Paleontologist Randy Irmis seeks to solve mysteries dating back 300 million years. In August, he received a Fulbright Fellowship for collaborative research in Argentina.

The Presidential Scholar award supports the work of exceptionally promising mid-career faculty in academic units across campus by providing $10,000 in funding each year for three years to the award winners.

The American Psychological Association found that more than 60% of college students met the criteria for at least one mental health program based on its Healthy Mind survey, which included the University of Utah. And earlier this year, U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy called for action to address what he described as an “epidemic of loneliness.”  Loneliness, isolation and lack of social connection is a public health crisis, he said, experienced by about half the adults in the U.S., with impacts on physical and mental health. This is especially true among college-age people, the report said. Such findings are no…

One person dies every 34 seconds in the United States from cardiovascular disease—and adults living in rural areas have a 19 percent higher risk of developing heart failure. Heart disease has been the leading cause of death in the US since 1950 but thinking about two people dying nearly every minute because of it makes a statistic most Americans have heard at some point in their life feel quite startling. While these CDC statistics don’t appear to be going away any time soon, there is hope in science—particularly in the lab of Dr. Sarah Franklin. Dr. Franklin runs one of…

Professor Brenda Bowen examines what the traces left by an ever-changing planet can tell us about what’s to come   As a professor of geology and geophysics, Brenda Bowen wants her students to understand how long the planet Earth has been around and that there’s nothing static about its surface or subsurface. “Our planet is 4.6 billion years old and, throughout that time, it’s been continually changing. The only constant is change,” Bowen says. “The current configuration of where continents, mountains, and oceans are is just this moment in time.” Bowen is the chair of the Department of Atmospheric Sciences…

Today atmospheric carbon dioxide is at its highest level in at least several million years thanks to widespread combustion of fossil fuels by humans over the past couple centuries. But where does 419 parts per million (ppm)—the current concentration of the greenhouse gas in the atmosphere—fit in Earth’s history?