Roselinde Kaiser, a clinical psychologist and neuroscientist, is being recognized for her research on the science and treatment of adolescent depression

Roselinde Kaiser, a University of Colorado Boulder associate professor of psychology and neuroscience, has been named a winner, the highest honor bestowed by the U.S. government on outstanding scientists and engineers early in their independent careers.

“PECASE embodies the high priority placed by the government on maintaining the leadership position of the United States in science by producing outstanding scientists and engineers and nurturing their continued development,” according to the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC), which was commissioned in 1996 to create PECASE.

“The awards identify a cadre of outstanding scientists and engineers who will broadly advance science and the missions important to the participating agencies.

In honoring scientists and engineers who are early in their research careers, the PECASE Awards recognize “exceptional potential for leadership at the frontiers of scientific knowledge during the 21st century. The awards foster innovative and far-reaching developments in science and technology, increase awareness of careers in science and engineering, give recognition to the scientific missions of participating agencies, enhance connections between fundamental research and national goals, and highlight the importance of science and technology for the nation's future,” according to the NSTC.

Kaiser is a clinical psychologist and neuroscientist who studies the science and treatment of adolescent depression. With her research group, the Research on Affective Disorders and Development Lab (RADD Lab), she conducts research that asks questions such as: How can brain functioning and behavior help us to understand the experience of depression in adolescence and over the course of human development? Can we use brain or behavioral markers to better predict depression—or to predict resilience? How can we enhance brain and behavioral functioning to promote emotional health and wellness throughout the lifespan?

The mission of the RADD Lab is to gain insight into the brain and behavioral processes that reflect or underlie depression and other mood experiences, with the goal of leveraging research discoveries to foster emotional health. This year, in partnership with an interdisciplinary team of scientists, educators and young people, Kaiser and her team are launching an initiative to scale and translate scientific discovery into high-impact programs aimed at promoting mental health.

“I am delighted and honored to receive the PECASE, which truly reflects the dedicated efforts of our research team and the commitment to innovation at the University of Colorado,” Kaiser says.

“Youth depression is an urgent public health priority; in our research, we are advancing new paths to promote healthy mood through interdisciplinary discovery achieved with and for young people. The PECASE recognizes the promise and innovation of this work and is a launchpad for research that will develop and scale programs for personalized health insight and wellness promotion. We are enthusiastic to begin the next chapter in research discovery and real-world impact.”

Also recognized with a PECASE award was , JILA fellow, National Institute of Standards and Technology physicist and CU Boulder physics professor.

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NEH funding also was awarded for two other humanities projects at CU Boulder

University of Colorado Boulder Department of History Associate Professor Henry Lovejoy has won a $60,000 fellowship from the  to allow him to research and write a book about involuntary African indentured labor between 1800 and 1914.

Lovejoy’s research focuses on the political, economic and cultural history of Africa and the African Diaspora. He also has special expertise in digital humanities and is director of the Digital Slavery Research Lab, which focuses on developing, linking and archiving open-source data and multi-media related to the global phenomenon of slavery and human trafficking.

Additionally, Lovejoy spearheaded the creation and update of the website , a living memorial to the more than 700,000 men, women and children who were “liberated” but not immediately freed in the British-led campaign to abolish African slave trafficking.

The term “Liberated Africans” coincides with a now-little-remembered part of history following the passage of the Slave Trade Act of 1807 by the United Kingdom’s Parliament, which prohibited the slave trade within the British Empire (although it did not abolish the practice of slavery until 1834).

Around the same time, other countries—including the United States, Portugal, Spain and the Netherlands—passed their own trafficking laws and operated squadrons of ships in the Atlantic and Indian oceans to interdict the slave trade.

However, in a cruel twist of fate, most of those “liberated” people weren’t actually freed—but were instead condemned as property, declared free under anti-slave trade legislation and then subjected to indentures lasting several years.

Lovejoy said the NEH fellowship is allowing him to take leave from work to write his book, focused on lax enforcement of anti-slavery laws, migratory patterns of African laborers, their enslavement and subsequent use as indentured laborers around the world from 1800 to 1914.

“I’m deeply grateful for being awarded this opportunity, as the NEH plays such a vital role in supporting the humanities by funding projects that foster our cultural understanding, historical awareness, and intellectual inquiry,” he said.

Meanwhile, Lovejoy said he is also writing a biography about Sarah Forbes Bonetta, a “liberated African” who was apprenticed by Queen Victoria, after conducting research in royal, national and local archives in England, Sierra Leone and Nigeria. Lovejoy also wrote the book , a biography of an enslaved African who rose through the ranks of Spain’s colonial military and eventually led a socio-religious institution at the root of an African-Cuban religion, commonly known as Santería. 

Lovejoy’s NEH fellowship was one of three NEH awards to CU Boulder faculty. Other awards granted were:

Germanic and Slavic Languages and Literatures Professor Patrick Greaney won a $60,000 fellowship to research and write a book about German manufacturer Braun, National Socialism and the creation of West German culture between1933-1975, focusing on Braun from the beginning of the Nazi regime through the 1970s in the Federal Republic of Germany. Greaney’s research focuses on literature, design and modern and contemporary art.

Wilma Doris Loayza, teaching assistant professor at the Latin American and Latinx Studies Center, and affiliated faculty of the Center for Native American and Indigenous Studies, along with co-project directors Joe Bryan, Leila Gomez and Ambrocio Gutierrez Lorenzo, won a two-year, $149,925 grant to develop course modules and educational resources about Quechua and Zapotec language and culture as part of efforts to expand and strengthen the Latin American Indigenous Languages and Cultures program.

The awards to CU Boulder faculty were part of $22.6 million in grants the NEH provided to 219 humanities projects across the country. The awards were announced Tuesday.

“It is my pleasure to announce NEH grant awards to support 219 exemplary projects that will foster discovery, education, and innovative research in the humanities,” said NEH Chair Shelly C. Lowe.

“This funding will strengthen our ability to preserve and share important stories from the past with future generations, and expand opportunities in communities, classrooms, and institutions to engage with the history, ideas, languages, and cultures that shape our world.”

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Fileva, a CU Boulder associate professor of philosophy, won a 2024 Public Philosophy Op-Ed contest

Iskra Fileva, an associate professor in the University of Colorado Boulder Department of Philosophy, has won a 2024 Public Philosophy Op-Ed contest from the American Philosophical Association for her blog 

Fileva’s article was originally published in 2023 in , for which she is a regular contributor. With her permission, the article was later reposted on the Colorado Arts and Sciences Magazine website.

Iskra Fileva, an associate professor in the CU Boulder Department of Philosophy, has won a 2024 Public Philosophy Op-Ed contest from the American Philosophical Association.

Fileva specializes in moral psychology and issues at the intersection of philosophy, psychology and psychiatry. She also studies aesthetics and epistemology. Her work has appeared in a number of journals, including Australasian Journal of Philosophy, Philosophers’ Imprint, Philosophical Studies and Synthese.

In addition to her academic work, Fileva writes for a broad audience, including op-eds for the New York Times. She writes a column in Psychology Today that has addressed a wide variety of topics, including perfectionism, self-sabotage, parents who envy their children, asymmetrical friendships, love without commitment, fear of freedom, death, dreams, despair and many others.

In announcing the award, the American Philosophical Association noted that winning submissions “call public attention, either directly or indirectly, to the value of philosophical thinking” and were judged in terms of sound reasoning and “their success as examples of public philosophy,” as well as their accessibility to the general public on topics of public concern.

Fileva said she’s pleased with the reception the article received and honored to be recognized by the American Philosophical Association.

“Receiving the public philosophy award was a very nice way to end the year,” she said. “It also drew attention to the essay, and I heard from people who read it and who likely would not have found it otherwise. It took me a day or so to re-read it as I don’t, in general, know what I would think of anything I’ve written several months ago, but I did re-read it, and I was happy to discover that I still agreed with what I’d written.”

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The American Mathematical Society recognition supports mid-career female researchers whose achievements demonstrate potential for further contributions to mathematics

Katherine Stange, a professor in the University of Colorado Boulder Department of Mathematics, has been named the 2025-26 American Mathematical Society (AMS) Joan and Joseph Birman Fellow.

The  is a mid-career research fellowship that aims “to address the paucity of women at the highest levels of research in mathematics by giving exceptionally talented women extra research support during their mid-career years,” according to the AMS. Fellows are those “whose achievements demonstrate significant potential for further contributions to mathematics.”

Katherine Stange, a CU Boulder professor of mathematics, has been named the 2025-26 American Mathematical Society (AMS) Joan and Joseph Birman Fellow.

“I am both honored and humbled by this award,” Stange says. “As my career has unfolded, I've learned the incredible value of community in mathematics, and I feel a great debt of gratitude to my amazing collaborators and the support of my mathematical community.

“Joan and Joseph Birman's vision, to support the careers of women reconciling the many aspects of work and life, goes beyond these individual awards; and so, I hope to support those around me, just as I have been privileged by the support of so many.”

Fellows can use the $50,000 award in any way that most effectively enables their research, including child care, release time, participation in special research programs and travel support.

Stange, a number theorist, earned her bachelor of mathematics degree at the University of Waterloo and her PhD at Brown University under the mentorship of Joseph H. Silverman. She held postdoctoral positions at Harvard University, Stanford University and the Pacific Institute for Mathematical Sciences at Simon Fraser University and is a fellow of the Association for Women in Mathematics.

Describing her research, Stange says, “I enjoy simple-seeming questions that lead to a richness of structure; and arithmetic questions with geometric and especially visual access points.”

Her areas of interest include elliptic curves, Apollonian circle packings, Kleinian groups, algebraic divisibility sequences, Diophantine approximation, continued fractions, quaternion algebras and quadratic and Hermitian forms. Stange is especially interested in cryptography, including elliptic-curve and isogeny-based cryptography, as well as quantum algorithms, “in part for the surprising way mathematical structures can have an outsize influence on human affairs,” she notes. “I enjoy problems that involve experimental, algorithmic and especially visual mathematics, using a computer and other tools.

“There’s a great deal of hidden beauty in number theoretical problems waiting to be illustrated.”

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The award jury called Biernacki’s 2023 book, The Matter of Wonder: Abhinavagupta's Panentheism and the New Materialism, ‘both striking and original’ 

Loriliai Biernacki, professor of religious studies at the University of Colorado Boulder, is one of this year’s winners of the American Academy of Religion Book Award (AAR).

The group’s annual award “recognizes new scholarly publications that make significant contributions to the study of religion,” according to the . Biernacki’s book, , published by Oxford University Press, won in the category of constructive-reflective studies, beating out five other finalists.

“Loriliai Biernacki makes a fascinating case for the contemporary relevance of Abhinavagupta’s 11th-century Indian philosophy,” the AAR jury said. “By analyzing wonder (camatkāra) as rooted in the material rather than in a cognitive faculty, The Matter of Wonder is both striking and original in its approach. The links she draws with viruses and AI in particular make this work pertinent and fresh.”

A faculty member at CU Boulder since 2000, Biernacki researches Hinduism, gender, New Materialism and the religion-science interface. She’s published dozens of book chapters and journal articles, as well as two other books: God's Body: Panentheism across the World's Religious Traditions and Renowned Goddess of Desire: Women, Sex and Speech in Tantra, the latter of which won the Kayden Award in 2008.

"As I was working on this book, reading these medieval Sanskrit authors, I found myself continually marveling at how prescient and cogent these medieval Indian thinkers were, so it felt very important to be able to connect us today to the thought of these writers so many centuries ago," Biernacki says. "Also, feel fortunate to be at the University of Colorado, which has been supportive of my work here."

Biernacki’s fellow recipients this year include , , , , and .

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CU Boulder historian serving second term in position, focusing on an accurate and comprehensive portrayal of Colorado’s history

William Wei, a University of Colorado Boulder professor of history and faculty affliate in the Center for Asian Studies, has been named state historian by History Colorado, his second time receiving the honor.

William Wei, CU Boulder professor of history and Colorado state historian, is the author of Asians in Colorado: A History of Persecution and Perseverance in the Centennial State.

Wei was one of the five founders of History Colorado’s State Historian’s Council, which “reaches across the state to aid in the interpretation of the history of Colorado and the West, providing opportunities to expand the understanding of the historical perspectives, cultures and places of Colorado.”

The State Historian’s Council was founded in 2018 and comprises five interdisciplinary scholars who provide complementary perspectives and rotate the state historian position every year on Aug.1, Colorado Day. Wei’s first term as state historian was from 2019-2020.           

"It is a great honor to be appointed the Colorado state historian again,” Wei says. “I remain committed to ensuring that Coloradans receive an accurate and comprehensive portrayal of the Centennial State's history. This commitment naturally extends to Colorado's marginalized communities, whose stories have often been neglected, overlooked and forgotten.”

Wei was named the 2022 Asian American Hero of Colorado and is the author of Asians in Colorado: A History of Persecution and Perseverance in the Centennial State. He also was a founding editor-in-chief of History Colorado’s and a lead advisor for the organization’s .

“William brings a broad global perspective alongside an encyclopedic interest in Colorado to the role of State Historian,” notes Jason Hanson, chief creative officer and director of interpretation and research at History Colorado, in announcing Wei’s second term. “He is passionate about how historical perspective can help us see the present more clearly and in ways that can truly improve people’s lives. I am excited for him to share his knowledge and passion with the people of Colorado as the state historian once again.”

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CU Boulder chemist will use the five-year support to study tailoring cycles affecting energy flow in solar energy conversion

���Ի��é��&�Բ�����;�ѴDzԳٴDzⲹ-�䲹���پ�������, an assistant professor in the University of Colorado Boulder Department of Chemistry, has been awarded a .

The fellowships, given by the , are awarded to innovative early-career scientists and engineers, who receive $875,000 over five years to pursue their research.

“These scientists and engineers are the architects of tomorrow, leading innovation with bold ideas and unyielding determination,” said Nancy Lindborg, president and chief executive officer of the Packard Foundation, in announcing the 2024 awards. “Their work today will be the foundation for the breakthroughs of the future, inspiring the next wave of discovery and invention.” 

Montoya-Castillo is a theoretical chemist who that encompasses multidisciplinary skills spanning physical chemistry, condensed matter physics and quantum information science.

Explaining his research that the fellowship will support, Montoya-Castillo notes, “The world’s growing population faces looming food shortages and the pressing need for cheap and sustainable energy sources. Reliable conversion of sunlight–our most abundant energy source–into fuel can address these threats. However, reliable energy conversion requires knowing how to tailor, at an atomic level, photoprotection cycles limiting food production and energy flow in solar cells that convert sunlight into fuel.”

He adds that he “will harness the power of generalized master equations to develop efficient, atomically resolved theories and analysis tools that cut the cost of experiments needed to reveal how to employ chemical modifications to manipulate photoprotection cycles in plants and the photocatalytic activity of metal oxides. Our developments will offer transformative insights into fundamental excitation dynamics in complex materials, enabling the boosting of photosynthetic crop production and optimization of environmentally friendly semiconductors that split water into clean fuels.”

Last year, Montoya-Castillo was named a U.S. Department of Energy Early Career Research Program scientist and earlier this year received the CU Boulder Marinus Smith Award, which recognizes faculty and staff members who have had a particularly positive impact on students. He received his BA in chemistry and literature from Macaulay Honors College, CUNY, and his PhD in chemical physics from Columbia University.

“I’m honored and thrilled to be part of the Packard Fellows class of 2024!” Montoya-Castillo says. “With the help of the Packard Foundation's funding, I look forward to finding new ways to measure and control nonequilibrium energy flow for human use.”

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Once frightened of insects, Ramsey has become a leader in the field of entomology

Samuel Ramsey, assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Colorado Boulder, is one of this year’s recipients of the .

The Lowell Thomas Award, named after broadcast journalist and explorer and given by , recognizes “excellence in domains or fields of exploration,” according to the award announcement. In particular, the award celebrates “individuals who have grit, tenacity, are undaunted by failure, and endure all obstacles, finding a way forward to discovery and results that expand the limits of knowledge.” 

Samuel Ramsey (left) working with the chieftain of a hill tribe village in Thailand to sample domesticated bees for parasites. (Photo: /.)

, also known as “your friendly neighborhood entomologist,” didn’t always like insects. They used to terrify him. But in the second grade he conquered his fears by learning about insects at his local library.

Now, more than 25 years later, Ramsey is one of the most innovative and distinguished thinkers in the field of entomology. His research has won him numerous awards, including first place in the , the American Bee Research Conference’s Award for Distinguished Research and the Acarological Society of America’s Highest Award for Advances in Acarology Research.

Ramsey—a member of the , class of 2024—also runs a nonprofit, the , which seeks to protect pollinator diversity.

Ramsey’s fellow awardees this year are zoologist , ocean conservationist and geothermal scientist . Past recipients include , , , , and .

The takes place in Austin on Nov. 1.

Top image: Samuel Ramsey researching bee biodiversity in Thailand. (Photo: /.)

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The CU Boulder Ineva Baldwin Professor of English is part of a Texas Literary Hall of Fame induction class that includes Cormac McCarthy and Molly Ivins

Stephen Graham Jones, author of bestselling horror novels and , among other award-winning works, has been inducted into the .

Born in Midland, Texas, Jones relocated to Boulder in 2008, where he continues to serve as the University of Colorado Boulder Ineva Baldwin Professor of English.

CU Boulder Ineva Baldwin Professor of English Stephen Graham Jones has been inducted into the Texas Literary Hall of Fame, a recognition whose previous recipients include Larry McMurtry and Sandra Cisneros.

“When I moved away from Texas for Colorado, I kind of suspected Texas might forget about me, even though a lot of my novels since then have been set there,” he says.

But if Jones’ admission into the state’s Literary Hall of Fame is any indication, Texas didn’t forget about him.

Established in 2004, the Texas Literary Hall of Fame recognizes the literary contributions of the Lone Star State’s most celebrated writers. Inductees are announced every two years by the Texas Christian University (TCU) Mary Couts Burnett Library, the TCU AddRan College of Liberal Arts, the TCU Press and the Center for Texas Studies.

“The Texas Literary Hall of Fame showcases top literary writers across the nation,” Sonja Watson, dean of the AddRan College of Liberal Arts, says on the Texas Literary Hall of Fame . “This group of inductees follows a long list of others who demonstrate how Texas has shaped the cultural landscape of their writings.”

Joining Jones this year as he enters the Hall of Fame are , , , , and . Past honorees include and .

“Colorado is home now, but Texas will always be where I'm from, and I'm honored and thrilled to be inducted into the Texas Literary Hall of Fame,” says Jones. “My father-in-law’s photo is in the Texas Capitol, which I always thought pretty special. This, to me, is that same kind of special.”

The official induction ceremony will take place on Oct. 29.

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Researchers Emily Yeh and Brian Catlos are recognized for prior career achievements and exceptional promise

Two University of Colorado Boulder scholars have been named , recognizing not only their prior career achievements but also their exceptional promise.

Emily Yeh, a professor of geography and College of Arts and Sciences professor of distinction, and Brian Catlos, a professor of religious studies and director of the , are among a group of scholars, scientists, artists and writers representing 52 scholarly disciplines and artistic fields, who “are meeting (humanity’s existential) challenges head-on and generating new possibilities and pathways across the broader culture as they do so,” noted Edward Hirsch, award-winning poet and president of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, in announcing the fellowships. 

The monetary award that accompanies the Guggenheim recognition will support Yeh in writing a book about global geographies of weather modification in the context of climate change adaptation and growing discussions about geoengineering.

Emily Yeh has conducted a significant amount of research in China and Tibet, and first became interested in cloud seeding through a Chinese project called Sky River, or Tian He.

“It’s going to be an expansion of my previous research on cloud seeding,” Yeh explains. “Cloud seeding as a practice has been around since the 1950s, but a lot of people don’t really know that it happens.

“I think it’s really important right now for two reasons: One is climate change and drought, with cloud seeding being seen as a form of climate adaptation which is being adopted by countries around the world. The second is the growing interest in stratospheric aerosol injection, a form of geoengineering, for climate mitigation, and the public conflation of this with cloud seeding.”

Yeh, who has conducted a significant amount of her scholarly research in China and Tibet, first became interested in cloud seeding through a Chinese project called Sky River, or Tian He: “There were a whole bunch of reports about how the Chinese government was going to move water vapor from the Himalayas and channel it over the Tibetan Plateau to the north. I started following that issue, and through that realized that even though that idea of channeling water vapor itself isn’t a reality, some of the ideas behind it are very revealing of certain imaginations of nature that also underpin the Chinese state’s discourse of ‘ecological civilization.’”

She says that in some of the Tibetan villages she’s visited on the border of Sichuan and Gansu provinces, few safety precautions accompany cloud seeding measures, so that rockets can fall without warning on herders’ pastures. They experience cloud seeding as a form of injustice, she explains. At the same time, experiences raise questions about what cloud seeding operations claim versus what effects they have. “Overclaiming of results is leading to conspiracy theories, like the idea that recent flooding in the United Arab Emirates was caused by cloud seeding rather than climate change,” Yeh says.

Boulder, as a national and international center of cloud seeding research and technology, is an ideal place to study not only cloud seeding in the context of drought in the American west, Yeh notes, but also institutional and political economic contexts for cloud seeding research and practice globally.

Reassessing history

For Catlos, the Guggenheim recognition will support him in writing An Age of Convergence: Christians, Muslims and Jews in the Pre-Modern Mediterranean, a culmination of his scholarship to date showing when, how and why members of these three faith communities—which hail from Africa, the Middle East and Europe—together laid the foundations of Western modernity.

“Traditionally, the way we’ve conceived of the West has been this sort of western European, essentially Christian culture that coalesced in the Middle Ages and led to Anglo-European culture and society today,” Catlos explains. “That’s based on a lot of assumptions and perspectives that are rooted in 19th century ideas of how society works—some racist, some colonial, some rooted in notions that the fundamental building block of history is the nation.

Brian Catlos' research centers on Christian-Muslim-Jewish relations and the medieval Mediterranean, and he has authored and co-authored books related to this research.

“These are ideas that became popular in the 19th century, a great age of nationalism, racism and colonialization as well. When we look at data and pull back from presumptions and prejudices, what we see is that what became the modern West—western Anglo-European culture and society—emerged out of a much broader historical background.”

In 650 CE, as Islam began expanding from the area west of the Indus River to the Atlantic Ocean and all the way around the Mediterranean, a common telling of the history of that time holds that the area was uniformly Abrahamic in terms of faith and culture. “There’s this idea that the three religious cultures were divided and oppositional—and they were to certain degree—but they also were deeply enmeshed and influenced each other both through polemic and also through collaboration and shared knowledge.”

Another prevalent myth, Catlos says, is that there were distinct spheres: a Christian sphere, a Muslim sphere, “maybe a Latin-Christian sphere, a Christian and Byzantine sphere, a Christian and Muslim sphere, and they were somehow coherent, homogenous social, cultural and political entities in opposition with each other,” Catlos says.

“That’s not really the case. There were lots and lots of Muslims and Jews living in Christian lands and vice versa. The division was not really there except in certain contexts.

“Think about crusade and jihad, about Christianity and Islam, about this clash of civilizations. If we look at the political and economic history of the pre-modern period in the larger Mediterranean world, we see that both of these spheres are broken into a whole range of different kingdoms, city states, etc. that in fact are in competition with each other, for number of reasons, not the least of which is geography and how it impacted the way that resources appear and are accessed.”

Rather than a united front of Muslim states vs. Christian states, Catlos says, “we see competition between Muslim states with each other, Christian states with each other, Muslims and Christian principalities seeking alliances with each other against rivals of their own faith. Much of the history of the West that we are taught is distorted and needs to be reassessed.”

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