Our science departments are committed to creating and disseminating new knowledge in their fields by combining research and teaching. Our 300 faculty members — including fellows of many learned societies and academies — are engaged in research that spans a broad range, from questions about the foundations of quantum mechanics, to the development of cancer cells and the workings of the brain, to work resulting in the spin-off of high-technology companies. Faculty share their excitement about their research with their students, training them to become part of the next generation of scientists who will push the frontiers of human knowledge. Explore majors, minors, concentrations, and academic programs in the Natural Sciences.
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World-Class Faculty in the Natural Sciences
Thien Nguyen
Associate Professor of Computer Science
Thien Nguyen is an expert in natural language processing, or the ability of artificial intelligence to understand, interpret and generate meaningful human language. He aims to enable computers to perform cognitive language-related tasks. His lab is among the first to develop deep learning algorithms for information extraction and text mining in natural language processing and data mining. His research on using natural language processing for multilingual learning earned him a Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) award from the National Science Foundation.
Nguyen's recent research focuses on programming computers to improve the efficiency and safety of large language models (LLMs) across human languages while extracting valuable information about events like natural disasters, cyberattacks, disease outbreaks, and protests from news articles and other sources. His work seeks to deliver useful insights from diverse data and make these technologies accessible in low-resource languages that lack adequate data sets for training AI models.
Tien-Tien Yu
Associate Professor of Physics, Institute for Fundamental Science
Tien-Tien is a theoretical particle physicist working at the interface of theory and experiment. She is particularly interested in understanding the nature of dark matter, whose existence is known through its gravitational effects on ordinary matter. She co-founded the SENSEI collaboration, an experiment utilizing silicon chips, much like those found in digital cameras, to search for dark matter. She was recently appointed to P5, an advisory group convened once a decade by the Department of Energy and National Science Foundation to help determine the next funded projects in particle physics.
On Jan. 14, 2025, Yu was one of nearly 400 scientists and engineers to receive the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, the highest award the US government awards to early career scientists.
A founding member of the group Particles for Justice, Yu is also a leader in advancing diversity, equity and inclusion in the physics field. In collaboration with the Comics and Cartoon Studies program, Yu created the UO Science and Comics Initiative. Read more about the initiative here.
Santiago Jaramillo
Associate Professor of Biology, Institute of Neuroscience
Santiago Jaramillo leads a research group dedicated to understanding how the brain processes and interprets sounds. Using advanced techniques to monitor and manipulate neural activity in mice, along with computational approaches, he investigates how the brain filters, learns, and assigns meaning to sounds and how brain disorders can affect these processes. His interdisciplinary work, supported by the BRAIN Initiative of the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation, includes collaborations with psychologists, bioengineers, theoretical neuroscientists, and linguists, with the long-term goal of developing neural interfaces to improve human-to-human and human-to-machine communication.
Beyond the lab, Jaramillo is deeply committed to broadening participation in STEM. He provides hands-on neuroscience experiences to middle school girls through the SPICE program, serves as an advisor for international programs engaging young minds in scientific critical thinking, and mentors college students from a wide range of backgrounds through programs such as NSF STEP-UP, SPUR, and the ESPRIT scholarship for aspiring K-12 science teachers.
School of Computer and Data Sciences
The mission at SCDS is to empower a diverse population of students and faculty working to advance knowledge in computer and data science, train the next generation of scholars, and engage with the wider world to tackle interdisciplinary challenges.
To do this, we start by applying our knowledge and experience at home across the University of Oregon campus.
Research in the Natural Sciences
Natural scientists use data to understand, predict, and work with naturally occurring phenomena on earth and in the universe. From highly controlled experiments in the lab to observations collected in the field, our findings help make sense of the natural world while driving advancements in society and technology that touch everyone. By expanding the limits of human knowledge, we provide a scientific foundation for helping people live better, longer lives.
Explore Other Majors and Minors in the College of Arts and Sciences
Meet our Dean
Welcome to the natural sciences, where our top-flight researchers bring students in to experience the biological, physical, and computational sciences. Working side-by-side with faculty who are equally committed to student success and scientific discovery, students learn valuable critical thinking skills through hands-on research in the lab, field, and classroom—from studying marine biology at the Oregon Institute for Marine Biology on our beautiful campus on the coast to coding advanced systems and analyzing complex data in the School of Computer and Data Science.
The research we’re conducting at the UO makes a tangible difference in our communities, our nation, and the world. For example, our chemists are pioneering the materials and techniques that will inspire the next generation of batteries for energy storage. Our psychologists are developing and testing cutting-edge interventions to improve mental health and wellbeing. Our geologists and environmental scientists are collaborating with governments, tribes, and industry partners to protect communities from earthquakes and wildfires.
You may or may not end up in a science career, but either way these experiences will change the way you experience and interact with the world. A healthy society depends on people who know how to gather evidence and critically analyze data. No matter what field you enter, scientific thinking will help you become a more thoughtful, engaged, and critical citizen in modern society.
We’re excited to explore the natural world with you.
Elliot Berkman
Divisional Associate Dean, Natural Sciences
Happening at CAS
2:00 p.m.
Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry Oregon Center for Electrochemistry Seminar
Jeiwan Tan, Materials, Chemistry, and Computational Sciences Directorate National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Golden, CO
Chirality induced spin selectivity suppresses competing hydrogen evolution during electrochemical CO2 reduction
Catalysts for electrochemical carbon dioxide reduction (CO2R) in aqueous electrolytes suffer from low Faradaic efficiency and selectivity of desired carbon products due to the competing hydrogen evolution from water reduction. Over the few years, a concept of chirality-induced spin selectivity (CISS) has been proposed to improve the efficiency of oxygen evolution reactions by stabilizing only one spin state of charge carriers at the catalyst surface. It was demonstrated that the formation of hydrogen peroxide and singlet oxygen was suppressed during the water oxidation reaction. However, this CISS phenomenon has not been studied during the reduction reaction at the cathode side. Here, we prepare chiral, helical-structured copper (Cu) electrodes that exhibit an exceptionally strong circular dichroism anisotropy factor and manifest product selectivity control during the CO2R owing to CISS. In situ spectro-electrochemistry is employed to investigate the role of the chirality inducer in real-time during the electrodeposition and under actual electrochemical CO2R conditions. Regardless of their handedness, the chiral Cu electrodes exhibit a lower onset potential for CO2R compared to their achiral counterpart by suppressing the hydrogen evolution reaction. I will also discuss how the carriers traveling through the helical structure become spin polarized, inducing an electron spin accumulation at the electrode surface. This spin polarization reduces hydrogen formation, thereby promoting CO2 reduction to CO and formate due to the Pauli exclusion principle for bond formation. These findings provide insights into the potential of chiral catalysts for controlling selectivity during CO2R as well as other valuable reduction reactions such as nitrogen or CO reduction where hydrogen evolution is also an undesired side reaction.
3:00 p.m.
Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry Organic/Inorganic/Materials Seminar Series
Spring Rotation Talks 3:00 pm Campbelle Hunt, Mascarenhas Lab 3:15 pm Natalie Lakanen, Jasti Lab 3:30 pm Tingting Zhang, Jasti Lab 3:45 pm Robert Greenwood, Jasti Lab 4:00 pm Ben Andrews, Harlow Lab 4:15 pm Joel Ashton, Pluth Lab 4:30 pm Michaela Vacca, Kempler Lab
5:00–8:00 p.m.
Please join Women in Graduate Sciences for our 11th Annual Fundraising Gala. We are hosting two back-to-back events designed to provide an engaging and informative evening celebrating women and marginalized genders in STEM!
From 5 to 6 PM, join us for a cocktail hour where community members are invited to learn about WGS's initiatives, meet our executive board, and hear from WGS members, including scholarship winners and our outreach team. Stay for the main event from 6-8 PM, where we welcome everyone for a buffet style dinner, banquet raffle, and exciting seminar by Dr. Laura Ackerman-Biegasiewicz, an Assistant Professor of Chemistry at Emory University whose research focuses on developing technology for accelerating reaction discovery in sustainable chemistry.
As the annual WGS fundraising benefit, the event offers a sliding scale of ticket prices ($50 for students, $100 for non-students, and $800 for an 8-person table). Purchase tickets or donate to WGS.
3:00 p.m.
Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry Organic/Inorganic/Materials Seminar Series
Spring Rotation Talks
3:00 pm Ernesto Lucatero, DWJ Lab 3:15 pm Ally Stonas, DWJ Lab 3:30 pm Alex Bender, Cook Lab 3:45 pm Sam Rundquist, Cook Lab 4:00 pm Ally Wagner, Cook Lab 4:15 pm Marie Kerns, Rapp Lab 4:30 pm George Piepgras, Rapp Lab 4:45 pm Andrew Goldman, Kempler Lab