Arizona Research Magazine Winter 2022

ARIZONA RESEARCH

12. SPACE

62.

48.

Native FORGE: From Data Source to Data Sovereignty Partnering

Safe Water on Tribal

University of Arizona Land Acknowledgment

We respectfully acknowledge the University of Arizona is on the land and territories of Indigenous peoples. Today, Arizona is home to 22 federally recognized tribes, with Tucson being home to the O’odham and the Yaqui. Committed to diversity and inclusion, the university strives to build sustainable relationships with sovereign Native Nations and Indigenous communities through education offerings, partnerships, and community service.

Producers

Kim Patten, Daniel Moseke

Designer

Andreá Brooks

Writing & Editorial Team

Stephanie Doster, Leslie Ruth Hawthorne Klingler, Emily Litvack, Kristina Makansi, Eric Van Meter

Original Reporting

Much of the content in this magazine is based on original reporting by Alexis Blue, Rosemary Brandt, Emily Dieckman, Lori Harwood, Mikayla Mace Kelley, Angela Martinez, Erika Mitnik, Kyle Mittan, Tracy Mueller, Stacy Pigott, Daniel Stolte, Eric Swedlund, Brittany Uhlorn

Questions and feedback research-comms@list.arizona.edu

Since its founding in 1885, the University of Arizona has focused on big questions about humankind, our world, and the universe in which we live. A few of our milestones include establishing the Arizona State Museum, founding the first-of-its-kind Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research, and being the first public university to lead an entire planetary mission.

More recently, our researchers led the development of critical imaging technology aboard NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, whose captivating imagery punctuates the pages of this magazine. Our National Science Foundation Center for Quantum Networks operates a quantum entanglement testbed on the Tucson campus, connecting laboratories in six buildings with a combination of optical fibers and free-space optics between rooftops in one of the most advanced network demonstrations in the world. Our Biosphere 2 is the world’s largest controlled environment dedicated to understanding the impacts of climate change and developing solutions for resilience.

A MESSAGE FROM

Dr.

Elizabeth Cantwell

SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT FOR RESEARCH AND INNOVATION

From ideas to results, we stay connected to our fundamental goal: creating societal and economic impact that benefits humankind. Our responsibility as Arizona’s land grant institution enables us to harness the power of science to meet needs across the state and beyond. And, as part of an academic institution, we must always pair creating new knowledge today with preparing the workforce of tomorrow.

Though the scope of the work highlighted in the forthcoming pages is wide-ranging, impact is the thread that weaves each of these stories together.

With societal advancement as a compass, University of Arizona researchers are charting the course toward a more resilient future for all.

Salad Lovers Take Heart: UArizona Scientists Gain Ground in the Fight Against Lettuce Wilt

Fusarium wilt, a plant disease caused by the fungus Fusarium oxysporum, has long lurked in lettuce farms around the globe. But in the past two decades, the disease has become a serious problem for Arizona farmers, who grow most of the lettuce consumed during winter months in the United States.

Tenacious diseases require persistent research. Utilizing sunlight and locally sourced compost, researchers are trying to stop fusarium wilt with high temperatures and fungus-fighting bacteria. Others are developing lettuce varieties resistant to the disease, several of which are already in production.

UArizona researchers have found that fusarium wilt spreads on contaminated farm equipment and are educating farmers to thoroughly clean and sanitize their equipment. They’re also encouraging farmers to plant less susceptible varieties of lettuce, such as romaine.

Finally, researchers are testing types of wild lettuce for their fungus-beating potential as alternatives to traditional varieties. Salad lovers, get ready to welcome wild new flavors as part of a green and healthy future.

Footprints Confirm 10,000-Year Earlier Start to American Human History

SOCIETY

Recently discovered footprints at White Sands National Park, NM, confirm human presence in the Americas 23,000 years ago— some 10,000 years before most archaeologists previously thought.

The discovery’s research team, which included a University of Arizona professor and doctoral student in the Department of Geosciences, pioneered nondestructive detection and imaging technologies to help locate the site without endangering the natural environment or buried artifacts.

Layers of human tracks were discovered in streambeds where water once flowed into an ancient lake. The tracks were made primarily by teenagers and younger children, likely at play or performing fetching and carrying tasks.

Tracks of mammoth, giant ground sloth, dire wolves, and birds were also found at the White Sands site, demonstrating human activities alongside now-extinct animals.

Learn More

Photo Courtesy of David Bustos/White Sands National Park

Metals, Microbes, and Motivation

The interaction of metals and microbes is just one focus of associate professor of immunobiology Michael Johnson. Another is inspiring undergraduates to pursue careers in biomedical research and graduate students to conduct their research with optimism and creativity.

During his postdoctoral fellowship, Johnson founded Science Sound Bites, a podcast for kids. At the University of Arizona, he founded the BIO5 Postdoctoral Fellowship Program to fund postdoctoral researchers.

Most recently, Johnson co-founded the National Summer Undergraduate Research Project

(NSURP) to serve undergraduate students of color affected by COVID-19.

In its first year, NSURP arranged microbiology lab mentorships for 250 undergraduates, most of them first-generation college students, from nearly 150 universities. Participants spent a summer conducting research, communicating their work, and learning from STEM professionals with backgrounds that often paralleled their own.

Johnson hopes NSURP will inspire future matchmaking programs emphasizing diversity, equity, and inclusion in STEM. “We really need support,” he says. “Bandwidth is low, but demand is high.”

Elevating Voices from the Borderlands

This undated photo from UArizona Special Collections’ Southwestern and Borderlands Photograph Collection shows the border between Nogales, Arizona, and Nogales, Sonora, along International Street. (Courtesy of University of Arizona Libraries, Special Collections)

COLLABORATION

Who controls the story of what’s happening along the U.S.-Mexico border also helps shape related policy, economics, and quality of life in those communities. Unfortunately, those most affected too often play a minor role in shaping that narrative.

As a land-grant institution less than 70 miles from Mexico and a rising leader in borderlands research, the University of Arizona is helping to elevate the voices of people with personal stakes.

Through initiatives funded by a $1.12 million grant from the Ford Foundation, students and faculty are working with those who live, work, and serve along the southern border to share and preserve their voices and perspectives.

In addition to story-gathering, the university has been selected to house physical and digital materials from more than 40 border-related projects in its archives. These new materials expand UArizona’s existing collection of distinctive materials revealing borderlands life, politics, and culture dating back to the 16th century.

Learn More

SPACE

INTRODUCTION

Since the founding of its Lunar and Planetary Laboratory in 1960, the University of Arizona has led the state’s aerospace economy as we further humanity’s quest to uncoil the secrets of the universe.

When NASA captured the first image of a black hole, first proved the presence of ice in Martian soil, extracted the first asteroid samples in an interstellar dance at more

than 61,000 mph, we were there, empowering every history-making moment.

Now, as the James Webb Space Telescope deploys UArizona technologies to peer further back into our galactic origins than ever before, our researchers are also looking forward, pioneering the next great frontier of space exploration: longterm, off-Earth habitation.

About the image:

Astronomers using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope combined the capabilities of the telescope’s two cameras to create a never-beforeseen view of a region in the Carina Nebula. Captured in infrared light by the Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) and Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI), this combined image reveals previously invisible areas of star formation.

James Webb Space Telescope

When Inspiration4, the world’s first all-civilian spaceflight, returned to Earth, it marked a turning point in space travel, raised money for charity, and made contributions to the future health of those living in space—and on Earth.

Crew members were the first to use VeriFAST, a University of Arizona technology for tracking stress, inflammation, and immunity in zerogravity conditions. While in space, crew blood and saliva samples analyzed by VeriFAST signaled physiological or molecular changes in minutes through a simple system of color-coded spots.

Developed by researchers at the university’s Center for Applied NanoBioscience and Medicine, VeriFAST tests can potentially detect serious health threats, such as radiation exposure and cancer. The technology is rapid, cheap, and easy to use—which means it could improve health monitoring on Earth as well as in space.

Monitoring Health for Space

Expanding Possibilities in Off-Earth Living

Space Analog for the Moon and Mars (SAM) is the latest project securing the place of the University of Arizona among the vanguard of institutions expanding possibilities in long-term, off-Earth human habitation.

Built around UArizona’s 1987 prototype Biosphere 2 Test Module, SAM will present many of the thorny challenges intrinsic to closed-system living as it attempts something never yet achieved: a transition from mechanical solutions like those in NASA’s International Space Station to plant-based life support.

SAM will be available to researchers around the world and already has a queue of projects slated to start early in 2023.

Up to four people can stay in situ from a week to a few months, and each team chooses its degree of off-world simulation, such as external communication delays matched to light travel time from Earth to Mars.

It was also important to SAM co-lead and director of research Kai Staats that the facility welcome writers, musicians, and other artists.

“That’s part of the human experience,” Staats says. “Stories are told generation to generation, millennia to millennia, through artists. We need that perspective on the human experience as much as we need the data.”

UArizona Helps Astronomers See Farther than Ever Before

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, designed with essential contributions from University of Arizona astronomers, orbits the sun a million miles from Earth, revolutionizing our vision of the universe.

Because the universe is expanding, light from the earliest galaxies has been stretched into longer-wavelength infrared light invisible to the human eye. Novel UArizona-led technologies built into the telescope visualize that light, enabling us to peer into the early phases of star and galaxy formation.

The James Webb telescope’s capabilities are possible because of both its location and large size. By orbiting in space, its instruments remain a steady minus 447°F, bypassing heat “noise” inevitable on Earth. The telescope’s enormous size—21 feet, with a primary mirror more than two stories tall— enables it to produce images far sharper than its predecessors.

The astonishing images we’ve seen thus far are just the beginning of the telescope’s work. Astronomers intend to use the instrument to study diverse extraterrestrial phenomena, including exoplanets, the early universe, black holes, and quasars. NASA has allotted the telescope’s time to researchers worldwide, with the greatest share, 13%, reserved for UArizona scientists.

University of Arizona scientists led the design and build of the James Webb infrared “eyes” that allow it to peer deeper into the history of the cosmos than any telescope before it.

Marcia and George Rieke worked toward this breakthrough for more than 20 years as two of 21 UArizona astronomers enabling the telescope’s long-planned sojourn into distant space.

Marcia Rieke is principal investigator for the Near Infrared Camera at the heart of the telescope. Her husband, George, is the science team lead for the Mid-Infrared Instrument, which expands the telescope’s reach farther into the infrared spectrum.

Lunar Harvests on the Horizon

Researchers at NASA believe humankind could save billions of dollars and precious resources by harvesting water and crops on the moon and that such practices would allow space missions to replenish supplies without entering the Earth’s atmosphere.

Two UArizona teams are working with NASA to explore how lunar harvesting may be possible.

One team, primarily students, is preparing a fleet of laser-equipped satellites to search for water in the dark craters of the moon’s southern pole.

Called FemtoSats, these tiny lunar explorers—satellites about the size of a stick of butter—are inexpensive to make and launch, and they’re disposable.

NASA has also awarded $1.12 million to the University of Arizona and four other organizations to develop an efficient watering system and mechanism to deliver nutrients to crops in space.

Without much gravity to keep things on the ground, farming goes wild in space; it’s hard to keep the right amount of water, nutrients, and oxygen in the right place for crops. This team is motivated both by the project’s potential to nourish astronauts and to lead to much-needed improvements to food production on Earth

NASA Greenlights a New Mission Under UArizona Leadership

NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft has been busy. After journeying more than two years, it nailed an unprecedented rendezvous with the asteroid Bennu, matched its 61,300 mph orbit of our sun, and collected a sample of rubble.

It will parachute that sample into the Utah desert in September 2023, but the fun doesn’t end there. Sporting the new mission name OSIRIS-APEX (short for OSIRISApophis Explorer) and still under University of Arizona leadership, the craft will then redirect to the even smaller asteroid Apophis.

When Apophis was discovered in 2004, scientists quickly calculated that among

near-Earth objects, it would have one of the closest brushes with Earth in a 150-year window. Though less than a quarter-mile in diameter, it will be visible with the naked eye to people in Europe and Africa in April 2029.

OSIRIS-APEX will reach Apophis just days after the “near miss” with Earth and spend 18 months shadowing the asteroid, collecting data to reveal how it’s affected by Earth’s gravity. The craft will also blast the surface of Apophis with its thrusters, allowing mission scientists to learn more about the asteroid’s subsurface properties.

An artist’s illustration of the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft. Heather Roper

Growing the Coolest Crops Under the Sun

As farmers wrestle with diminishing water resources, rising energy costs, and a rapidly warming planet, UArizona researchers are innovating a promising solution: agrivoltaics, or growing crops in the shade of solar panels.

University of Arizona geographer Greg Barron-Gafford pioneered the field. His team of professors, grad students, and undergrads established the first agrivoltaics research site and found that many food crops do better in the shade of solar panels.

For example, tomato harvests were three times greater in an agrivoltaic system than in traditional farming. The technology also lowered water use, promising to make production more efficient.

Could agrivoltaics make meaningful headway in the world’s food and energy challenges? That’s what a new, large-scale UArizona study aims to find out.

With $10 million from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, researchers are adapting agrivoltaic technology to three diverse terrains and microclimates in Arizona, Colorado, and Illinois.

Data collected from the studies will give the team a better picture of how agrivoltaics could address challenges in today’s food, energy, and water nexus.

Fighting Manipulation and Disinformation

Logical fallacies, false equivalences, cherry picking: How many of these rhetorical strategies could you recognize and define?

University of Arizona English professor Jonathan Reinhardt, creator of The Clarify Initiative, believes a failure to educate ordinary citizens to recognize rhetoric aimed at psychological manipulation is why racism, ecological irresponsibility, and fascist tendencies have gained such footholds.

“If you understand the con, the con doesn’t work,” Reinhardt says. His initiative offers a digital textbook, app, and simulation game that blend critical language awareness into traditional grammar and language instruction. The curriculum explains, for example, how hyperbole, superlatives, and the pronoun “we” can be used to manipulate audiences.

On another front in this fight, Diana Daly, assistant professor in the UArizona School of Information, is working to better understand what people gain when they embrace and spread misinformation.

Daly believes the rewards have to do with our innate need to belong: individuals let go of one set of beliefs and the community supporting those ideas only when another community and way of seeing things promises to fill the same needs.

As part of her goal to educate the public in how to disentangle from misinformation, Daly hopes to produce and disseminate materials questioning, satirizing, and debunking harmful anti-vaccine messaging.

Wildcats Down Under and Peacocks Among the Saguaros

COLLABORATION

Graduate schools at the University of Arizona and University of Western Australia (UWA) in Perth are joining forces for two collaborative professional degree programs: a joint doctor of law degree (JD) and joint medical doctor degree (MD).

The new partnership leverages strengths at both universities as they pursue international research and workforce development in several areas of mutual interest. Students enrolled in the programs will spend time on both campuses and receive credentials from both universities.

UArizona’s Wilbur and Wilma Wildcat are already well acquainted with UWA’s Laurence the Peacock from past and ongoing partnerships. Those connections will now deepen as their law and medical schools work together alongside ongoing collaborations in astronomy, space science, and physics.

Big-League Research Spans the Atlantic

COLLABORATION

The largest scientific research institution in Europe, France’s National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), has joined forces with the University of Arizona in a new collaboration: The France-Arizona (FA) Institute for Global Grand Challenges.

The FA Institute is committed to bridging the gap between research discoveries and viable, lasting solutions to real-world problems. It’s a hub where scientists across continents and disciplines work together to make a difference at meaningful scales.

Diverse teams of researchers put their heads together to figure out, for example, how

communities can exist sustainably in arid lands, bring equity to the digital revolution, and tackle challenges before they become crises.

With more than 1,100 laboratories on five continents, CNRS is a research heavyweight. UArizona has collaborated with its scientists for more than a decade.

With the founding of the FA Institute, the partnership has rapidly expanded to include a number of new projects, including research on green chemistry, food-energy-water solutions, and combating infectious diseases.

The World According to Rocks

EDUCATION

Earth was much simpler 4.5 billion years ago, when there were only a dozen or so minerals in our newly formed solar system.

But our Blue Marble has always been a wild one. Unleash an interplay of water, heat, plate tectonics, and oxygen-producing microbes, and before you know it, you’ve got today’s 5,500+ known minerals.

Those crystalline structures offer a wide-spectrum educational lens, and there’s no better view than through the 20,000 specimens of the University of Arizona Alfie Norville Gem & Mineral Museum.

TECHNOLOGY

Since 1910, Arizona has been the leading U.S. copper producer. Early miners smuggled away stunning specimens of copperbased azurite and malachite to save them from smelting.

ENVIRONMENT

The electric vehicle revolution today hinges on the availability of lithium, like that found in spodumene and lepidolite.

HEALTH

The apatite group of calcium phosphate minerals includes an array of stunning gems as well as the main components of human bones and teeth.

Next-Generation Mining

EDUCATION

The San Xavier Underground Mining Laboratory is addressing critical gaps across the mining workforce as the nation’s only student-run, multilevel mining laboratory.

Opportunities abound for innovation in mining, from water and power efficiencies to autonomous vehicles, reprocessing and recycling mining waste, and preserving biodiversity.

Here, students gain hands-on experience in every aspect of operations: budgeting, safety, logistics, and project management. They also learn vital skills for building good relations.

“No mine in the U.S. today can function without social license from the community,” says Kray Luxbacher, head of the Department of Mining and Geological Engineering. “We’re doing the technical work we’ve always done, but we’re also bringing students these more modern issues they’ll face at any mine site.”

Clients include top mining companies and manufacturers as well as government agencies for whom its controlled, subterranean environment meets specialized research and training needs.

NATIONAL SECURITY

Beyond the $10+ billion economic impact of Arizona’s seven military installations, University of Arizona research drives federal investment in the state while enhancing and advancing national security.

Upgraded hypersonic facilities support critical testing for the Department of Defense, innovations in laser technologies counter today’s deadliest threats, and the university’s new Space4 center is increasing security beyond Earth, shaping the discipline of space domain awareness.

Alongside these advancements in equipment, engineering, and information technology, UArizona scientists are also improving the capabilities and ensuring the health of the most vital element of national security: the people of the U.S. armed forces.

New Systems for Laser Defense

High-energy lasers are the best countermeasure for fast-moving targets with unpredictable trajectories, like guided missiles traveling at thousands of miles per second.

Today’s laser defense systems use continuouswave lasers at wavelengths of roughly one micron, creating heat so intense it obliterates targets. But UArizona researchers have engineered lasers at wavelengths of two microns and are developing a super-continuum source, integrating directed energy of one to five microns in a single system.

These lasers can neutralize targets at lower power levels without destroying them. They can also mean greater efficacy: longer wavelengths are less susceptible to light scattering and

variations in air pressure or temperature, factors that degrade both aim and impact.

In parallel research, the center is advancing ultrashort pulsed lasers (USPLs) and nanosecond illuminators. USPLs can neutralize threats more efficiently than continuous-wave lasers, and illuminators are designed to be fired first, literally lighting up targets for destructive, continuouswave beams in their wake.

UArizona’s Center for Directed Energy is codirected by David Hahn, dean of the College of Engineering, and Nasser Peyghambarian, endowed chair in optical sciences and director of the National Science Foundation Engineering Research Center for Integrated Access Networks.

Upgraded Wind Tunnels Blast Hypersonic Testing Limits

The University of Arizona received $10 million from state sources and the Department of Defense (DOD) to upgrade its hypersonic facilities, including two wind tunnels.

Wind tunnel speed is represented by Mach numbers, with Mach 1 being equal to the speed of sound: about 761 mph at sea level. The upgrades extend UArizona’s testing range from subsonic to hypersonic levels (below Mach 0.8 up to Mach 5)—a realm typically found only in government facilities.

The new, state-of-the-art infrastructure enables testing in underserved ranges critical to defense and civilian aerospace and allows the university to provide services for DOD, NASA, and private ventures in space and commercial travel.

The upgrades also build on the university’s work as a member of the University Consortium for Applied Hypersonics, established in 2020 with a $100 million award from the U.S. Department of Defense. The award supports collaboration among more than 60 U.S. universities partnering with industry, laboratories, and government agencies to accelerate technologies around hypersonic flight.

Erica Corral, UArizona associate professor and distinguished scholar of materials science and engineering, serves on the consortium’s governance board and technical leadership team, heads a consortium cross-functional

team in manufacturing, and serves as its deputy director for industry and national laboratory engagement.

Early in her career, Corral received a grant from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research to explore ceramic coatings as a more robust material to shield hypersonic vehicles from extremely high temperatures, expanding possibilities for longer missions and forays into more extreme environments.

AME Subsonic Wind Tunnel.

Photo by Steven Meckler

Protecting the Military’s Most Important Assets

The most important technologies in the U.S. military aren’t found in a jet or tracking system. They’re the brains and bodies of service members, whose health is the sole focus of neuroscientist and Army reservist, Col. William “Scott” Killgore.

Funded by the Department of Defense, Killgore developed a blue light therapy that accelerates repairs to traumatic brain injuries, improving sleep and cognitive function. In the first-ever study on blue light for post-traumatic stress disorder, Killgore found that the same protocol prolonged the benefits of fear-extinction therapy.

An emotional intelligence training developed by Killgore’s Social, Cognitive, and Affective Neuroscience Lab at the University of Arizona is the most scientifically validated in the world.

It not only improves resilience, interpersonal understanding, and overall mood but is protective against suicidal ideation—critical in a military where suicides over the past two decades outnumber deaths from military operations by four to one.

Killgore’s latest research targets include optimizing performance tailored to individual biorhythms, improving sleep with handheld magnets, and replacing today’s standard, multihour neuropsychological assessment with one that yields fuller, better results in only minutes.

Building Security in Space

Orbital space between Earth and the moon has become congested, contested, and competitive. The University of Arizona’s newSpace4 Center is developing end-to-end research and education to ensure that zone remains safe, secure, and sustainable for decades to come.

This area of research, space domain awareness (SDA), focuses on detecting, identifying, and tracking near-Earth objects. Monitoring satellites, for example, has become a vital dimension of national security. Experts project that governments and industry will launch up to 100,000 new satellites in just the next decade.

Space4 combines expertise in planetary defense, astrodynamics, machine learning, data science, business, and law to develop game-changing capabilities and a workforce that meets the national security demands of the evolving space economy.

Space4 director Vishnu Reddy has collaborated with the U.S. Air force to create an advanced SDA computing platform. The Air Force Research Lab also awarded Reddy and Space4 deputy director of engineering Roberto Furfaro $7.5 million toward additional SDA research, including work at UArizona’s Space Domain Awareness Observatory complex.

Partnering for Safe Water on Tribal Lands

COLLABORATION

People are often surprised to learn that many families on the Navajo reservation don’t have plumbing. Access is further complicated by the fact that water available from natural sources can be poisoned with residual chemicals from past mining activity.

Some families must drive as far as fifty miles one-way for potable water.

To change that, Navajo Nation undergraduate students, working

alongside University of Arizona graduate students, designed and built solar-powered water filtration systems from items available at everyday hardware stores. The team also trained local technicians to build and maintain them.

While much work remains to ensure that Native Nations have reliable access to clean water, these first-wave systems now provide 30 households with 50 gallons of safe water daily.

Learn More

Native FORGE: From Data Source to Data Sovereignty

COLLABORATION

Fewer than 1% of Arizona businesses are Native American-owned, and the Native American population in Arizona has a poverty rate more than double the national average. Together with tribal nations, the University of Arizona founded Native FORGE to help change these statistics.

The initiative partners with tribal communities in Tucson and the 22 federally recognized Native American nations in Arizona to educate Indigenous participants on the foundations of entrepreneurship.

Native FORGE leverages resources already developed by the university’s Arizona FORGE, a program providing business education and startup assistance for student and community ventures statewide.

A mentor-in-residence offers business advice and entrepreneurship insights, and participants can take advantage of Arizona FORGE programs and opportunities.

Native FORGE also aims to improve tribes’ abilities to visualize and leverage their own data. Non-native researchers have long collected data among tribal populations and used that information—which is too often inaccurate—to shape academic and political understandings of Indigenous Peoples and communities.

Accurate data collection and analyses are critical for Native American governments, community organizations, and businesses to be able to set strategic economic and financial goals.

The Transformative Power of Mexican Mothers, Wives, and Sisters

Michelle Téllez, associate professor in the University of Arizona Department of Mexican American Studies, is unpacking remarkable political work by the women of Maclovio Rojas, a contested border community in the Tijuana Municipality of Northern Mexico.

Maclovio Rojas began with 25 Mexican families settling on vacant lands after leaving cities where changing economics made earning a living all but impossible. Despite legal challenges and NAFTA policies prioritizing corporate interests, the population has grown to 12,000+ under the leadership of everyday women and their homegrown system of government.

Through neighborhood-based committees and open asambleas, citizens brainstorm and reach consensus on matters ranging from childcare to protest activities as they continue to fight for basic services supporting education, health care, and housing.

Tellez’ new work centering border women’s voices—including creating a digital and oral history on activism by Chicanas and Mexicanas— is supported by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation via the Crossing Latinidades Humanities Research Initiative.

The grant catalyzes research, Latinx studies, and graduate student training across a network of Research-1 Hispanic-Serving Institutions.

Book cover design by Leigh McDonald using art from a mural of Hortensia Hernández in the community of Maclovio Rojas, painted by Elizabeth Huato.

Reliance on data has exploded over the past half century, says Arthur “Barney” Maccabe, executive director of the University of Arizona Institute for the Future of Data and Computation (IFDC): “It’s hard for me to imagine any area of society that won’t be impacted by the ability to collect massive amounts of data or gain more information from very small amounts of data.”

Centering Ethics in Data Science

That expansion obligates bringing social and human disciplines into data initiatives from the start, on par with technical disciplines. It’s a sea change in a field that has mostly

neglected social responsibilities around data or tried to tack them on—to poor effect—late in the game.

IFDC will expand and help retool outreach to K–14 students and develop retraining for people working both in and beyond “data” careers. Potential offerings range from supporting a professional master’s degree to “micro-certifications” focused on specific skills.

Data science is key to solving world problems, Maccabe says, but that equation requires trust between science and societies. The work of IFDC, therefore, is cultivating not just new capabilities, but also the trusted stewardship needed to truly address grand challenges.

QUANTUM

INTRODUCTION

In 1947, Albert Einstein dismissively referred to quantum entanglement as “spukhafte Fernwirkung,” famously translated as “spooky action at a distance.”

Twenty-five years later, scientists proved that phenomenon: two entangled subatomic particles do remain fundamentally linked, whether microns or miles apart, connected only by the laws of subatomic physics.

By then, quantum mechanics was already the foundation for several inventions: atomic clocks, electron microscopes, even pocket calculators.

Now University of Arizona scientists and engineers are leading the national vision for quantum networks, making Arizona ground zero in research that lays the foundation for quantum-enabled breakthroughs in communications, medicine, space exploration, and more.

Framing the Future of Quantum Technologies

Quantum networks, sensors, and computing will radically change every area of society— and will, undoubtedly, result in unintended consequences. University of Arizona law professor Jane Bambauer is working to ensure that quantum technology doesn’t create more problems than it solves.

Baumbauer and her team research likely applications of quantum technologies to inform decision-makers now of potential benefits and risks on the horizon. Their aim is to help shape laws, public policy, educational approaches, and business practices to harness quantum technology advances while minimizing adverse effects on society.

For example, the university’s BIO5 Institute is exploring the use of quantum sensors in bioimaging. Radically smaller and more

powerful equipment could lead to better health care, but it may also put privacy and data at risk.

Similarly, drug developers could someday create pharmaceuticals so individualized that they render current approval processes requiring massive human trials irrelevant. Bambauer is exploring what new regulations might be needed in a health care system transformed by quantum-assisted medicine.

As she leads development of policy recommendations, Bambauer also plans to create business support clinics where law students work with engineering and optical science grad students to help quantum technology startups structure their companies and manage their intellectual property ethically and sustainably.

Building the Quantum Internet from the Ground Up

In 2020, the National Science Foundation awarded the University of Arizona a five-year, $26 million grant with potential five-year renewal to establish and lead the Center for Quantum Networks (CQN), an Engineering Research Center of national and international partners working out the ground-level technologies for a quantum internet.

In his first job after getting his PhD at MIT, Saikat Guha came to know some of the early engineers of ARPANET, the late-60s/early-70s progenitor of today’s internet.

”Their sole program objective was to connect computers to literally send letters of the alphabet from one room to another,” Guha recounts.

Today, it’s hard to imagine top scientists sweating over something so elementary, but Guha can relate. It parallels the work of the Center for Quantum Networks (CQN) he now leads.

Quantum data is encoded as qubits in individual photons, the energy “packets” that make up light. They’re highly fragile compared to binary bits of today’s data but still need to travel fiber networks.

They also require all the processing of today’s data transfer—routing, error correction, and more—the unseen, always-on protocols and algorithms that make a mobile call or Venmo payment seamless.

“The creators of ARPANET were not working to enable Zoom calls, but we wouldn’t have Zoom now if they hadn’t first figured out those fundamentals,” Guha says.

“Now imagine a global network of optical telescopes that work as one giant telescope with an effective diameter as big as the Earth. We could do that with quantum entanglement. But first we need to master these fundamental challenges.”

CQN in Year Two

CoQREATE-ing Tomorrow’s Internet

The University of Arizona-led Center for Quantum Networks (CQN) is spearheading international research to create the foundations of the quantum internet.

Dubbed CoQREATE—short for Convergent Quantum Research Alliance in Telecommunications—the partnership is developing technologies to connect quantum computers to one another and someday link the quantum internet with today’s “classical” internet.

Because quantum computers encode data in ways fundamentally different from today’s binary-based computers, they’ll require new infrastructure to transmit information reliably. And because the quantum internet will work in tandem with today’s internet,

those underlying technologies also need upgrades for compatibility.

Once those essential components are in place, the quantum internet will surpass capabilities of today’s internet in at least two important ways. First, it promises communications security that cannot be hacked by any amount of computational power. Its more powerful processors and sensors will also bring unprecedented advances to distributed computing.

CoQREATE brings together CQN, Ireland’s Research Centre for Future Networks and Communications, the Irish Photonic Integration Centre, and researchers at the Centre for Quantum Materials and Technology at Queen’s University in Northern Ireland.

QUANTUM WHAT?

“Q uantum mechanics” are the physical laws of how atoms and even smaller particles behave. “Quantum networks” are linked computers that leverage those extraordinary properties.

CLASSICAL & QUANTUM DATA

In today’s “classical” networks, the basic unit of data is a bit, which can have only two values, usually described as 1s or 0s. That information is stored in various ways (e.g. DVDs, thumb drives) and sent over long distances as on/off pulses of laser light.

Quantum networks instead use “qubits,” which can have a value of 1 or 0 once “measured” but inherently can also have a value of both at the same time—a phenomenon called “superposition”.

Quantum data isn’t transmitted in pulses of laser light; instead, qubits are encoded into photons themselves (the bundles of energy that can be thought of as the particles that form light), known as “photonic qubits.”

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER

Qubits travel between computers as photons moving through optical fiber, much like the backbone of today’s “classical” internet.

“Quantum networks” are simply two or more computers (and/or processors, sensors, etc.) that exchange data via these photonic qubits, and the “quantum internet” will link such computers around the world.

Quantum Networks 101

For anyone not already versed in all things quantum, a very simplified primer can be helpful.

Healthy eating is expensive, particularly for people in rural areas and impoverished urban communities. With growing climate crises and the global population projected to reach nearly 10 billion by 2050, nutritious produce will become out of reach for most.

University of Arizona researchers believe indoor vertical farming, which takes less land, water, and nutrients than conventional farming, could help. However, current methods, though proven viable, are too expensive to replicate on a meaningful scale.

With $5.4 million funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and private corporations, UArizona scientists in the Optimizing Indoor Agriculture initiative are addressing challenges that prevent vertical farming from becoming standard practice.

At the university’s Controlled Environment Agriculture Center and its newer Vertical Farming Facility, researchers are combining computer models and dirtunder-the-fingernails experimentation. Manipulating air movement, light, carbon dioxide concentrations, and other conditions, they’re discovering better and cheaper ways of maintaining ideal growing conditions.

Beyond testing growing methods and technologies, the team is also exploring the economics of vertical farming, with UArizona students working alongside researchers to gain hands-on experience and help shape the evolution of agriculture to healthier and more sustainable practices.

Learn More

Green from Top to Bottom

Unpacking “Resilience” in International Aid RESILIENCE

International development is increasingly focused on resilience, but what does that look like? How is it measured? Fifty experts on the topic recently gathered at the University of Arizona to advance the work of answering those questions.

“Development agencies have gotten really good at measuring whether or not a project delivered certain outcomes, like reducing poverty,” says Greg Collins, UArizona associate vice president for resilience and international development.

“We are still early days in figuring out how to measure whether or not communities and countries are, in fact, more resilient.” That is, how do we know if they’re getting better at maintaining gains and progress in the face of shocks and stressors like conflict and climate change?

Helping solve that puzzle is something UArizona is especially well-suited for, Collins says, given its extraordinary strengths in climate research and its ability to assemble multidisciplinary science teams.

New approaches will combine technologies like remote sensing, satellite imaging, and on-ground systems for capturing real-time, high-frequency data. But metrics will also need to capture social capital, sense of agency, and other psychosocial factors we now know play a role.

UArizona partnered with the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Global Resilience Partnership to convene the 2022 consultation, which included representatives from U.S. and foreign governments, the United Nations, the World Bank, and a range of research and aid organizations.

UArizona Bears Down on Cybercriminals

EDUCATION

However, recent statistics estimate the number of unfilled cybersecurity jobs at more than 600,000 in the U.S. and more than 3.5 million worldwide. Without a robust security workforce, the internet becomes the domain of criminals, endangering nearly every aspect of modern life.

nearly $6 million to bulk up today’s insufficient cybersecurity workforce. The funding supports an enrollment goal of 2,000 students by the end of 2025 and 5,000 students by the end of 2030.

UArizona’s cyber operations program began in 2016 with three students. Within two years, the National Security Agency designated the university as one of just 24 Centers of Academic Excellence in Cyber Operations nationwide. Today, the program has grown to nearly 1,000 students. Learn

To address that need, the University of Arizona College of Applied Science and Technology is investing

It can be a murky and dangerous world online—a realm we increasingly inhabit, and one where we sorely need more cyberverse “good guys” to make it safe.

Tech Launch Arizona: 10 Years of Putting Inventions to Work

COLLABORATION

In 2022, Tech Launch Arizona (TLA) celebrated a decade of driving economic and social progress. TLA helps University of Arizona employees commercialize innovation through protecting and licensing intellectual property and creating new business ventures.

Data through June 2022

Tech Parks Arizona: Future-Focused

COLLABORATION

In 2022, Tech Parks Arizona celebrated 28 years of success developing communities where emerging companies and tech giants work side by side, generating, attracting, and retaining technology companies and talent aligned with UArizona research and goals.

$2 billion In annual Arizona economic impact

1,345 acres/2 million sq. ft. for offices, labs and R&D

Home to commercialization hub Tech Launch Arizona

65 acres/1.2 million sq. ft. planned for offices and labs

SUPPORTING SPACE SCIENCE INITIATIVES

250+ startups incubated since opening in 2003

Currently supporting 77 science and tech companies

Steward Observatory recently scaled up electrical-optical research at the flagship UA Tech Park, increasing its footprint to roughly 25,000 square feet for offices and labs to complement testing and evaluation space.

Additionally, the new Mission Integration Lab, the first UArizona research building at UA Tech Park at The Bridges, features a “high bay” facility where researchers will develop and test balloonborne telescopes and other instruments.

Balloon-borne missions, like those of NASA’s Scientific Ballooning Program, fill an important niche between ground- and spacebased observation, deploying technologies at altitudes with less interference from the Earth’s atmosphere.

ENVIRONMENT

INTRODUCTION

Global warming is fast approaching the threshold that scientists have flagged as a critical tipping point for cascading disruptions in Earth systems.

Working against that ticking clock, researchers at the University of Arizona are unraveling the complex interactions both resulting from and driving climate change: intensifying wildfires, soaring urban heat, unprecedented flooding, and more.

Our innovations in modeling the dynamics of watersheds, cleaning up environmental toxins, and better understanding how ecosystems respond to drought directly benefit Arizonans.

At the same time, they add to a growing portfolio of potentially life-saving strategies and technologies that can be adapted for hot and arid regions around the world.

Humble Sponge Enlisted in Environmental Clean-Up

While useful in many applications, perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, commonly called PFAS, can present major health and environmental challenges. University of Arizona researchers are now testing the humble sponge as a potential cleanup solution.

The durability of PFAS—the quality that makes them so valuable—means they’re hard to eliminate. Another big challenge is the chemicals’ stickiness: scientists have had a hard time figuring out how to cleanse materials used in PFAS removal, so clean-ups have involved single-use materials.

For decades, these long-lasting synthetics— resistant to water, heat and grease—have been used in a vast range of products: makeup, food packaging, nonstick pans, raincoats, carpeting, and firefighting foam, to name just a few.

Unfortunately, they also contaminate water supplies and cause adverse health effects, including decreased fertility, developmental delays in children, and increased risk of cancer.

UArizona researchers initially used off-the-shelf cellulose sponges to see how they remove PFAS. After studying the sponges’ optimal pore size, density, and other qualities, they designed new sponges specialized for the work of soaking up PFAS-contaminated water, squeezing out clean water, and being cleaned for reuse.

The team is testing its specialty sponges by using prototypes to clean contaminated waters from Pima County, Coconino County, and the Navajo Nation.

Engineers are testing modified cellulose sponges, like the tiny sponge in this photo, as potential tools for removing toxins from drinking water.

Better Planning for

Nature’s Deadliest Weather

Funded by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and National Institutes of Health, University of Arizona researcher Ladd Keith led development of a way for communities to better respond to the growing threat of heat.

The methodology, the first of its kind specific to heat, was published by the American Planning Association as PIRS™ for Heat. It builds on a national standard for evaluating community plans to reduce risks.

With a step-by-step guide and accompanying resources, this newly published tool helps users create a master view of often siloed plans and

policies. It then provides a way to assess that integrated plan against known heat risks and identify opportunities for increasing public safety.

The approach can also add value to a NOAAfunded community science initiative that, since 2017, has helped 60+ communities turn data from vehicle-mounted sensors into interactive maps of urban heat islands.

Causing 700+ deaths annually, heat has been the nation’s leading weather-related killer for decades. In 2021, Keith was the lead author of Planning for Urban Heat Resilience, the American Planning Association’s first authoritative guidance on heat planning. Learn

When Forests Burn Like Never Before

Tree ring and field data show wildfires are now more destructive compared to norms of the past two millennia. To better predict burn severity, University of Arizona researchers developed the Ecosystem Moisture Stress Index to measure forest health and wildfire potential using imaging data from Google Earth.

While media coverage of burns often emphasizes damage to built environments, wildfires release carbon dioxide sequestered in forests, dumping much of it into the atmosphere. Recent studies indicate, for example, that wildfires in California have undone much of that state’s progress in reducing carbon emissions.

Prescribed burns and mechanical thinning can reduce extreme flammability created by long-standing fire suppression, says dendrochronology professor and fire ecologist Donald Falk. But when severe burns occur, changing climate is making it harder for forests to recover.

Restoration ecologists are starting to address those challenges by introducing better climateadapted species in some areas. This “assisted colonization” is controversial but becoming accepted as inevitable in the wake of severe burns and climate change.

“Everything that the restoration ecologist does is mimicking some natural process that’s been compromised,” Falk says. “Of course, we would much rather nature heal itself, which goes back to that first principle of, ideally, staying out of trouble in the first place.”

Photo Courtesy of Bureau of Land Management

Novel Research Reveals Far Greater Global Flooding Risks

Today a record number of people are at risk from floods—not just because habitats are flooding more, but also because people are moving to flood-prone areas.

Most flood maps, including those used by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, rely on flood simulations based on data such as elevation, rainfall, and ground sensors. These models can have dangerous limitations, like overlooking risks in regions not historically prone to flooding.

Assistant professor Elizabeth Tellman and postdoctoral researcher Jonathan Sullivan in the University of Arizona School of Geography, Development, and Environment have devised a way to provide an accurate picture of the locations, frequency, and extent of recent flooding.

Drawing on satellite observations, their research reveals that the proportion of the global population exposed to floods has grown by 24% since the turn of the century—10 times more than scientists previously thought.

Their work also shows that change is largely driven by economic development, with between 58 million and 86 million people having moved into observed flood regions between 2000 and 2015.

Nearly 90% of flood events worldwide occurred in South and Southeast Asia, but the new models suggest that climate and demographic changes will add 25 more countries to the 32 already experiencing increasing floods.

Next-Generation Water Modeling

It might seem a given that watermanagement professionals base their decisions on the best hydrologic science. Unfortunately, most rely on modeling created through observations, assumptions, and simplifications now out of date with the shifting water landscape.

With a $5 million grant from the National Science Foundation, University of Arizona researchers are creating advanced models of the nation’s watershed systems through data from current, real-life challenges combined with machine learning.

After all, explains Nirav Merchant, coprincipal investigator for the project, an

environmentally sustainable future ”is all fueled by machine learning and artificial intelligence.”

The Hydrologic Scenario Generation (HydroGEN) project aims to break research out of the ivory tower by developing tools that allow people outside academia to build their own purpose- and location-specific models.

Resource managers, policymakers, and the public will be able to use HydroGEN to predict factors such as stream flow, soil moisture, and groundwater levels on seasonal to annual time scales, informing decisions across a range of needs, from wildfire control to agricultural water pumping.

Rainforest, Unite!

To study how climate change will affect Earth’s ecosystems, an international team of 80 scientists temporarily stopped the rain in the world’s only enclosed rainforest at the University of Arizona research facility Biosphere 2.

For the downside: In response, the rainforest’s carbon dioxide storage was reduced by 70%, showing drought can dramatically diminish a rainforest’s role in sequestering greenhouse gasses.

On the upside: The forest endured the dry spell relatively well. Turns out, survival came down to collaboration. Vegetation released more chemicals linked to communication and signaling among soil microbes and plants.

These compounds also contributed to cloud condensation and rain formation.

The most drought-sensitive trees drastically reduced water consumption and tapped into deep-water reserves only under extreme stress. Meanwhile, the more drought-tolerant trees held onto their canopy leaves the longest, providing continued shade and slowing topsoil dehydration.

The forest continued to display a variety of responses after rain was reinstated, indicating that soil, plants, and atmosphere continue their teamwork during recovery.

The experiment underscored the importance of considering rainforests as interdependent, collaborative communities, from microbes to the largest trees.

Students RISE to Thrive

EDUCATION

University of Arizona students are preparing for careers through the Resilience Internships and Student Experiences (RISE), which connects them to paid interdisciplinary internships.

Unlike many internship programs, RISE delivers experiential education that nurtures the multifaceted perspectives today’s students will need to thrive in diverse, ever-changing, and interconnected professions.

From summer 2022 through summer 2024, RISE is coordinating internships for 200 undergraduate and graduate students. Students are placed within the university as well as with federal, state, nonprofit, and private organizations worldwide.

Learn

Professor Prioritizes STEM by and for All

EDUCATION

In Gurtina Besla’s universe, all science would be inclusive, diverse, and accessible. The University of Arizona assistant professor of astronomy is using a $745,000 award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to further this mission of STEM by and for students from all backgrounds.

It’s all about access, Besla explains, noting an immediate way researchers can begin to make a difference: “Faculty need to think about making their data products available to students across the world.”

Example: Besla is investigating two nearby galaxies, the Small and Large Magellanic Clouds, which she believes are causing

disturbances in our galaxy. She’ll share that work through an open-source program designed for ordinary laptops and accompanied by user guides.

The NSF award will also help Besla expand TIMESTEP: Tucson Initiative for Minority Engagement in Science and Technology Program, a program she founded in 2015.

TIMESTEP provides support and community for STEM undergraduates, particularly those of color, by inviting faculty from across the country to share about their cultural heritage and how they stay true to their identities in their professions.

Assistant professor Gurtina Besla has received a five-year, $745,000 CAREER grant from the National Science Foundation.

Racism Education Takes a Cue from Fortnite and Pokémon

Virtual “skins” are commonplace for gamers: a way of changing the look of characters, vehicles, or other game elements. Earned, found, or purchased, skins can alter anything from costumes to eye color, and yes, skin color, too.

Associate professor Bryan Carter, director of the University of Arizona Center for Digital Humanities, now hopes to contribute to education on racism and discrimination using skins in game-like experiences.

Carter is leading that work with two applications:

1. A fully immersive experience utilizing a headset and 360-degree video, akin to the game Fortnite. Skins place learners in various situations in which they experience microaggressions.

2. Augmented reality, a technology used in the Pokémon GO app. The learner scans their surroundings and digitally interacts with superimposed virtual characters who deliver common microaggressions against a backdrop of real environments.

Carter is clear that these experiences are not a substitute for other types of learning. Instead, virtual and augmented reality are tools to help uncloak the invisibility of systemic racism.

His digital innovations are designed to let people “walk in someone else’s shoes,” and he hopes that organizations will adopt them for employee orientations and diversity training.

Research on Guns in the U.S. Leads to Prestigious Fellowship SOCIETY

University of Arizona sociologist

Jennifer Carlson has been named a “genius fellow” and, as a result of the award, has $800,000 to further her work on guns and their impact in the U.S.

The MacArthur Fellowships, often called “genius grants,” are a nostrings-attached investment in the originality, insight, and potential of U.S. scholars, scientists, and artists. They are nominated anonymously by leaders in their respective fields.

Carlson has spent more than a decade examining the politics of guns in American life and has published three books on the topic. Her research— involving extensive, in-depth conversations with gun owners, gun sellers, law enforcement, gun violence

survivors, and state licensing bodies— is regularly featured in high-profile publications and programs.

She is currently conducting a largescale study on trauma caused by gun violence and its effects on individuals, communities, and U.S. society as a whole.

“Ultimately, I will have done my job as a sociologist if I can provide people with the tools to understand where the other side is coming from and have a productive, generative conversation that is aimed at consensus rather than stalemate,” she says.

Carlson will dedicate a portion of her award to support graduate students in sociology at the University of Arizona.

Polymers Advance Fossil Fuels

University of Arizona chemical and environmental engineering professor

Erin Ratcliff is confident her team can help create cheaper, better, and more sustainable alternatives to fossil fuels and batteries.

Ratcliff’s Center for SoftPhotoElectroChemical Systems, or SPECS, is funded to the tune of $11 million by the U.S. Department of Energy. Its focus is on using organic polymers for semiconductor technologies that power electrochemical reactions with light. The resulting substances are called solar fuels, e.g., hydrogen produced from sunlight.

“It’s not milk jug plastic,” Ratcliff says, explaining organic polymers. “But it’s the same concept in that it can be mass-

produced. Our polymeric material can be readily 3D printed and scaled.”

That innovation alone solves a major challenge of other methods for creating solar fuels: their components are made of inorganic materials that are costly, hard to get, and difficult to scale.

Another goal of SPECS is to help the team’s younger members develop as excellent scientists. Ratcliff explains, “When I came to the University of Arizona, I was exposed to so many new things and amazing scientists. That’s my hope for our early-career researchers. I want their scientific worlds to open up as much as mine did.”

Dr. Erin Ratcliff discusses a new project with members of the Laboratory for Interface Science of Printable Electronic Materials.

Puppies and People: Perfect Together

SOCIETY

University of Arizona researchers found that dogs’ much-appreciated companionship to humans may be innate.

For the study, the university collaborated with Canine Companions, an organization providing service dogs to clients with physical disabilities. Researchers examined how 375 eight-week-old puppies performed in tasks measuring social communication.

The study engaged puppies in different activities, such as checking to see if the dogs would follow human cues to find treats or hold someone’s gaze as that person read to them.

A significant number of puppies were responsive to humans’ physical and verbal cues in the initial experiments. Because their prior interactions with humans had been minimal, researchers could deduce that the behaviors they observed were biological rather than learned.

Study leaders also knew how the puppies were related and found that genetics explained more than 40% of variation in their performance on tasks.

The researchers will next look for specific genes that contribute to dogs’ capacity to communicate with humans. Organizations like Canine Companions could benefit tremendously from being able to identify suitable service dog candidates even before they’re born.

HEALTH

INTRODUCTION

In the time it takes you to read this sentence, more than 3 million people around the world will have died of cancer. Another 3+ million will have been diagnosed with dementia, and 780 million will continue living with chronic pain.

In recent years, progress in genetics, machine learning, material science, and a host of otherwise disparate fields have converged to put modern medicine on the cusp of revolutionary change.

University of Arizona researchers are helping to lead that revolution, bringing Arizonans lifechanging interventions that ultimately improve health outcomes worldwide.

With a coalition of physicians, public health experts, scientists, and engineers, we are unsnarling the etiologies of complex diseases, breaking down unjust health disparities, girding for pandemics we can’t foresee, and developing ways to help all people live longer, healthier lives.

New Research Could Make Alzheimer’s Preventable by 2025

Doctors diagnose 10 million new cases of dementia yearly, and that number is projected to triple by 2050. Dementia is often caused by Alzheimer’s disease, for which there is no known cure. New lines of University of Arizona research could change that.

Researchers at the UArizona Center for Innovation in Brain Science (CIBS) begin with existing data and use artificial intelligence and bioinformatics to mine for risk factors and medications that could be helpful for preventing or treating Alzheimer’s.

Rui Chang, a CIBS computational biology investigator, used AI to analyze data from the brain tissues of deceased Alzheimer’s patients. He then created a model demonstrating how changes in even a single gene influenced disease progression.

Targeting genes dysregulated early on in Alzheimer’s, Chang identified three compounds

that, in mice with Alzheimer’s, improved memory so dramatically that their brain function nearly “caught up” to that of mice with no disease—an achievement never before demonstrated.

In parallel research, Francesca Vitali, associate director of bioinformatics at CIBS, used AI to study vast quantities of data on Alzheimer’s patients before they were diagnosed—medical histories sometimes spanning decades.

Vitali identified more than 300 diseases and conditions linked to higher risk for Alzheimer’s, then mined drug information repositories to identify more than 600 approved medicines used to treat those conditions.

Vitali’s published analyses were so promising, they inspired a very hopeful and specific prediction: “We believe that early interventions that strategically target known risks for developing Alzheimer’s could effectively make this a preventable disease by 2025.”

Wearable Health Monitors with a Perfect Fit

University of Arizona engineers have developed what they’ve named “biosymbiotic devices”—wearable monitors 3D-printed based on body scans to create a perfect fit.

Imagine a custom-fitted health monitoring device that hugs your bicep, calf, or torso without adhesive. It is lightweight and breathable, strategically placed sensors continuously measure data points like core body temperature or muscle changes, and it never needs a charge.

University of Arizona engineers have developed what they’ve named “biosymbiotic devices”—wearable monitors 3D-printed based on body scans to create a perfect fit.

A welcome bonus: these devices use wireless power transfer with a range of several meters. When the wearer moves out of range, a small energy storage unit provides power.

Biosymbiotic devices could radically improve disease tracking and treatment, drug testing, and personal health monitoring. Far more sophisticated than heart rate monitors or step counters, they will potentially detect increasing frailty in older adults, diagnose diseases, and test the efficacy of new drugs.

Learn More

Chronic pain affects one in three Americans and significantly diminishes quality of life for approximately one in 10, driving many to opioids, addiction, and accidental death by overdose.

University of Arizona researchers are working to put an end to this tragic trajectory.

Scientists at the UArizona Comprehensive Pain and Addiction Center (CPAC) are combating the opioid crisis by discovering pain-relief alternatives to opioids, working to prevent relapse from opioid use disorder, and developing effective medications for opioid overdose.

The team benefits from data on 18,000 unique research molecules developed by Purdue Pharma to address chronic pain and addiction. It also uses more than 40,000 human bio samples from patients in two decades of clinical trials involving opioids and non-opioids.

CPAC also aims to train students and the existing workforce to treat substance use disorder more effectively. Outreach includes establishing a Southwest-region addiction science network to further study and educate about the overlap between pain and addiction.

Fighting Chronic Pain and Addiction

$60 Million Investment to Help Brains Keep Up with Bodies

Why do so many people experience cognitive declines in their later years?

The bottom line is that humans’ cognitive life span doesn’t match the body’s lifespan overall.

With the support of a $60 million grant from the National Institutes of Health, UArizona researchers are tackling that gap through the Precision Aging Network.

The network connects neuroscientists and other experts to apply precision medicine to the aging brain.

The researchers are discovering how health professionals can better serve seniors with interventions rooted in genetics, lifestyle,

environment, and other factors rather than relying on a one-size-fits-all approach.

While addressing Alzheimer’s disease and dementia are priorities, researchers hope their work can help anyone since even what is considered ”normal” age-related cognitive declines can reduce quality of life for aging patients as well as their families and caregivers.

Addressing Health Care Disparities

The Precision Aging Network is working to ensure its studies comprise adults of different ages, ethnicities, and backgrounds. An important goal of the initiative is to expand knowledge about populations historically underrepresented in aging research.

Learn More

The Shifting Challenges of Covid-19

More than two years into the pandemic, the University of Arizona remains at the forefront of institutions shining light on how to address future diseases, even as we grapple with lingering mysteries of COVID-19.

Studying Vaccine Efficacy and Attitudes

With a $15 million grant renewal from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the UArizona-led AZ HEROES study is analyzing COVID-19 immunity and vaccine effectiveness in front-line workers, children, and populations historically underserved in health care and research.

Results from the study show that individuals who contract COVID-19 after vaccination have less virus in their systems, shorter infection times, and milder symptoms compared to unvaccinated people who get the disease.

Researchers are also studying knowledge, attitudes, and practices around COVID-19

vaccines: Why are some people enthusiastic about vaccines and boosters? Why do others refuse them? Why do some people follow vaccine recommendations, but only partly?

Ultimately, scientists hope to better understand connections between behaviors and what individuals know and think about the virus and vaccines.

Unpacking the Enigma of Long COVID

Backed by $9.2 million in first-year funding, the university is participating in the National Institutes of Health RECOVER study. The initiative aims to discover why one in three people who get COVID-19 remains symptomatic for weeks or even months.

One of 30 RECOVER teams nationwide, UArizona researchers are leading a statewide collaborative effort to better understand these recovery discrepancies and how to prevent or minimize long-term damage to health and quality of life.

Minimizing Losses, Maximizing Lessons Learned

From the pandemic’s earliest days, the University of Arizona has made significant contributions to fighting and understanding COVID-19. Now, its Aegis Consortium is converging great minds across disciplines and around the world to study pandemic preparedness, prediction, and control.

Wearable sensors are helping some researchers track the secondary and long-term effects of COVID-19, while others look backward to examine why some hospitals better dealt with uncertainty and the influx of patients. Some Aegis projects aim to understand the impact of K–12 school closures

on children, other projects involve collaborating with senior living associations to learn about the impact of the pandemic on older adults.

The consortium is also studying how built environments—the buildings in which we live, work, and play—can be part of the problem or solution in a pandemic.

Scientists are creating a building index system to rate risks of infection, developing new technologies to reduce disease spread in built environments, and exploring ways to detect airborne viruses in real time.

Your Best Defense? Your Own Immune System

Researchers at University of Arizona Health Sciences are excited about the new Center for Advanced Molecular and Immunological Therapies (CAMI), set to become a regional hub for precision medicine in Phoenix.

“The current landscape is just exploding right now,” says senior vice president for UArizona Health Sciences Michael D. Dake, MD. “The fields of immunotherapy and genome modification are merging—you can’t be any closer to leadingedge than that. You’re going to see a wide array of therapies vastly different than past generations ever had.”

With four research targets—cancer, infectious diseases, autoimmune diseases, and real-time monitoring of the immune system’s response to therapy—CAMI builds on increasing evidence that one’s natural immune system is the best defense against disease. Its research will consider each patient’s unique body and life story as it works toward personalized therapies.

“The fields of immunotherapy and genome modification are merging—you can’t be any closer to leading-edge than that. You’re going to see a wide array of therapies vastly different than past generations ever had.”

UA RIZONA Research Highlights

ENTREPRENEURSHIP (FY21)

274 invention disclosures +11 over previous year

124 licenses & options for university inventions +29 over previous year

100 patents issued Ranked no. 28 among worldwide universities granted U.S. utility patents

17 startups launched 125+ since 2012

$1.6B in economic output from commercialization activities between FY17-FY21

Through cutting-edge research and innovation, the University of Arizona is committed to expanding human potential, exploring new horizons, and enriching life for all. With $824M in annual research activity, we are leading the way in tackling the most pressing and complex challenges of our time, from climate change to planetary defense, and pandemic preparedness to healthy aging.

Administration 601 PO Box 210066 | Tucson, AZ 85721

Office: 520-626-0631 | Main: 520-621-3513

This image of interstellar gas and dust, which NASA scientists named the Pillars of Creation, was captured by the James Webb Space Telescope Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) in 2022. The pillars lie within the Eagle Nebula, also known as Messier 16 (M16). NIRCam instrument design, instrument control, focal plane electronics, and software were created by the University of Arizona and Lockheed Martin.