiple plant and animal species. This research includes work on the conservation and management of endangered species, climate change impacts on wild species and communities and basic research on species interactions and population dynamics.

In the first of these areas, Doak has worked to better understand the degree of endangerment and the most effective management methods for species including sea otters, island foxes, California condors, Mediterranean purple gorgonian corals and multiple rare plants.

His climate change research includes development of analysis and modeling methods, as well as a continuing 25-year study of arctic and alpine plants and their responses to climate across a wide latitude range in western North America.

Finally, he has worked with colleagues to better understand the ways that spatial patterns and changing contexts can shape ecological interactions. This area of work includes field studies of how termites create spatial structures in the East African savanna and the ways that changing ecological contexts can mediate the impacts of sea otters on kelp forest communities. 

�Թ�� the Distinguished Research Lectureship

The Distinguished Research Lectureship is among the highest honors given by faculty to a faculty colleague at CU Boulder. Each year, the Research and Innovation Office requests nominations from faculty for this award, and a faculty review panel recommends one or more faculty members as recipients.

The lectureship honors tenured faculty members, research professors (associate or full) or adjoint professors who have been with CU Boulder for at least five years and are widely recognized for a distinguished body of academic or creative achievement and prominence, as well as contributions to the educational and service missions of CU Boulder. Each recipient typically gives a lecture in the fall or spring following selection and receives a $2,000 honorarium.

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In his Feb. 17 Distinguished Research Lecture, CU Boulder Professor Dan Doak will address the question, ‘What can we do that will actually help species survive?’

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Top photo: Yajun Dong/Pexels

What are the little red dots deep in space?

Rachel Sauer — Fri, 16 Jan 2026 15:28:58 +0000

What are the little red dots deep in space? Rachel Sauer Fri, 01/16/2026 - 08:28

Blake Puscher

�Թ�� of Colorado researchers work with an international team to uncover more about the mysterious objects detected by the James Webb Space Telescope

As the largest telescope in outer space, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has been able to view celestial objects that are too dim or distant for its predecessors to detect. As a result, it has helped astronomers look deeper into topics like galaxy formation. However, the JWST can see only so far, and at the edge of its vision some of the most interesting recent astronomical observations have been made, in the form of strange, seemingly impossible objects.

They are small, red-tinted spots of light and were descriptively named little red dots (LRDs). Information on them is limited, though they are known to be extremely dense and to have existed twelve to thirteen billion years ago (for context, the Big Bang was slightly less than fourteen billion years ago). What can be seen of them now are afterimages, because looking so far into space also means looking back in time; even light takes a while to make it between galaxies. There are several theories about what LRDs are, but none of them can completely reconcile the evidence with established astronomical principles.

CU Boulder astrophysicist Erica Nelson and an international team of research colleagues found evidence that the little red dot dubbed Irony is a growing supermassive black hole, which suggests that at least some of the other little red dots are as well.

Erica Nelson, an assistant professor of astrophysics at the �Թ�� of Colorado Boulder and one of the researchers who first discovered LRDs, recently published a study that focuses on a specific LRD dubbed Irony. The study was co-led by Francesco D’Eugenio at Cambridge �Թ�� and included CU Boulder PhD student Vanessa Brown as well as an international team of scientists. They found evidence that Irony is a growing supermassive black hole, which suggests that at least some of the other LRDs are as well.

Little red dots

According to Nelson, there are two main interpretations of what little red dots are. “Either they are really massive galaxies, or they are growing supermassive black holes,” she says. The two can be difficult to distinguish because both are very luminous. Massive galaxies are luminous because they typically have more stars, but “contrary to what most people expect, supermassive black holes are incredibly luminous” too, Nelson continues, “especially when they’re growing.”

Either of these possibilities would have implications for our understanding of the history of the universe. If LRDs are massive galaxies, “it could mean that early galaxies grow much more rapidly than we think they should be able to,” Nelson explains. That could be because their stars formed in a different way than how scientists have observed stars to form previously.

If they are supermassive black holes, they could be a phase in the development of black holes long hypothesized by CU Boulder professor Mitch Begelman, though never observed. “For a long time, we have tried to understand how supermassive black holes can grow so fast,” Nelson says. If LRDs represent an early phase of supermassive black hole growth, it could help narrow down the possibilities for how they form, “which has been a mystery for a really, really long time.”

Regardless of what the answer is, if it falls into one of these interpretations, it will provide insight into a broader question: whether galaxies or supermassive black holes formed first. That matters because most large galaxies, including the Milky Way, seem to have supermassive black holes at their centers. So, even if LRDs are black holes, that fact will have implications for galaxy formation.

The Irony is…

Irony is the name of the LRD with the deepest medium-resolution JWST spectroscopy to date. Spectroscopy is a way of determining what elements objects are made of, along with other characteristics like density and heat, based on the light coming from them. Irony is an incredibly bright object, giving off more light than other LRDs, so the researchers were able to get more details about it using spectroscopy. Upon examination, these details reveal several oddities.

Images of little red dots captured by the James Webb Space Telescope. (Photo: NASA)

“One is that it was the first time we have detected forbidden iron lines in any distant object,” Nelson says. Spectroscopy uses lines in a spectrum to represent the types of light coming from an object, and this pattern of lines corresponds to iron. The reason they are considered forbidden is technical and not immediately relevant; their detection is significant because scientists do not expect to find iron in something as old as an LRD. “The universe began with just hydrogen and helium,” Nelson explains. “There was no carbon, no oxygen and no iron.”

Heavier elements like iron were produced in the cores of stars over several generations through nuclear fusion. When older generations of stars went supernova, they launched heavier elements than what they formed out of into space, to be picked up by newer generations of stars and fused into even heavier elements. “So, seeing a lot of iron at very early cosmic times means that there had to have been a lot of generations of star formation very rapidly,” Nelson says. Iron in particular is the heaviest element that a star can create during normal hydrogen fusion (the others are only made during supernovae), so it is strange to find iron in older objects.

Another oddity is the strength of Irony’s Balmer breaks, which are breaks in the spectrum of light coming from an object. “The thing we have started to find in some of these little red dots, and especially in Irony, is that the breaks are too strong and too smooth to be produced by stars,” Nelson explains. “No model we can generate produces a break like that, so we think, instead of the atmospheres of a bunch of old stars, it is actually this single atmosphere around a growing supermassive black hole.”

These features suggest that Irony is a supermassive black hole rather than a massive galaxy. Other LRDs may not be the same as Irony, but making this determination about Irony strengthens the argument that some LRDs are supermassive black holes.

Black hole sun

All of this raises a question: What does it mean for Irony and potentially other LRDs to be black holes if LRDs do not fit cleanly into the category of either galaxies or black holes? “The kind of supermassive black holes that these things might be, and that a subset of them likely are, is nothing like any supermassive black holes we’ve seen before,” Nelson answers. They could be a new class of object, called black hole stars or quasi-stars that have been hypothesized by CU Boulder professors Mitch Begelman and Jason Dexter, that in some ways look like incredibly large stars but function differently.

“Instead of being powered by nuclear fusion like our sun and all other stars are, they’re being powered by the energy that is radiated when matter falls into the supermassive black hole,” Nelson explains. This energy comes from the gravitational potential of the objects. Similar to how charging a battery allows it to release energy later, moving an object into a place like the edge of a cliff “charges” it with energy that will be released when it falls. This gravitational potential would be especially strong because of how much gravity black holes of this size exert.

“It’s been a really cool time in extragalactic astrophysics because a big segment of our field is pitching in and collaborating to try to figure out a true mystery that the universe has shown us."

Another telling detail is the mention of an atmosphere around the supermassive black hole, which is not part of the common image of a black hole. “Normally,” Nelson says, “you have the supermassive black hole, and then an accretion disk around it.” The accretion disk is the glowing ring and halo that has appeared in many depictions of black holes in popular culture. “The new theory of these black hole stars is that there is almost spherical accretion.” However, this is a more theoretical aspect of the research, and there are different opinions about the structure that this type of black hole would have.

More research is planned to help resolve these ambiguities, and several JWST proposals for next year are designed to help. Two major points that Nelson identifies are collecting data on more LRDs to understand the variations that exist between them and collecting new data to see if previously observed LRDs have changed since they were first documented.

“Maybe some of them are massive galaxies, maybe some of them are black hole stars, maybe some of them are something else entirely,” she says. “It also helps to have information at different times because things as compact as black holes should show variation on very short timescales, so that will tell us a lot about the nature of the object.

“It’s been a really cool time in extragalactic astrophysics,” Nelson continues, “because a big segment of our field is pitching in and collaborating to try to figure out a true mystery that the universe has shown us. It’s also a strange time, because a lot of funding has been cut from astrophysics in particular. But with support, it could be a golden era in astrophysics. A lot of new discoveries will be made with James Webb. We really are just at the beginning of the data that we’re getting.”

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�Թ�� of Colorado researchers work with an international team to uncover more about the mysterious objects detected by the James Webb Space Telescope.

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Inferring the evolutionary tree of antelope ground squirrels

Rachel Sauer — Fri, 16 Jan 2026 15:25:19 +0000

Inferring the evolutionary tree of antelope ground squirrels Rachel Sauer Fri, 01/16/2026 - 08:25

Jeff Mitton

Desert dwellers offer evidence that genes carried by an individual store information that literally reaches back millions of years

Sitting in my campsite at Goblin Valley State Park, I saw an antelope ground squirrel standing erect on its back feet, which I found amusing. I soon found that this was a common posture evoked by vigilance. Antelope ground squirrels are in the genus Ammospermophilus, which has five species, all in North America. I was watching white-tailed antelope ground squirrels, A. leucurus, the only antelope ground squirrel in Colorado and Utah.

Antelope ground squirrels (AGS) occur primarily in deserts, including Great Basin, San Joaquin, Mojave, Peninsular, Sonoran and Chihuahuan. They also occur in dryland environments like sagebrush communities and some grasslands. Most species of ground squirrels hibernate, but living in relatively warm and dry environments allows AGS to be active year round.

AGS have several adaptations that allow them to live in the deserts of the western United States and Mexico. Later that day, in the heat of the afternoon, AGS were walking with their white tails coiled above their backs to shed their own portable shade. They would also linger in the shade of a piñon pine, dumping heat by stretching out their legs and pressing their bellies onto the soil. This posture is used frequently in their burrows, between bouts of foraging on the surface. Their body temperatures can rise to 108 to 110 degrees F without damage, much higher than most mammals.

AGS are adapted to deserts or drylands and A. leucurus occupies the greatest distribution, including Oregon, Idaho, California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico and the Baja California Peninsula. Background reading turned up a paper in a scientific journal that nicely demonstrated, with AGS, how biologists can utilize DNA sequences to infer an evolutionary tree of the genus, and to not only estimate the date that the genus first arose but also infer when and where each species arose.

Antelope ground squirrels occur primarily in deserts and also in dryland environments like sagebrush communities and some grasslands. (Photo: Jeff Mitton)

From 10 million years ago to the end of the Miocene, 5.33 million years ago, a single lineage sustained the ancestors of AGS, but approximately 4 million years ago, as deserts were spreading and developing in the Southwest, the lineage split into three clades. That is, from a solitary trunk the tree of AGS sprouted three branches. A. interpres evolved east of the Sea of Cortez, A. leucurus south ranged from the southern tip of Baja to the middle of the peninsula and A. leucurus north ranged from the middle of Baja to Oregon and Idaho.

Fewer than 1 million years ago, another three species evolved. Pioneers from the leucurus south clade colonized two small islands east of Baja in the Sea of Cortez and evolved into A. insularis. The leucurus north form spread into the San Joaquin Desert in California and evolved into A. nelsoni, and subsequently the AGS in Arizona and northern Mexico evolved into A. harrisii. A. leucurus still ranges from the southern tip of Baja to Oregon and Idaho, but within A. leucurus nine subspecies are recognized today.

Dates on the AGS phylogenetic tree were estimated with mutation rates in three genes and with fossil data. A. insularis, A. harrisii and A nelsonii evolved recently, with an average of 0.32 million years ago. On a different continent, modern humans evolved around 0.20 to 0.30 million years ago—approximately the same time.

At first, the differentiation of A. leucurus into northern and southern forms or clades seems curious, but similar vicariances or taxonomic boundaries have been noted in systematic and biogeographic studies of other mammals, birds, fish and insects. The barrier has been attributed to the Vizcaíno Seaway, which is now the Vizcaíno Desert. While systematists agree that there was a barrier to gene flow near the middle of the Baja Peninsula, estimates from different studies yield different estimates, which vary from 1 to 3 million years ago. One description of the modern desert mentions multiple marine terraces, but another states flatly that there is no convincing evidence of an open, freely flowing seaway. Perhaps the marine terraces were formed by recurrent, ephemeral lagoons or marshes that were sufficient to disrupt gene flow.

Studies like this one emphasize the point that the genes carried by an individual store information that literally reaches back millions of years. Historical biogeographers working with genetic data in animals or plants or microbes can peer through the roiling mists of time to infer relationships among species, to detect speciations and extinctions and to map the migrations of species driven by glacial cycles. Similar techniques to those used in this study of AGS were used to map the migration routes that brought humans from southern Africa to every continent, archipelago and island in the world. Furthermore, our genome carries the evidence that humans hybridized with Neanderthals in Europe and the Middle East and Denisovans in Siberia.

Jeff Mitton is a professor emeritus in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the �Թ�� of Colorado Boulder. His column, "Natural Selections," is also printed in the Boulder Daily Camera.

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Desert dwellers offer evidence that genes carried by an individual store information that literally reaches back millions of years.

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Listening to the preacher: Martin Luther King Jr. on collective morality

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 15 Jan 2026 18:21:16 +0000

Listening to the preacher: Martin Luther King Jr. on collective morality Rachel Sauer Thu, 01/15/2026 - 11:21

Anshul Rai Sharma

Among the many reasons that Martin Luther King Jr.'s legacy matters is because it refuses cynicism and moral fatigue

Jan. 19 marks Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a day to commemorate King’s life and an opportunity to revisit his political practice. In this current moment when crises intersect—as economic inequality widens, housing and healthcare insecurity grows and geopolitical uncertainties strengthen—many of us experience a quieter crisis of moral fatigue. The scale of what is wrong can numb our attention.

One of the many reasons King’s legacy matters is because it refuses cynicism. Fifty-eight years after his death, we are faced with the same question as he: How do we turn “this fatigue of despair into buoyancy of hope,” to use the preacher’s own phrase? In an era saturated with calls to save the world through individual moral ambition, King's approach may offer better and more productive alternatives by inviting a shared reflection on moral fatigue across societies, from the United States to India.

Anshul Rai Sharma is a PhD student in the CU Boulder Department of Geography.

As a national leader, King was always alert to that which people share beneath their divisions. In his speeches, he always articulated a common humanity: "We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny." This network of mutuality made him see social divisions as unnatural and morally indefensible.

As a young man, his train journey from Atlanta to Connecticut allowed him to witness how Black people sat separate from whites up to the Mason-Dixon line. But north of it, that barrier disappeared, revealing the arbitrariness of racial divisions and setting him on a lifelong path toward reconciliation. If, as W.E.B. Du Bois famously observed, the problem of the century was the problem of the color line, King's response was to wage a struggle against this separation through nonviolence.

In doing so, King was informed by an amalgam of influences, from Gandhi’s philosophy and practice of nonviolence to Walter Rauschenbusch’s social gospel. King wrestled with each philosophical idea and method as he exercised his own conscience. Added to this was his experience in organizing—from Montgomery’s bus boycott to the Poor People’s Campaign in Chicago, each, in its way, shaping and expanding King’s conception of humanity. The result was a moral geography without borders—one that may offer a way out of fatigue.

King’s life and practice

Throughout his life, King presented groups with moral demands attuned to their social position. From African Americans, he demanded nonviolent discipline in protest, a rigorous collective practice capable of transforming suffering into political force. From northern white liberals, he asked for more than verbal agreement with racial equality. As he put it, “It is one thing to agree with the goal of integration legally; it is another to commit oneself positively and actively to the ideal of integration.” From Southern white moderates, he demanded courage to overcome fear, to break with social consensus and to persuade others.

I read this strategy, unique to King, as a widening of moral responsibility. To separate morality from social life was, in his view, to empty it of force.

Similarly, individual ethical commitments that remained confined to belief, civility or legal agreement were insufficient because they left unjust structures intact. Instead of placing morality above or apart from social relations, King embedded it within them.

The result was a slow and gradual forging of solidarities, which transcended religious and class divisions. The Montgomery bus boycott, for instance, brought together Baptists, Methodists, Lutherans, Presbyterians and Episcopalians. Though some clergy at times resisted King’s call to address social realities—instead suggesting that such matters be left to courts—King reminded them that “[a]ny religion that professes to be concerned about the souls of men and is not concerned about the slums that damn them, the economic conditions that strangle them and the social conditions that cripple them is a spiritually moribund religion awaiting burial.” In doing so, King redefined the church’s role as a moral actor accountable to the material conditions of people’s lives.

During his 1959 visit to India, Martin Luther King Jr. was introduced at a public gathering as a fellow “untouchable." He was featured on a stamp in India in 1969. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

His moral appeal transcended class divisions as physicians, teachers and lawyers stood alongside domestic workers and laborers in marches, united by King's vision of common life. Thus, social uplift became a shared undertaking in which no group stood outside responsibility. By grounding ethics in social struggle, King laid the foundation for a politics aimed at social reform.

‘I am an untouchable’

Social reform, in any credible sense, must begin from the lived realities of those most affected by injustice and confront the structures that sustain inequality. Not only did King’s philosophy align with Gandhi’s non-violence, it was also informed by a deep encounter with caste as a form of structural oppression.

During his 1959 visit to India, King was introduced at a public gathering as a fellow “untouchable,” a term then used to describe Dalits, those placed at the bottom of caste hierarchy and historically subjected to extreme social exclusion. Initially taken aback by the comparison, King reflected on its meaning: “Yes,” he said, “I am an untouchable, and every Negro in the United States of America is an untouchable.” He recognized the shared condition of social degradation produced by social systems. Such systems were deemed moral evils that demanded organized dismantling. Speaking of race and caste, he continued, “We have a moral mandate to get rid of this evil system.”

In this respect, King’s project of racial integration and equality resonates intimately with that of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, the early-20th-century Dalit intellectual and political leader and principal architect of modern India’s constitution. Born into an “untouchable” caste, Ambedkar argued that political freedom without social reform was hollow and that democracy in independent India could not survive unless caste was dismantled at its roots.

While King is most often read alongside Gandhi, more enduring intellectual and strategic affinities lie with Ambedkar. Both leaders share historic trajectories, where King, the son of a Black preacher, rose to become a national leader of the U.S. Civil Rights movement; and Ambedkar, born into a Dalit family, became India’s foremost leader of the oppressed castes. These parallel lives help us see how both thinkers understood social oppression as systemic and placed social reform at the center of a nation’s political life. In 2017, Martin Luther King III, during a visit to India, emphasized the shared legacy of King and Ambedkar.

Moral ambition in contemporary times

Martin Luther King Jr. was intimately aware of how working people and the poor possess moral agency even when systems limit their options, and he campaigned to make people see this for themselves. This recognition is the beginning of self-respect, notes CU Boulder scholar Anshul Rai Sharma. (Photo: U.S. Information Agency Press and Publications Service)

It is against this background that contemporary articulations of morality appear inadequate. Recent calls for ethical renewal often focus on individual responsibility while leaving social relations largely unexamined. Consider Dutch author Rutger Bregman's 2025 book Moral Ambition, which asks people to dedicate their time to improving the world—yet his framework reveals assumptions that, while indicative of our times, need to be reviewed.

Bregman argues that scientists, doctors, entrepreneurs, engineers and lawyers must become "morally ambitious" and that this is the pathway to solving the world’s most pressing issues. But his framework dismisses ordinary people, describing them as "herd animals" who "do what we're taught to do, accept what we're handed, believe what we're told is true."

Where King recognized the masses as capable of spiritual awakening, Bergman’s articulation of morality strips them of agency, seeing ordinary people as passive followers "sticking to the script that goes with our kind of life."

In thinking about this notion of moral ambition, it is important to remember that modern life still divides labor between activities that are or may seem as menial and routine and those that are seen as creative and ideal. A major portion of working people, especially caste minorities in the Global South and racial minorities in the United States, fall into the former category. To label such populations as "herds" or suggest they lack moral ambition refuses genuine engagement with the actual forces that shape people's lives, forces deeply felt and understood by both Ambedkar and King.

A portion of King’s enduring appeal lies in this recognition. Ordinary people face real economic and social constraints that shape their choices. These may include the struggle to make rent, raise children, navigate discrimination and survive without reliable state support. King was intimately aware of how working people and the poor possess moral agency even when systems limit their options, and he campaigned to make people see this for themselves. This recognition is the beginning of self-respect.

In his sermons and speeches, he spoke to the part of our being which is a gift, our ability to live dignified lives despite and against inequalities and oppressive structures. Through King’s words, people could see the constraints but also the real meaning of their lives, encouraging them to organize and to act. From Washington to Mumbai, from university halls to churches, this was the transformation that the preacher from Atlanta sought.

This is King's enduring gift, a moral framework that refuses to separate the personal from the social, that sees ordinary people as agents and that understands justice as something we create together rather than await from authorities or technocratic experts. As we face our own moment of moral fatigue, perhaps the question we should ask ourselves is not how to become more “morally ambitious” but how to bring home and amplify the latent moral energies that do not promise rapid or universal solutions, but that remain the quiet foundation of how communities endure, resist and remake the world.

Anshul Rai Sharma is a PhD student in the Department of Geography at the �Թ�� of Colorado Boulder. His research focuses on caste, urban dispossession and housing in the city of Bengaluru, India.

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Among the many reasons that Martin Luther King Jr.'s legacy matters is because it refuses cynicism and moral fatigue.

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Top photo: The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in Washington, D.C. on Aug. 28, 1963. (Photo: Agence France-Presse/Wikimedia Commons)

Couple capture the wonders of wildlife (and wolverines!)

Rachel Sauer — Tue, 13 Jan 2026 16:50:39 +0000

Couple capture the wonders of wildlife (and wolverines!) Rachel Sauer Tue, 01/13/2026 - 09:50

Clint Talbott

Having stepped away from high-powered careers, alumnus Scot Bealer and his wife, Lea Frye, now focus on what they love, writing about and photographing Rocky Mountain wildlife

Scot Bealer doesn’t think of himself as a writer, but he’s written one book and co-written another. The way he tells it, he just communicates about what he loves: wildlife and nature.

His partner in publishing and in life has, quite literally, the same focus. She’s a photographer.

Together, Bealer and Lea Frye, who are married, have published a new book titled Wildlife Through the Lens: Animal Stories from Montana and the Rocky Mountains, which fuses their lifelong passions for wildlife, photography and storytelling. Last year, they teamed up on Most Trout Don’t Read: Lessons from Time on the Water.

Scot Bealer (left), a 1986 CU Boulder biology graduate, and his wife, Lea Frye (right), recently published Wildlife Through the Lens: Animal Stories from Montana and the Rocky Mountains, which fuses their lifelong passions for wildlife, photography and storytelling.

His path from college biology student to author was not exactly linear. Here’s how it happened:

Bealer graduated from the �Թ�� of Colorado Boulder in 1986 with a BA in biology, cum laude, and went on to earn an MBA from Texas McCombs School of Business.

When he came to CU Boulder and majored in biology, he was initially baffled about why he had to take non-science courses. One of those courses was philosophy.

There were weekly writing assignments, and the professor returned Bealer’s first essay covered in red ink and bearing a “stunningly low grade.” The professor invited students who didn’t do well to see him during office hours. Bealer did that.

The professor told Bealer that he clearly knew the material and could talk about it, but writing was another story. “This will make a difference in your life, if you take the time to learn how to get your thoughts down on paper,” the professor told Bealer.

By the end of the semester, the professor praised Bealer’s progress, noting, “I hope you see how much you’ve changed in your writing.”

Bealer calls that encouragement “transformational.”

Science, fly fishing and business

At CU Boulder, he was mentored by biology professors Carl Bock and David Armstrong, who encouraged him to develop critical thinking and communication skills. Armstrong was Bealer’s advisor for his honors thesis.

After graduating from CU Boulder, Bealer joined a PhD program, thinking he’d go into academe. While in graduate school, though, Bealer took a job with the L.L. Bean fly-fishing school, where he worked with Dave Whitlock, who wrote and illustrated the L.L. Bean Fly-Fishing Handbook. He had such a satisfying time in Maine that he stayed at L.L. Bean and didn’t return to the PhD program.

An American badger featured in Wildlife Through the Lens: Animal Stories from Montana and the Rocky Mountains. (Photo: Lea Frye)

Also at the L.L. Bean Fly-Fishing School, Bealer met Brock Apfel, who would become a great friend and mentor and who encouraged him to go into the business world. Bealer got an MBA and launched a business career that went “pretty well,” he notes.

Bealer eventually rose to vice president of worldwide sales and marketing for Universal Air Travel Plan (UATP), a global payment network and expense management system for corporate air travel. Prior to that, he worked at Continental Airlines in revenue management.

At Continental Airlines, he crunched data to figure out when one person might pay $1,000 for a seat even if the person in the next seat paid $200. “Well, it was all about demand. And I was very good at analyzing statistics to predict demand on future flights,” he notes, adding: “The foundation in statistical work I did at CU is really what drove me to succeed in the realm I did from a business standpoint.”

Bealer found that in many ways working at UATP was that “dream job” with good pay and a chance to travel around the world, “which in one sense was spectacular. I got to do business trips to New Zealand, where I could bring my fly-fishing gear and take a few days” to fish. But constant travel is “not healthy,” and he stepped away from the dream job, eventually returning to work as a fly-fishing guide in Salida, Colorado.

“And I was back to doing what I loved. It was really kind of a fun circle, and it worked for both me and Lea, who also did very well in her business career. … We were kind of spendthrifts, so when we were ready to go do stuff that we loved, we could pay down debt and live on what we made doing jobs that paid less.”

“We’re working 60 to 80 hours a week on our book and photography ... we’re getting about 2% of the income we used to get, but we love everything we do,” notes CU Boulder alumnus Scot Bealer of producing Wildlife Through the Lens: Animal Stories from Montana and the Rocky Mountains. (Cover photograph: Lea Frye)

A shared love of the outdoors

Bealer and Frye both grew up loving nature and wildlife, which they continue to explore together:

They met in Texas, but their families are both from Pennsylvania, and both families enjoyed spotting animals in the wild. “Lea’s passion was wildlife photography ... She loved taking pictures of animals with little instamatic cameras.” Over time, those cameras would get bigger and better.

“Her mom and dad both loved taking pictures, and when she was 8 or 9, her dad built a dark room in their basement. She remembers going down and helping him with that archaic technology called developing film.”

One thing that cemented their bond was that Bealer and Frye loved spending time outside. “And if we saw an animal, we were happy to stop and watch it and see what it was doing. We might even wander off trail for miles because what it was doing was interesting, and we stayed with it.”

Bealer notes that many people love animals but are satisfied looking at pictures and getting outside a few times a year. “If they see something, cool; that’s exciting, and it shows up and then it goes away. Lea and I love to spend time watching what the animals do. We think seeing their little neat, quirky behaviors that are part of their life is just wonderful.”

Hitting the jackpot

But seeing and photographing wildlife can require a lot of time waiting and watching. Sometimes, the investment pays off. Last summer, Bealer and Frye were in the Montana wilderness when they spied (and photographed) a wolverine.

Such a sight is extraordinarily rare. Bealer calls it a “once-in-a-lifetime” encounter. He also calls it a “lottery-ticket kind of win.” (The wolverine photos are in Wildlife Through the Lens.)

“But our time in the field buys us a lot of lottery tickets. We still got lucky. I know people who have lived here all their lives; they’re serious outdoors people like I am. They still haven’t seen one.”

Then there are badgers, which few people see. Frye has photos of them, too. They spend a lot of time in prairie-dog colonies (because prairie dogs are a favorite food) but are less visible than prairie dogs. Bealer noted that Frye has an eagle eye for things like plumes of dirt rising from prairie-dog towns.

For instance, as they were driving, they noticed a puff of dirt flying into the air. “Most people would not have seen that or cared if they did because it was windy and there were lots of little dust plumes.”

But Bealer and Frye stopped the car. “Five plumes later a badger pops his head up. If you didn't stop when you saw that first plume, you wouldn’t have seen it.”

Bird lovers and ‘birders’

Bealer and Frye love to see birds, and Wildlife Through the Lens includes arresting images of birds. Still, they pause when they’re asked if they are “birders.”

Bealer puts it this way: Those who call themselves birders can be focused on completing “life lists” of birds they’ve seen and on traveling great distances to find an individual species. Meanwhile, “we don’t find as much excitement in seeing 10 new birds. We find the excitement in finding one bird and then watching it do something really cool.”

Nonetheless, Frye is keen to photograph the dance-on-water moves of the western grebe. Bealer says they’ve seen the grebes dancing on water. “We just didn’t get the pictures yet.” They’re planning to return to that same place next spring to try again, so one might call them “birder-adjacent.”

Among the wildlife that Scot Bealer and Lea Frye document are bighorn sheep. (Photo: Lea Frye)

Among the many other species they chronicle and display in their book are bighorn sheep. Bighorn males are known for butting heads (literally) in the rutting season. They’re less known for another contest of wills: kicking each other in the, um, privates.

In the book, Bealer notes that Frye was hesitant to publish the images. “But over time I convinced her that I couldn’t be the only adult in the world that still had the sense of humor of a 13-year-old.”

As soon as she printed the first one, he adds, “it became a hit.”

Bealer notes that he and Frye are a synergistic team.

“We can spend hours watching stuff without saying a whole lot,” he says, noting that they are both skilled at finding animals. “Lea is just hell on wheels finding nests. She can hear in a range that I can’t. And if we’re hiking and she hears baby birds, it’s like she’ll just stop and look up like there’s a nest and I haven’t heard a thing.”

When they make such a find, they’ll back away and make a note of where the nest was. They want to see the parents and watch the young grow.

Their previous book, Most Trout Don’t Read, reflects Bealer’s philosophy that fishing should be fun.

The book’s title “was a one-liner I used when teaching beginners about fly fishing,” he says, adding: “It doesn’t have to be complicated. You can take six fly patterns and fish a whole lifetime and catch lots of fish. You don’t need to be a master caster.”

Lifelong learning and reflection

From his career in business, Bealer saw the value of a broad education and critical thinking, especially in leadership roles:

“People coming out of school with technical degrees fill immediate needs, but for advanced roles, you need people who can think creatively and solve problems,” he says. “I became a huge fan of looking for people with a liberal arts education.”

Now retired, Scot and Lea continue to pursue their passions with enthusiasm and humility: “We’re working 60 to 80 hours a week on our book and photography ... we’re getting about 2% of the income we used to get, but we love everything we do.”

Even the writing.

“I would not go so far as to say that I’m a writer,” Bealer says, adding: “I translate oral stories into reasonable texts that hopefully people understand.”

Black bear

Northern pygmy owl

Mountain goats

Grizzly bear

Photos by Lea Frye

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Having stepped away from high-powered careers, alumnus Scot Bealer and his wife, Lea Frye, now focus on what they love, writing about and photographing Rocky Mountain wildlife.

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Top image: wolverine on a riverbank (Photo: Lea Frye)

Reading the past, engineering the future

Julie Chiron — Mon, 22 Dec 2025 22:34:31 +0000

Reading the past, engineering the future Julie Chiron Mon, 12/22/2025 - 15:34

Julie Chiron

CU Boulder geobiologist Lizzy Trower received a Simons Foundation Pivot Fellowship, allowing her to acquire new tools and redirect her deep-time expertise toward urgent environmental challenges

For most of her career, Lizzy Trower has been a time traveler.

The associate professor of geological sciences at the �Թ�� of Colorado Boulder studies rocks that are hundreds of millions of years old to decode how microbial life first shaped our planet, such as oxygenating our atmosphere and paving the way for animal life.

But as a field researcher, Trower has found herself increasingly aware of the present and yearning to look toward the future. In the field, she witnessed pristine microbial mounds in Great Salt Lake frequently exposed and stressed by megadrought, and hurricane scars etched across fragile ecosystems in the Turks and Caicos. Those experiences reshaped her scientific priorities.

CU Boulder scientist Lizzy Trower

"The more time I spend in modern environments, the harder it is to ignore the challenges that are happening now related to climate," says Trower. "The questions I work on in Earth’s history are really interesting, but sometimes they don’t feel quite as relevant or urgent."

The features at Great Salt Lake have thrived underwater for more than 10,000 years. Long fascinating to geoscientists as a way to understand what they might see in rocks, these windows into the past are now under threat. Trower worries that some of these systems may simply disappear, no longer available for study or teaching.

"It's shocking to be in a moment where these things that have been around for thousands of years and have been useful and cool for generations of scientists might not be there much longer,” she says.

Increasingly, conversations in the field have shifted from how these systems grow to how they degrade when exposed for long periods above the lake’s surface. "The destruction and degradation weren’t something we talked about when I was a grad student," Trower says.

Unbounded exploration leads to breakthroughs

As a newly named 2025 Simons Foundation Pivot Fellow, Trower is undertaking a bold research shift and acquiring new skills to apply her deep knowledge of geobiology to help address today’s urgent environmental challenges.

The highly competitive Pivot Fellowship supports midcareer scientists who are seeking to "pivot" into a new discipline, offering a year of immersive mentorship, training and resources for scholars to acquire entirely new skills. The program celebrates the idea that breakthroughs often emerge when researchers cross disciplinary boundaries, a principle that resonates with the College of Arts and Sciences emphasis on interdisciplinary exploration.

"I love experimentation, but I’m at a point where my ideas exceed my toolset. I want to culture microbes, design experiments and teach students how to work with them," says Trower. "It's rare to get dedicated time to develop new skills. I want my work to feel urgent, impactful, relevant — and this helps me move toward that."

Microbes in a headwind

Trower’s pivot centers on euendoliths—microbes that bore microscopic cavities into calcium carbonate minerals. In doing so, they generate alkalinity, a chemical process that raises pH and could counteract ocean acidification, one of the most pressing threats to marine ecosystems.

"What’s fascinating about these microbes is that they dissolve minerals to create tiny tunnel systems," says Trower. "But here’s what’s wild: they do this in places where dissolving these minerals should be thermodynamically unfavorable."

"In those environments, these minerals should be forming—not dissolving," says Trower. "So, I imagine these microbes like hikers walking into the headwind, stubbornly using a lot of energy to carve out tunnels even though the environment is against them."

If scientists can understand and harness this ability, the implications are far-reaching: targeted mitigation of ocean acidification, enhanced carbon removal strategies, improved wastewater treatment and even innovations in engineered living building materials.

A year outside the comfort zone

The science is still in its infancy. Only one euendolith has ever been isolated in pure culture, a cyanobacterium discovered on a Puerto Rican beach. Trower’s fellowship year will focus on building the toolkit to change that. Alongside microbial ecologist John Spear in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Colorado School of Mines, she will learn to culture environmental microbes, apply genomic tools and characterize the diversity and behavior of these organisms.

Beyond the lab, Trower’s pivot reflects a philosophical shift from basic science grounded in the past to applied research aimed at solutions. "My goal is to prepare students for impactful careers beyond academia," she says. Research shows that today’s undergraduates value altruistic motivators, helping people and the environment, when choosing STEM careers. Trower’s new direction aligns with those ideals, offering students opportunities to address climate challenges through innovative science.

The Simons Foundation announced the 2025 Pivot Fellows on Nov. 13, highlighting researchers who pursue bold, interdisciplinary ideas and acquire new tools that can open entirely new avenues of discovery. For Trower, the fellowship is more than a career milestone, it’s a chance to honor the memory of a close CU Boulder colleague whose expertise she hoped to draw on. The loss of her friend and esteemed researcher inspired her to gain new expertise to continue the work herself.

For a geobiologist who has spent her career translating the planet’s oldest stories, the pivot is less a departure than a continuation, carrying the lessons from billions of years ago into a future that urgently needs them.

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Research charts the pathway from thought to emotion

Rachel Sauer — Mon, 15 Dec 2025 22:00:35 +0000

Research charts the pathway from thought to emotion Rachel Sauer Mon, 12/15/2025 - 15:00

Alexandra Phelps

CU Boulder scientist Roselinde Kaiser and research colleagues seek to understand the connection between executive functioning and mood problems

You’ve just missed your test. Thoughts about how you missed it keep circling around in your head and won’t stop. These thoughts begin to disrupt your everyday life by changing the way you approach tasks. You can’t shake the blame you’re putting on yourself for missing this test, and now your mood has dropped.

This pattern is just one of the pathways that Roselinde Kaiser, a �Թ�� of Colorado Boulder associate professor of psychology and neuroscience, and research colleagues Quynh Nguyen and Hannah Snyder at Brandeis �Թ�� tested in research recently published in the journal Anxiety, Stress & Coping.

In this study, led by graduate student Nguyen, researchers aimed to understand the pathway between executive functioning (EF) and mood problems, and found that poor EF creates risk for developing depression and mood problems. EF is an umbrella term that refers to an individual’s ability to pursue goals and adapt to change. The discovery that this pathway is what links EF and mood problems is significant because it creates a foundation for researchers and mental health professionals to develop interventions that can help treat people.

CU Boulder scientist Roselinde Kaiser and her research colleagues aim to understand the pathway between executive functioning and mood problems.

Nguyen, Kaiser and Snyder’s data show that problems in EF can contribute to mood problems through a chain reaction: problems in EF predict dependent stress, which predicts repetitive negative thinking (RNT) and then lower mood. Dependent stressors are stressors that are generated by, at least partially, an individual’s behaviors. The stress that stems from these dependent stressors leads to RNT, which functions like a “washing machine, where the same negative self-oriented thoughts circle in your mind over and over again,” Kaiser says.

Kaiser, who is the director of the CU Boulder Center for Healthy Mind and Mood, and who leads the Research on Affective Disorders and Development (RADD) Lab, first became interested in psychology when she was an adolescent and had questions about human suffering. Her research centers around finding ways to support people during periods of suffering, boost individuals’ resilience, foster their recovery or even stop their suffering.

Kaiser, who received a combined PhD in clinical psychology and neuroscience from CU Boulder in 2013, is drawn to clinical psychology as “a corner of psychology that seems to be poised for the highest impact for the most people,” she says. Through her research she seeks to understand the mechanisms that cause mood problems and that could be potential targets for clinical prevention, especially among younger populations.

“My jam is working with adolescents and young adults, in part because it is this really potent period of risk, and it's also a period in which if we do deliver effective interventions, we can have a lifelong impact.”

Executive functioning and mood problems

Kaiser and her Brandeis colleagues began their recently published research from the previously established connection between EF and mood problems. “We know that EF is associated with mood problems,” Kaiser notes. “We see that within a number of different studies within our research group. How does that happen for individual people?”

EF is an essential part of being able to complete tasks. “College students are a really interesting sub-population because they are navigating a lot of stressors on their own, for the first time. The demands on EF are especially high for college students because they transitioned from—usually—living with adults and caregivers who help them with things like getting them to school on time, homework, laundry, getting their car checked out at the mechanic, grocery shopping, all of the kinds of things that we need to do on the daily, and that we need EF to do all of those things.”

Balancing higher-level academics and more extensive everyday tasks can become even more challenging if EF becomes negatively impacted. “If you look at the age of onset distribution,” she says, “what you’ll see is that more than 50% of the people who experience depression in their lifetime will say it started before the age of 23.”

The researchers’ study took place over a six-week period during the COVID-19 pandemic. Through online surveys every two weeks, their participant pool of 154 Brandeis �Թ�� undergraduate students logged their answers to questions that focused on the pathways the researchers were looking at. Participants’ ages ranged between 18-23, a span intentionally chosen because Kaiser and her colleagues were interested in understanding neurocognitive mechanisms of risk that are targets for intervention.

“We know that EF is associated with mood problems. We see that within a number of different studies within our research group. How does that happen for individual people?” says CU Boulder researcher Roselinde Kaiser.

Their research aimed to determine which, if either, of the pathways they designed based on the previously determined connection between EF and mood would provide a structure of how EF leads to mood problems.

In the first pathway, the scientists predicted that executive dysfunction has an indirect effect, or a mediation path, on depression. The concept is that executive dysfunction causes stress generation, which in turn causes RNT. That results in an individual's mood sinking, leading to depression. Kaiser and her colleagues hypothesized that poorer EF would prospectively predict higher RNT levels, and RNT in turn would predict higher depression levels.

In the second model, Kaiser and her colleagues substituted a dependent stressor for perceived uncontrollability of stressors. Perceived uncontrollability means that an individual believes that they lack the ability to change a stressful situation. This pathway looked at proving that if someone struggles with EF, then they have trouble keeping their actions and thoughts directed toward goals. This then causes an individual to feel that they have less control over stressors, in turn causing RNT and their mood to sink. For model two, the researchers hypothesized that poorer EF would predict lower perceived control over stress, and higher levels of RNT would subsequently predict higher depression levels.

“One of the reasons we’re interested in breaking down these pathways is it gives us better insight and more ideas into how we can help people by delivering effective clinical interventions, preventions or preventative programs,” Kaiser explains. “It’s hard to change executive functionability, but we can help buffer people against the dependent stressors by giving them skills and tools so that those types of stressors are less likely to happen.

“From where I sit as a clinical psychologist as well as a neuroscientist, that’s a good reason that we want to understand who is at risk, and how that risk happens.”

Kaiser and her colleagues found through the data they collected that the first pathway was supported but the second was not. There were a number of factors that could have resulted in the second pathway not being supported.

“One totally reasonable explanation is that we were just wrong—that it is not a pathway that is consistently observed among people with EF,” she says. Another possible explanation could be “that the era in which we were measuring these variables—during the COVID pandemic—everyone kind of had heightened uncontrollability in their world. What that might mean is that because everyone was generally feeling like the world was out of control, we weren’t able to pick up on just the people who are more likely to perceive stress as uncontrollable even in the absence of a global pandemic"

She adds that a third reason could be “the timing is just different if you perceive control or not. Maybe … uncontrollable perceptions happen on a slower time scale (their research was measured every two weeks) meaning that it may take longer for perceived uncontrollability to build up and then push your mood around. Or the opposite, it could happen more quickly. (Overall), we don’t know if any of those things could be true, and it certainly merits more exploration.”

“My jam is working with adolescents and young adults, in part because it is this really potent period of risk, and it's also a period in which if we do deliver effective interventions, we can have a lifelong impact.”

Getting mood snapshots

Neuroimaging, neurocognitive testing (computer testing, psychophysical testing, interviewing and self-reporting are all methods that can be used to collect information from participants. However, since Kaiser, Nguyen and Snyder completed their project, there have been wide strides in the development of new data-collection methods. Kaiser and her research groups are now implementing these new methods alongside others to further their research.

“Each of these modalities has pros and cons in terms of what they can tell us about the underlying constructs that we’re interested in measuring,” Kaiser says. “EF, for example, we can measure that through a neurological assessment or a computer-based assessment. I can also tap into that by asking people about their abilities out in the world; but there are key differences in what we’re getting at.”

These different kinds of assessments are that they give complementing information, but do not duplicate what researchers receive from the surveys. “More recent research from my research group and also my collaborators and colleagues indicates that we’re getting two complementary sources of evidence, but it’s not the same evidence. So, the kind of information from computer-based testing or from the brain is not necessarily the same information we get when we ask people.” These two sources of evidence are only weakly related. Since Kaiser and her colleagues completed the project, they have developed a way to collect information without having participants fill out surveys.

“What we’ve been working with are mobile applications that perform something called digital phenotyping, which effectively means using the information your phone is already collecting about you to understand your actions out in the real world and to get little snapshots on your mood and your stress level in daily life,” Kaiser says, adding, “They can see things like numbers of calls, screen time and other factors that allow them to better understand the individuals.”

Now, researching alongside various experts and students on a number of different projects, Kaiser says she hopes to “make these interventions accessible to everyone at the touch of a finger on their smartphone in the real world. We want people to be able to access this information when they need it.”

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CU Boulder scientist Roselinde Kaiser and research colleagues seek to understand the connection between executive functioning and mood problems.

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Murder and the microbiome

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 11 Dec 2025 14:40:00 +0000

Murder and the microbiome Rachel Sauer Thu, 12/11/2025 - 07:40

Daniel Long

A paper co-authored by CU Boulder researcher Christopher Lowry draws upon the infamous ‘Twinkie defense’ to explore the relationship between ultraprocessed foods and human behavior

On November 27, 1978, in the heart of San Francisco, former City Supervisor Dan White climbed through a window into City Hall, pulled out a gun and fatally shot Mayor George Moscone and City Supervisor Harvey Milk. He then turned himself in to the police, saying, “Why do we do things . . . I don’t know . . . I just shot [Moscone], I don’t know.”

In the trial that followed, People v. White, which ran from May 1-21, 1979, White’s defense argued not that White was innocent—he’d confessed, after all—but that, when he committed the murders, he’d been suffering from “diminished capacity” and was therefore incapable of premeditation, a key requirement of first-degree murder charges.

One revealing piece of evidence, the defense claimed, was White’s diet. For days leading up to the shootings, White had been gorging himself on junk food, an abnormal behavior for the typically health-conscious former police officer, firefighter and Army veteran.

CU Boulder scientist Christopher Lowry and his research colleagues suggest a link between ultraprocessed foods and human behavior.

It was a risky legal tack—journalists at the time mockingly dubbed it the “Twinkie defense”—but it worked. White was charged with voluntary manslaughter, a lesser charge than first-degree murder, and received a prison sentence of just under eight years, of which he ended up serving only five.

A fierce backlash followed the ruling. Many took to the streets to express their outrage, most notably with the White Night Riots, while others took to the media.

“There is no question that a travesty of justice occurred in the trial of Dan White,” wrote psychiatrist Thomas Szasz. “In the trial of Dan White, the defense, aided and abetted by the prosecution, had the power to hand the case over to the psychiatrists, and the psychiatrists had the power to redefine a political crime as an ordinary crime, and an ordinary crime as a psychiatric problem.”

Yet in a paper published in the journal NeuroSci, �Թ�� of Colorado Boulder Professor of Integrative Physiology Christopher Lowry, along with several co-authors, suggests that the White case might have been ahead of its time in assuming a link between ultraprocessed foods and human behavior.

Gut reactions

It’s unsurprising that so many people found White’s claim of diminished capacity less than persuasive, says Lowry. In 1979, the scientific community hadn’t yet recognized the microbiome, or the commonwealth of bacteria occupying the human gut. The connection between it, one’s diet and one’s behavior therefore seemed flimsy.

“We didn't know that there was a microbiome, and that the microbiome impacts behavior,” Lowry explains. “[White’s defense team] was just basing their conclusions on observations that these types of foods, these ultraprocessed foods, could affect people’s behavior in negative ways. So, it was kind of a crude assessment of this association between what you eat and behavioral outcomes.”

But for the past several decades, scientific research in a field referred to as psychoneuroimmunology, much of it pioneered by Steven F. Maier and Linda R. Watkins of CU Boulder’s Maier Watkins Laboratory, has established a clear relationship between microbes (or their components), the brain and behavior.

A crucial explanatory ingredient in this relationship, says Lowry, is inflammation, or the body’s immune response to what it deems threats.

“There’s a through-line between diet impacting the microbiome and the permeability of the gut barrier, which allows bacteria and bacterial products to get into the body, which can drive systemic inflammation. Systemic inflammation drives neuroinflammation in the brain, and neuroinflammation in the brain alters brain and behavior.”

“Given the growing evidence that ultraprocessed foods lead to multiple negative health outcomes, I think the goal is to shift away, to the extent possible, from ultraprocessed foods toward less processed food,” says CU Boulder researcher Christopher Lowry. (Photo: iStock)

The takeaway, Lowry explains, is that some foods—namely ultraprocessed foods—can negatively affect the microbiome and thus increase risk factors for violent or rash behavior. “It’s clear that inflammation does impact aggressive behavior, does impact impulsivity.” It’s so clear, in fact, that the negative health outcomes of ultraprocessed foods are now at the forefront of public health policy, and San Francisco is suing makers of ultraprocessed foods for creating products that have saddled governments with public health costs.

Yet the news isn’t all bad, Lowry says. Just as ultraprocessed foods can lead to negative mental health outcomes, less-processed foods can lead to positive mental health outcomes.

“What other researchers have found is that, regardless of whether you look at people without a diagnosis of depression or anxiety, or you look at clinical populations—people that have a diagnosis of anxiety disorder or mood disorder—in either case, you can simply change the diet of these individuals [by reducing their intake of ultraprocessed foods] and improve their anxiety and depression symptoms.”

Food or foodlike substances?

Moving away from ultraprocessed foods would mean big changes for many Americans, says Lowry, who points out that more than 50% of the foods purchased in U.S. grocery stores are ultraprocessed.

But what counts as ultraprocessed anyway? Don’t most foods go through some degree of processing before ending up on eaters’ plates?

One useful resource, says Lowry, is the four-level NOVA system developed by Carlos Augusto Monteiro and a team of researchers at the �Թ�� of São Paulo in Brazil in 2009.

“Level 1 is unprocessed. This would be if you pulled the carrot out of the ground and ate it,” says Lowry. “Level 2 involves more processing,” but it’s processing “that we can do in our kitchen. So, you might take a carrot and combine it with some celery and spices and make a stir-fry that you put on rice.”

Level 3 involves processing that people generally can’t perform in their kitchens. “For example, there’s very few of us that can take salmon and make canned salmon. It’s food—it’s salmon—but it’s been processed in a way with very high heat and pressure to make it sterile so that it has a prolonged shelf life.”

Level 4, on the other hand, is another thing entirely, different from the other three levels not just in degree but in kind.

“Level 4 is not food,” says Lowry. “Level 4 is chemicals that have been put together in a way that makes them highly palatable.” In the words of Michael Pollan, Level 4 processing produces not food but “edible foodlike substances.”

To avoid inflammation—and its attendant behavioral risk factors—Lowry suggests eaters opt for the first three levels and do their best to steer clear of the fourth.

Just as ultraprocessed foods can lead to negative mental health outcomes, less-processed foods can lead to positive mental health outcomes, says CU Boulder scholar Christopher Lowry. (Photo: Jacopo Maiarelli/Unsplash)

“Given the growing evidence that ultraprocessed foods lead to multiple negative health outcomes, I think the goal is to shift away, to the extent possible, from ultraprocessed foods toward less processed food,” he says. “The diets that have benefit are rich in fresh fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, healthy fats like olive oil and occasionally fish.”

Free will on trial

In their paper, Lowry and his co-authors raise questions about the role of free will in criminal law. Specifically, how much responsibility does a person bear for a crime they committed while under the influence of diminished capacity?

A few non-food-related examples bring this question into stark relief.

Shane Tamura, who in July shot four people in a Manhattan office building before killing himself, was revealed in an autopsy to have had low-level chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a disease often associated with contact sports like football and boxing. “[S]tudy my brain please,” he said in his alleged suicide note. “I’m sorry.”

And Charles Whitman, the “Texas Tower Sniper” who in 1966 killed his wife, his mother and 11 people on the �Թ�� of Texas at Austin campus, likewise requested that he undergo an autopsy following his crimes.

“[L]ately (I can’t recall when it started) I have been a victim of many unusual and irrational thoughts,” the Eagle Scout, scoutmaster and Marine veteran wrote in his confession the night before his crimes. “After my death I wish that an autopsy would be performed on me to see if there is any visible physical disorder. I have had some tremendous headaches in the past and have consumed two large bottles of Excedrin in the past three months.”

During the autopsy, medical examiners discovered a nickel-sized tumor pressing up against Whitman’s amygdala. Since the 1800s, researchers have known that damage to the amygdala can cause emotional and social disturbances.

Whether Tamura’s and Whitman’s brain pathologies directly caused their crimes is unknown and impossible to prove, but if their writings are any indication, they didn’t seem fully committed to perpetrating those crimes. And yet perpetrate them they did. What if something similar happened with Dan White? What if what people eat alters their sense of what they choose to do—their free will?

Of course, some philosophers and scientists don’t believe free will exists at all, perhaps the most popular among them being the neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky, author of Determined: A Science of Life without Free Will.

“When most people think they’re discerning free will, what they mean is somebody intended to do what they did: Something has just happened; somebody pulled the trigger. They understood the consequences and knew that alternative behaviors were available,” Sapolsky says in a New York Times interview.

“But that doesn’t remotely begin to touch it, because you’ve got to ask: Where did that intent come from? That’s what happened a minute before, in the years before, and everything in between.”

For his part, Lowry expresses less certainty than Sapolsky, but he nevertheless believes the issue of free will as it relates to ultraprocessed foods, the brain and human behavior is an important one to consider.

“If you’re born in an inner city with low socioeconomic status, you have very limited access to fresh foods—vegetables, nuts, seeds, healthy foods—and instead you’re raised on ultraprocessed foods, which are very cheap, do you ultimately have free will? Do you have the mental foundation to make decisions based on free will? Or is your free will somehow compromised by these conditions, which, at one level, are imposed by societal factors?

“This is a philosophical question,” Lowry adds. “I don’t claim to have the answer.”

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A paper co-authored by CU Boulder researcher Christopher Lowry draws upon the infamous ‘Twinkie defense’ to explore the relationship between ultraprocessed foods and human behavior.

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Top photo: Thayne Tuason/Wikimedia Commons

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