Natural Sciences News

PSYCHOLOGY - Adolescence isn’t a time of dysfunction; it’s a peak period of brain development, adaptability, and growth. Jennifer Pfeifer, a psychology professor at the College of Arts and Sciences, discusses at the 2025 TEDxPortland that it’s time to flip the script and recognize that young people are acting exactly as they’re wired to, and are capable of far more than we’ve been led to believe.

CHEMISTRY AND BIOCHEMISTRY - Sylvia Kennerly, Marie Kerns, Natalie Lakanen, Keyan Li, Rohan Myers, and Dario Nunez have been named recipients of the 2025 Chemistry and Biochemistry Graduate Student Teaching Awards. The award recognizes graduate student educators that have greatly exceeded the normal expectations of a Teaching Assistant, and their important contributions to the instructional mission of the department.

CHEMISTRY AND BIOCHEMISTRY - UO Chemistry graduate student Audrey Klein has been selected to receive a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship.  The fellowship provides three years of support for graduate students who have demonstrated their potential for significant research achievements in STEM or STEM education.

EARTH SCIENCES - The earthquake geology workforce is depleted, limiting data collection and slowing progress in our understanding of the Cascadia Subduction Zone. Cores to Code addresses this gap by training the next generation of paleoseismologists through immersive, hands-on experiences. But through CRESCENT's Cor to Code program, students from around the US are getting a thorough scientific experience.

EARTH SCIENCES - An analysis of the Columbia River Gorge, which runs along the border between Oregon and Washington, shows that steep, rocky watersheds in that area have been prone to debris flows and rockfall for thousands of years. Those events didn’t measurably increase after the Eagle Creek Fire, which scorched 47,000 acres of the gorge over three months in 2017. CAS Earth scientist Josh Roering and members of his lab published their findings Aug. 8 in Science Advances.

BIOLOGY - New in 2025, the Coastal Quarter program allows undergraduates from all majors to spend winter term living at the coast and taking classes in marine biology, environmental studies, anthropology and science communication. Out of the nine students who participated this year, five are majoring in either environmental sciences or environmental studies; four are marine biology majors; and one is a sports journalism major.

BIOLOGY - An AI-based imaging system that is a collaboration between researchers at the University of Oregon and Oregon State University, funded by the National Council for Air and Stream Improvement Inc., is working to monitor bee populations without harming the insects. The technology could solve a key paradox in bee conservation efforts. The collaboration includes CAS biologist Lauren Ponisio.

CHEMISTRY AND BIOCHEMSTRY - UO Chemistry and Biochemistry faculty Carl Brozek has been selected as a Fulbright U.S. Scholar for 2025-2026 at Kyoto University in Kyoto, Japan.

BIOLOGY - Franklin W. Stahl, a molecular biologist who helped create a methodology to confirm how DNA replicates that was so elegant, it has been remembered for more than five decades as “the most beautiful experiment in biology,” died on April 2 at his home in Eugene. He was a professor in the College of Arts and Sciences.

MATHEMATICS - Check out the latest in faculty, student and alumni news in our annual 2024-2025 Mathematics newsletter!

HUMAN PHYSIOLOGY - A new study from University of Oregon College of Arts and Sciences researcher John Halliwill shows that blocking histamine at high levels interferes with fitness gains. It remains to be seen if lower-dose, over-the-counter antihistamine drugs have the same effect. The study was published May 30 in the Journal of Applied Physiology.

EARTH SCIENCES - The Cascadia Region Earthquake Science Center (CRESCENT) has awarded 11 new grants to researchers studying the Cascadia subduction zone as part of its ongoing effort to help build community resilience against earthquakes along the West Coast’s massive fault line.

NEUROSCIENCE - Using a novel technique he developed in Professor David A. McCormick’s neuroscience lab, postdoctoral researcher Evan Vickers is studying how the brain’s various regions react during different states of arousal, such as sleep versus wakefulness, both at the individual cell level and across large swathes of the cerebral cortex.

EARTH SCIENCES - Deposited in 2022 when the underwater Hunga volcano spewed a 37-mile plume into the atmosphere—the biggest eruption seen in the modern satellite era—the seafloor ash provided a unique opportunity to study the impact of sediment movement on deep-sea life. Marcus Chaknova, then a marine biology and geology major, discovered ash from the volcano, which will shape scientific research for years to come.

Different mental health disorders can present drastically different symptoms, but many share a common thread: disruptions to episodic memory, or the ability to recall personal experiences. Students, faculty and staff in the Department of Psychology explored the role of episodic memory in mental health disorders during a recent workshop on “Episodic Memory as a Window to Understand Psychopathology.