Ducks Give is May 14. And We Need Your Help!
Ducks Give is the University of Oregon’s annual 24-hour fundraiser. On Thursday, May 14, your gifts — no matter how small — can support programs that benefit undergraduate and graduate students, including experiential learning and scholarships that are making a real impact to prepare them for careers after college.
Join Ducks from around the world to support current and future students. Let’s rise together on May 14!
Congratulations, Graduating Ducks!
You’ve put in the work and earned the diploma. Now let’s celebrate! On June 15, join your fellow CAS Ducks for this year’s CAS commencement ceremony. Head over to the 2026 CAS Commencement website where you can find ceremony details for each CAS ceremony, logistics and any other answers to all your questions about the big day.
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.
News from Natural Sciences
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We Love Our Supporters
Gifts to the College of Arts and Sciences can help our students make the most of their college careers. To do this, CAS needs your support. Your contributions help us ensure that teaching, research, advising, mentoring, and support services are fully available to every student. Thank you!
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.
2024-2025 Sponsored Research in Natural Sciences
Between July 2024 and June 2025, researchers in CAS received $83 million to fund 199 research projects, including approximately $75 million in Natural Sciences. The research projects, which span divisions and fields of study, represent CAS's commitment to curiosity, discovery, and innovation.
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
9:00 a.m.–8:30 p.m.
This annual event offers undergraduates from all majors a vibrant, inclusive forum to showcase their research and creative work through a variety of presentation platforms. The event celebrates inquiry and discovery across disciplines, helps students build communication and professional skills, and connects them with peers, faculty, and mentors. Whether attending or presenting, students at any stage in their academic journey will gain confidence, expand their networks, and continue strengthening their pathways to success.
The General Agenda on the website gives an overview of events throughout the day. The searchable schedule will be posted at urds.uoregon.edu/symposium closer the event.
3:30–8:00 p.m.
This conference examines the future of higher education in an increasingly authoritarian global environment marked by democratic backsliding, political polarization, and intensifying state efforts to control knowledge production. Across regions, universities face intersecting pressures: geopolitical instability, new technologies, shifting patterns of mobility, growing demands for measurable “impact,” and deepening contests over truth, history, and public trust.
A central concern of this convening is systemic autonomy in higher education: the capacity of teaching and research to be guided by scholarly standards rather than direct political instruction. Universities are never separate from politics, law, the economy, or media. The question is which institutional arrangements allow these relationships to support, rather than undermine, free inquiry.
The Schnitzer School of Global Studies and Languages invites all to attend and engage!
✒️Register here *Attendance is free
5:30–7:30 p.m.
We are excited to celebrate the 9th Asian Studies Research Event and the Asian Studies Award. This will be an in-person event with catering; details will be announced in May. This event is sponsored by the Asian Studies Program in partnership with the 2026 UO Undergraduate Research Symposium. Registration deadline to participate: April 1. Undergraduate Student Registration: Current UO undergraduate students from any major are welcome to participate in this event (you don’t need to be an Asian Studies major or minor). You can present independent research (e.g., honors theses, term projects, translations, flagship projects, etc.) and creative work focused on a topic in the broad, interdisciplinary field of Asian Studies. Presentations will be 10-12 minutes; detailed instructions and preparation advice will be provided. If you have any questions, or you are not sure your project fits this event, we welcome you to email Alisa Freedman at alisaf@uoregon.edu. You can also see the participants and project titles of recent events here: https://asianstudies.uoregon.edu/asian-studies-research-event/
- Register by April 1. Go to https://urds.uoregon.edu/symposium/registration-preview for instructions, then click on “Registration Form” to sign up.
- When you reach the Academic area of research project section on the form, select the Asian Studies Event. This will automatically opt you in.
Graduate Student Registration: Current UO graduate students from any department or program are welcome to participate, and we welcome students who completed graduate degrees in 2025 but did not present at last year’s event. You can present research focused on a topic in the broad, interdisciplinary field of Asian Studies. Presentations could be on MA theses, seminar papers, and PhD dissertations, creative work and translations. Presentations will be limited to three minutes in the style of “3-Minute Theses” and detailed instructions and advice will be provided. Register by April 1. If you have any questions, or you are not sure your project fits this event, please email Dan Buck (danielb@uoregon.edu). In your registration email please include your name, department, graduation date, academic advisor, and a provisional presentation title (you can finalize it later). Asian Studies Awards, Undergraduate and Graduate: These awards recognize oral, poster, and creative work presentations focused on a topic in the broad, interdisciplinary field of Asian Studies and characterized by excellence in research and clarity of delivery:
- Undergraduate Awards: One $400 award, and two $150 honorable mention awards.
- Graduate Awards: One $400 award, and two $150 honorable mention awards.
- Sponsorship: Asian Studies Program and the Division of Undergraduate Education and Student Success.
5:30–8:00 p.m.
The undergraduate chapter of the UO Net Impact Group is excited to present SPRNG, our annual conference exploring the intersection of sustainability and business.
This year's theme, "Flipping the Switch," centers on the critical role energy plays in shaping a more sustainable future. As communities, companies, and institutions respond to climate challenges, energy remains at the center of innovation, policy, and business strategy.
The conference will bring together students and professionals for a keynote speaker, industry panel, networking mixer, and a case competition focused on real-world sustainability challenges.
This event is free and open to all!
Agenda
- Day 1: Keynote, industry panel, and networking mixer Thursday, May 7, 5:30–8:00 p.m., Lillis Business Complex 282
- Day 2: Case competition Friday, May 8, 10:00 a.m.–2:00 p.m., Lillis Business Complex 211