Graduate students

Students learning dam good lessons from nature's busy builders

Rachel Sauer — Fri, 31 Oct 2025 13:54:40 +0000

Students learning dam good lessons from nature's busy builders Rachel Sauer Fri, 10/31/2025 - 07:54

Rachel Sauer

In a capstone project partnership with the Boulder Watershed Collective, Masters of the Environment students study what it means to live alongside beavers

Beavers are so much more than nature’s most eager builders. In many ecosystems, they play a key role in nature-based solutions to flood control, habitat restoration and fire mitigation.

They are a keystone species that can increase biodiversity in suitable habitats, according to Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW), but they also are a source of human-wildlife conflict in Colorado. For example, beavers have been known to build dams and inadvertently flood areas that ranchers or homeowners don’t want flooded.

Jack Carter, Amanda Opp and Colin McDonald (left to right) completed a Masters of the Environment capstone project studying beavers and how they live alongside humans in partnership with the Boulder Watershed Collective. (Photo: Masters of the Environment program)

The question for conservationists, land managers and any human who cares about wildlife, then, is how to live alongside this native species that broadly engenders mixed feelings. It’s a question that ��ƷSM��ӰƬ Masters of the Environment (MENV) students Amanda Opp, Jack Carter and Colin McDonald addressed in their capstone project, which they will publicly present today at the 2025 MENV Capstone Symposium.

Partnering with the Boulder Watershed Collective (BWC), Opp, Carter and McDonald examined the social perceptions and ecological impacts of beavers via surveys, research and data collection. They talked with land and wildlife managers across the Front Range to study how public agencies make beaver management decisions, and they participated in two beaver reintroductions, developing a monitoring plan to measure ecological metrics at the sites where the beavers were reintroduced.

“I think we all read the book ‘Eager’ by Ben Goldfarb, about beavers in America and how there was a high reduction in numbers from trapping in the 19^th century,” Carter explains. “Now there’s a movement to reintroduce them, and we have this thing about ‘coexistence’ as one of those kind of trigger words. We tried to come up with multiple things like ‘living with beavers’ in place of ‘coexistence’ or ‘reintroduction,’ which somehow give off the vibe that your life is going to change by the presence of these animals coming back, which isn’t necessarily the case.”

Back from the brink

Not too long ago, the North American beaver was on the verge of extinction because of 19th-century fashions that required the under fur of beaver pelts. At their population peak before the fur trade began in earnest, there were anywhere between 60-400 million North American beavers, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), but by 1900 there were fewer than 100,000.

As beaver populations began to rebound in subsequent decades thanks to conservation and reintroduction efforts, another issue emerged: Humans had moved into beaver habitat, converting “wildlife-rich wetlands into agricultural lands” and building towns nearby, according to USFWS.

For many years along the Front Range, beavers and humans have lived in an uneasy and sometimes nonexistent détente, so one of the goals of the students’ capstone project was to gather data that might help inform CPW’s beaver conservation and management strategy, which is currently being developed.

Some of the points of conflict that Opp, Carter and McDonald learned about as they collected data included ranchers concerned about losing rangeland to flooding and homeowners who were “very concerned about mosquitoes and thinking that if beavers are creating marshy areas, the risk for West Nile increases,” Opp says.

One of the beaver releases on private land near Nederland in which Amanda Opp, Jack Carter and Colin McDonald participated for their MENV capstone project. (Video: Colin McDonald)

Working with the Boulder Watershed Collective, they learned the nuances of effective conservation, which must include education, collaboration and partnership between stakeholders, Carter says: “Due to conflicts over public infrastructure and Colorado water law, reintroducing beavers is not as easy as it may seem.”

“I think BWC, and a lot of people involved with conservation, when they’re conveying the message of ‘Hey, these are beneficial animals,’ they have to meet people where they’re at,” Opp says. “One of biggest concerns in Colorado is fire mitigation, so when we’re thinking about unique solutions, nature-based solutions that might not have been considered in the past, beavers have been a really important pitch: ‘If you have a wet environment with wet soil and healthy grass, you’ll probably have reduced risk of fire reaching your property.’”

At the beginning of the 20th century, the North American beaver was on the verge of extinction because of 19th-century fashions that required the under fur of beaver pelts. (Photo: Amanda Opp)

Not just a cute animal

The two reintroductions in which Opp, Carter and McDonald participated happened on private land near Nederland, with the landowners inviting BWC to release beavers in ponds or wetlands on their land. Several of the reintroduced beavers came from Aurora, where they had been causing problems, McDonald says, so BWC and Aurora wildlife officers worked together to ensure that the beavers were trapped in families so they could be released together.

“Beavers aren’t endangered anymore, so there’s zero protection for them,” Carter explains, adding that the areas in which the beavers were released are far from settlements, hopefully giving the beavers the greatest chance to thrive.

At one of the relocation sites, the beavers had monitors attached to their tails, enabling researchers and wildlife officials to track their movements, Opp says. And at both locations, the landowners are reporting their visual observations of beaver movement to BWC, which is included in the MENV students’ monitoring plan. Their plan also includes measuring how wide the bodies of water into which the beavers were released become.

For the students, each of whom came to the MENV program as committed conservationists, their work with beavers for their capstone project was about more than busy, charismatic rodents.

“I’m really passionate about conservation and passionate about protecting animals in the wild, and this project instilled in me how rewarding this work is,” Opp says, a sentiment that McDonald echoed, adding that he appreciated learning how to build community partnerships and how to maximize impact at small nonprofits.

“Before this, I don’t think I really appreciated beavers,” Carter says. “I didn’t realize how important they are to an ecosystem. One of the biggest things that’s happening right now is biodiversity loss, and beavers create essential habitats for moose, for certain amphibian species. A lot of amphibians are going down the drain, especially in a state like Colorado, and beavers can help solve that problem.”

“The best way to move forward with all the damage humans have done is to realize we’re not separate from our environment,” Opp says. “We have to do everything we can to protect it, and beavers are a really awesome keystone species that’s not just this cute animal; they can play an important role in solving the climate crisis.”

Jack Carter, Colin McDonald and Amanda Opp (left to right) on their way to release a beaver on private land near Nederland. (Photo: Amanda Opp)

A beaver after being released on private land near Nederland. (Photo: Amanda Opp)

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In a capstone project partnership with the Boulder Watershed Collective, Masters of the Environment students study what it means to live alongside beavers.

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Top photo: Amanda Opp

Scaling stream restoration across Colorado

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 16 Oct 2025 19:36:49 +0000

Scaling stream restoration across Colorado Rachel Sauer Thu, 10/16/2025 - 13:36

Leah Bilski

How a unique partnership is mapping the future of riverscape restoration in the state

Colorado’s streams face mounting pressures from climate change, development, and over a century of historical degradation. While the recent passing of Senate Bill 23-270 (SB23-270) allows six categories of minor stream restoration activities to move forward exempted from water rights administration, practitioners across the state still face challenges when getting projects off the ground.

The missing piece? A comprehensive understanding of Colorado’s “restoration landscape” – who’s doing what, where, and what barriers stand in their way. This has prompted an innovative partnership between Audubon Rockies, Water for Colorado and ��ƷSM��ӰƬ students to map Colorado’s restoration landscape and identify opportunities for scaling impacts for functioning and healthy riverscapes. This work builds on Audubon’s commitment to shaping Colorado’s water future for people, birds and the habitats that we all depend on.

Leah Bilski is a graduate student in the interdisciplinary ��ƷSM��ӰƬ Masters of the Environment Graduate Program. (Photo: Leah Bilski)

A proven solution is gaining ground

Process-Based Restoration (PBR) offers a spectrum of cost-effective approaches for addressing climate and drought resilience for healthy riverscapes while furthering Colorado’s Water Plan objectives. From simple, hand-built structures using natural materials to more sophisticated engineering solutions, these techniques focus on addressing stressors and boosting natural stream processes that allow rivers to heal themselves. The passage of SB-270 created unprecedented opportunities for implementing Low-Tech Process-Based Restoration (LTPBR) across Colorado by providing legal clarity for six categories of minor stream restoration activities.

Despite these advances, critical questions remained unanswered:

Which stakeholders are leading restoration efforts, and where?
What motivates organizations to pursue stream restoration projects?
Most importantly, what barriers prevent or slow down implementation, and how has SB-270 influenced restoration practices on the ground?

CU Masters of the Environment: the perfect partner

Enter ��ƷSM��ӰƬ’s Master’s of the Environment (MENV) program. Each year, MENV students are paired with organizations addressing pressing issues in the fields of environmental policy, renewable energy, and sustainability. The students work as student consultants while simultaneously completing their master’s capstone project. The program’s focus on practical, need-driven solutions makes it an ideal partner for Audubon’s efforts to elevate stream restoration in Colorado.

Three dedicated students—Pearl McLeod, Josie Rivero and Leah Bilski—have brought fresh perspectives and social science expertise to complement Audubon Rockies’s experience as a leader in policy and project implementation for stream restoration. This collaborative approach ensures that research directly serves the needs of the restoration community while building the next generation of conservation and stream restoration professionals.

By combining Audubon’s on-the-ground experience with the students’ in-depth analysis, the partnership can reach across Colorado’s eight major water basins to engage everyone from NGOs and federal agencies to private consultants and watershed groups.

Mapping Colorado’s stream restoration efforts

The project’s primary objective is ambitious yet essential: create a comprehensive map of LTPBR projects across Colorado to identify gaps in geographic coverage and stakeholder engagement. This foundation will inform where resources and support are most needed to scale effective restoration approaches statewide.

Phase one involved launching a statewide survey to capture the broad restoration work happening across the state, while phase two will focus on in-depth case studies to understand how successful projects overcome barriers. The collaborative approach ensures findings focus on learning from both challenges and successes.

An innovative partnership between Audubon Rockies, Water for Colorado and ��ƷSM��ӰƬ students maps Colorado’s restoration landscape and identifies opportunities for scaling impacts for functioning and healthy riverscapes. (Photo: Attie Heunis/Pexels)

Early success: education efforts are paying off

Initial results reveal encouraging trends and some surprising insights. Audubon’s educational efforts regarding SB-270 have been largely successful across many regions of Colorado, with 38% of survey respondents reporting that SB-270 has benefited their stream restoration projects, while only 4% report it as a barrier.

The data shows that hydrology is the primary motivation driving most restoration projects, followed closely by wildfire recovery efforts, reflecting Colorado’s recent fire impacts and ongoing drought concerns. Restoration work is happening across all of Colorado’s major river basins, though with varying intensity, and projects consistently involve multi-partner teams applying diverse techniques to meet multiple goals simultaneously.

However, significant barriers persist, despite SB-270’s passage. Permitting challenges remain the top concern, followed by limited funding and agency coordination issues. These findings suggest that while legal clarity has improved, practitioners still need support navigating implementation processes and securing adequate resources.

The restoration community has demonstrated strong engagement and willingness to participate in research that could benefit their work. Practitioners are actively sharing knowledge and experiences, building a foundation for a deeper understanding of Colorado’s restoration landscape.

Looking ahead: supporting Colorado’s restoration community

This research will help address specific needs identified by practitioners, such as connecting isolated restoration workers with peer networks, creating guidance for navigating restoration implementation, and identifying which regions need additional technical support or funding. By identifying non-policy barriers, such as limited technician capacity and technical implementation concerns, that limit restoration work, Audubon and partners support stream restoration stakeholders in better addressing their challenges, shifting social perceptions, and ultimately restoring healthy stream habitat throughout the state. The findings can also inform potential sound policy moving forward, ensuring that future legislation builds on SB-270's success.

Through continued partnership, community engagement and support, and innovative restoration techniques, we’re working to revive Colorado’s streams for generations of birds, wildlife, and people who depend on them.

Join the effort

We are continuing to capture important data about restoration projects throughout Colorado and challenges faced through our survey. Participation helps build a complete picture of Colorado’s restoration landscape and ensures that findings reflect the full diversity of approaches and challenges across our state. Share your restoration experience through our survey (open until midnight on October 12th, 2025) and help us identify exactly what Colorado’s restoration community needs to succeed.

Leah Bilski is pursuing a master's in environmental and natural resource policy in the Masters of the Environment Graduate Program.

Essay reproduced with permission from Audubon Rockies. Read the original here.

How a unique partnership is mapping the future of riverscape restoration in the state.

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Top photo: Tricia Pionzio/Audubon Photography Awards

Why do some thoughts refuse to leave?

Rachel Sauer — Tue, 09 Sep 2025 23:38:52 +0000

Why do some thoughts refuse to leave? Rachel Sauer Tue, 09/09/2025 - 17:38

Cody DeBos

��ƷSM��ӰƬ graduate student researcher Jacob DeRosa delves into the brain’s ability to remove unwanted thoughts

Imagine trying to fall asleep, but your brain won’t cooperate. You tell yourself to let go of the embarrassing conversation from earlier in the day that keeps looping through your head, for example, but you can’t stop thinking about it.

Why are some thoughts so hard to dismiss?

It’s a question ��ƷSM��ӰƬ psychology and neuroscience graduate student Jacob DeRosa has been pondering for years. Now, with a newly published study in NeuroImage. Clinical, DeRosa and his co-researchers may be closer than ever to understanding what makes some brains better at letting go of unwanted thoughts—and why other brains tend to get stuck.

Jacob DeRosa, a ��ƷSM��ӰƬ psychology and neuroscience graduate student, studies the question of why some thoughts are so hard to dismiss.

“Why is John really good at getting a thought out of his mind and going on with his day and I’m not?” DeRosa says. “This thought just seems to get stuck up in my head, and I’m thinking about it over and over and over again.”

That puzzle—why some people can suppress a thought and move on while others can’t—drove DeRosa to design a study that explores the neuroscience behind thought control.

The findings point to specific brain patterns and networks that may explain why some of us struggle to quiet our internal noise.

A question of control

Before tackling the nuances of thought control, DeRosa wanted to define what it actually means to “control” a thought. He and his team focused on four mental operations that are performed in working memory—the brain’s active thinking space.

The distinct tasks they studied included maintaining a thought, replacing it with a new one, suppressing it entirely or clearing the mind completely.

“What am I doing when someone tells me a phone number? Am I switching it with other information? Am I suppressing it? Or am I clearing my mind completely?” DeRosa asks.

To get to the bottom of it, study participants were asked to view and manipulate words in their working memory while undergoing functional MRI scans. This allowed researchers to observe when different parts of the brain activate and determine whether those patterns vary between people with and without self-reported difficulties in controlling unwanted thoughts.

They found that participants who reported more trouble controlling their thoughts showed less distinct neural activity across the four control operations.

“We’re basically creating a map of the brain,” says DeRosa, “and we’re looking at, well, how organized are these networks when someone is removing information?”

Hoping to better understand which regions play a role in thought removal, the team started looking closer at how they were recruited during different operations.

“What we found is that people who are really good at controlling their thoughts have really distinct color patterns for each operation. People who aren’t have a similar color pattern across the four operations, which tells us there’s not a lot of distinct activity happening,” DeRosa explains.

That lack of distinctness, when the brain isn’t clearly switching between tasks like suppression and replacement, could be why some people struggle to get rid of unwanted thoughts.

“It’s going to take some time to get more organization in your brain and get it working together to remove those thoughts, but it’s definitely possible,” says ��ƷSM��ӰƬ researcher Jacob DeRosa. (Photo: Pexels)

“There seems to be more of this blending across the brain in terms of what’s happening when someone is trying to remove a thought. What it tells us is that these individuals aren’t able to precisely implement a certain operation,” he adds.

In other words, your brain might try to use the same mental tool for every task—like using a hammer for every job, when what you really need is a screwdriver.

But perhaps more importantly, DeRosa’s study found that this neural blending didn’t show up when people were at rest. It only emerged when they were actively engaged in trying to remove or control a thought.

DeRosa says the nuance matters.

“It’s not that people’s brains are just disorganized in general. It’s actually when it comes time to remove the information where we see them having a harder time,” he notes.

Bridging brain scans and mental health

Although anyone can have difficulty controlling thoughts, it’s also a common symptom of a range of mental health conditions, including depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). DeRosa believes that mapping out the brain mechanisms responsible for thought control can help researchers identify objective markers for these disorders and even ways to track how treatments are working.

“What’s nice about this initial study is that it gives us a baseline. Now we can begin to compare between high- and low-internalizing populations and eventually move on to even more specific psychiatric populations like depression, anxiety and PTSD,” he says.

The good news for everyone is that thought control isn’t necessarily a fixed trait.

“Our biggest takeaway is that it’s possible for anyone to practice getting better at thought control. I think beginning to practice these operations when unwanted thoughts come in is helpful for people because they can begin to differentiate what’s working for them,” says DeRosa.

That idea reframes thought control not as a matter of brute force willpower or something in our genetics. Rather, it’s a skill that can be trained and supported, whether through mindfulness, cognitive behavioral techniques, journaling or simply paying attention to what works for you.

For anyone who’s ever felt stuck in a spiral of unwanted thoughts, DeRosa’s research offers a glimpse of both clarity and hope. Of course, he also cautions that improvement doesn’t happen overnight.

“It’s going to take some time to get more organization in your brain and get it working together to remove those thoughts, but it’s definitely possible.”

Researchers Harry Smolker, Hyojeong Kim, Boman Groff, Jarrod Lewis-Peacock and Marie Banich also contributed to this study.

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��ƷSM��ӰƬ graduate student researcher Jacob DeRosa delves into the brain’s ability to remove unwanted thoughts.

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Students are shaping (and leading) CU’s climate response

Rachel Sauer — Tue, 27 May 2025 18:12:47 +0000

Students are shaping (and leading) CU’s climate response Rachel Sauer Tue, 05/27/2025 - 12:12

Cody DeBos

Fueled by a passion for climate justice and a commitment to student involvement in the university’s future, interdisciplinary graduate student team designs and teaches undergrad course on climate action planning

As the ��ƷSM��ӰƬ continues to advance its Climate Action Plan (CAP), an interdisciplinary group of graduate students has championed a new way to involve students in shaping a more sustainable future.

Initially, the CU steering committee creating the CAP did not involve students. In response to the exclusion of student voices, a group of graduate students began work to give students a seat at the table and engage the undergraduate community in CU’s climate-planning work. First, the group launched a petition calling for student participation in the drafting of the CAP. Then the group helped pass a resolution through student government to grant student seats on the committee implementing the CAP in the future.

“Students have always been key drivers of sustainability and climate action on campuses across the U.S., including at ��ƷSM��ӰƬ,” the team says. “As young people, our futures are jeopardized by the climate crisis, so we have a collective stake in rapidly reducing our greenhouse gas emissions.”

The graduate students and faculty who co-designed and now teach an undergraduate course on climate-action planning include (left to right) Brigid Mark, Nadav Orian Peer, Jonah Shaw, Sean Benjamin, Mariah Bowman and Sara Fleming.

But the group didn’t stop there. Fueled by a shared passion for climate mitigation and the belief that students should help shape the university’s future, the group of five graduate students from four different departments spent hundreds of hours co-designing and now teaching an undergraduate course on climate-action planning.

The course gives undergrads hands-on experience with CU’s campus emissions data, collaboration opportunities with university stakeholders and a chance to develop sustainability strategies that could be implemented campuswide.

Their efforts recently earned the group ��ƷSM��ӰƬ’s 2025 Campus Sustainability Award for Student Leadership. The group also won a $5,000 scholarship from the women-led nonprofit Zonta Foothills Foundation, in recognition for their groundbreaking work in climate education and advocacy. The CU School of Engineering, following advocacy from generous faculty members David Paradis and Carol Cogswell, was also gracious enough to provide funding for their work.

A more engaging climate classroom

The group of graduate instructors brings an interdisciplinary approach and myriad perspectives to the classroom.

The teaching team includes Mariah Bowman (law), Sara Fleming (geography), Sean Benjamin (mechanical engineering), Brigid Mark (sociology) and Jonah Shaw (atmospheric and oceanic sciences). Each has worked to tackle climate-related issues through the lens of their expertise, from Indigenous environmental justice to climate-change modeling.

The team’s diverse makeup is reflected in the design of their course and has fueled their success. But the road to this point hasn’t been easy.

“This is a labor of love,” the team says. “We are doing this because we care. Funding and the time required have been challenges.”

Before the course launched, each graduate instructor spent many unpaid hours creating the syllabus, listing the course and building campus partnerships to access emissions data. During the semester, they spend many hours a week on teaching responsibilities that come in addition to their regular duties.

Financial support from the School of Engineering and the Zonta Foothills award has helped, but long term, the team hopes to see the course institutionalized and funded.

The team says, “Institutionalizing the course so that it runs each year and guaranteeing funding for instructors and teaching assistants would ensure the longevity and sustainability of this course. It would ensure continued involvement of students in the Climate Action Plan, and a more robust, actionable plan.”

An interdisciplinary group of graduate students (holding plaques) who worked work to give students a seat at the table and engage the undergraduate community in CU’s climate-planning work received ��ƷSM��ӰƬ’s 2025 Campus Sustainability Award for Student Leadership.

Hands-on climate action

From the start, the group has viewed student involvement as essential, not symbolic.

At the start of the semester, students gain foundational knowledge on topics like climate justice, global carbon budgets and emissions accounting. From there, they split into teams to tackle different emissions categories on campus: commuting, waste, business travel and student/parent flights.

“Students work in four teams, each focused on a different category of campus emissions. They’re developing strategies to reduce emissions for their category, adding depth and student perspective to the high-level strategy suggestions in the CAP,” the instructors say.

Guest speakers, including administrators and national experts, round out the curriculum. Students have heard from Stanford University’s sustainability team and ��ƷSM��ӰƬ faculty like Professor Karen Bailey (environmental studies) and Professor Nadav Orian Peer (law). They also meet with stakeholders across campus to refine their proposals.

The team believes this approach is the best way to facilitate opportunities to create actionable, equity-centered climate strategies grounded in real data.

“Involving students in climate initiatives enables them to apply knowledge about climate change to their own institution, experience they will carry to become leaders in climate action in their future workplaces and communities,” says Mark.

The results are already visible on campus.

One student team is working with CU’s transportation specialist to revise the campus commuting survey. Another is working on a survey for better tracking of student and parent air travel. Others are collaborating with dining services and facilities to reduce waste and consulting with faculty to provide more accurate emissions calculations of flights taken by faculty and staff.

“Students often learn about the gravity of climate change without learning about solutions, which can be quite depressing,” says Mark.

An interdisciplinary team of graduate students teaches the climate-action planning course for undergraduate students.

“Involving students in climate-action planning and implementation can combat feelings of hopelessness and enable participation in creating real change.”

Impact on both sides

This student-led course has already sparked engagement on both sides of the classroom. One undergraduate took the initiative to launch a campus club to raise awareness about the CAP. Others hope to join implementation committees or pursue careers in sustainability.

“To me, this demonstrates that students are hungry for interdisciplinary courses that enable them to apply their skills and creativity to issues on campus and engage with solutions to the climate crisis,” Fleming says.

For Bowman, the most rewarding part of the experience is the students themselves. “They are passionate, knowledgeable, interested, hardworking and fun to be around! It has been deeply meaningful to get to train them on something I care so much about, and have them care about it in return,” she says.

And for Fleming, designing and teaching the course has also given her much. She adds, “Team teaching is so much fun, and I’ve learned so much from each of my teammates on both content and pedagogical skills.”

As for the future, the graduate instructors each plan to continue fighting for climate action in their respective fields, using their knowledge and experience to make a difference on campus, in state government and in the community.

They also hope CU continues what they started so future students can participate in a course that gives them a voice in the climate conversation through data, creativity and real-world collaboration.

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Amazing grads share advice and reflect on key lessons

Kylie Clarke — Fri, 02 May 2025 16:10:11 +0000

Amazing grads share advice and reflect on key lessons Kylie Clarke Fri, 05/02/2025 - 10:10

Earning high praise from faculty and staff, students offer words of wisdom and more

Each year, students leave their mark on the College of Arts and Sciences. Their choices, hard work and determination leave a legacy for the next generation.

As graduation approaches, the nostalgia of first days, the pride of achievement and the excitement of what is to come replays in the buzzing minds of almost-graduated students.

To celebrate amazing grads, we asked faculty and staff to nominate remarkable students.

Each nominee answered one of the following questions:

What is your best advice for other students?
What will you carry with you into the next chapter of life?
What does graduating represent for you?

Each nominator answered this question:

In your view, what makes this student amazing?

Q&A
Q: What does graduating represent for you?
Salomé Carrasco, EBIO ‘25: Graduating from college is a representation of the personal commitment and determination I have as a student from a diverse intercultural background, but also the community support and dedication my professors, peers and others have provided for me. This success also represents that students are capable of pursuing higher education despite financial, social and structural inequalities.

Q: What makes Salomé amazing?
Nominator: Salomé transferred to ��ƷSM��ӰƬ from community college during the fall of 2023. I had the good fortunate of having Salomé in my Art of Science Communication class that term. Since then, Salomé has been an incredibly engaged member of our lab group. She participated in a month-long sampling expedition to western Canada during the summer of 2024 and just defended her honors thesis! Her growth and progress have been outstanding on so many fronts! Our lab is in awe of her artistic and scientific skills. We feel so honored that she has been a part of our research community during her time at CU.

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Cetacean science: A new understanding of humpback whale genetics

Rachel Sauer — Mon, 02 Dec 2024 16:44:47 +0000

Cetacean science: A new understanding of humpback whale genetics Rachel Sauer Mon, 12/02/2024 - 09:44

Blake Puscher

How a team of ��ƷSM��ӰƬ PhD students produced the first chromosome-level reference genome for humpback whales

Humpback whales are striking animals, not only because of their size, but also because of their complex vocalizations, acrobatic swimming and thousand-mile migrations.

Moreover, they hold a vital role in marine ecosystems, as their fecal matter, which is released as floating plumes, fertilizes the upper layer of the ocean and stimulates the growth of the photosynthesizing plankton there. These plankton are the basis of the marine food chain and are major contributors to the global carbon cycle.

PhD student Maria-Vittoria Carminati worked with colleagues to create the first chromosome-level reference genome for humpback whales.

Despite the importance and charisma of humpback whales, research into the species has been limited by the lack of complete genetic information.

Maria-Vittoria Carminati, a PhD student in the ��ƷSM��ӰƬ Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, changed this when, along with Associate Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Nolan Kane and a team of fellow graduate students*, she created the first chromosome-level reference genome for the species.

Moving the needle

Carminati became an attorney in 2008 and worked in that field until recently. “I came to the realization that I wanted to do something more meaningful with my brain power,” she says. “That’s why I switched to science: I thought it would allow me to make greater contributions to society.

“So, three years ago, I went back to college and got my bachelor’s in ecology and evolutionary biology.” After that, she started her PhD at ��ƷSM��ӰƬ. There remained the question of what she would do to “move the needle forward,” but Carminati knew it would probably involve the ocean.

“I’m a diver, I’m a dive instructor, I like to sail even though I’m not very good at it,” she continues. After seeing a humpback whale in person one day, she started reading about them and found a paper that mentioned they were splitting into different subspecies. “I thought the paper was trying its best, but I don’t think it had the tools it needed to be assertive about what it was saying.”

One of those tools is a reference genome. So, Carminati went to experiment.com for funding and to Cantata Bio for the sequencing. She got a permit to sequence the humpback DNA sample from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and obtained the sample itself from the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

The sample was from the kidney of an orphaned whale calf that was beached and died on the shore of Hawaii Kai.

Cantata Bio’s sequencing yielded half a terabyte of data, which Kane tasked a class to help Carminati process.

A humpback whale swimming off the coast of Moorea, French Polynesia. (Photo: Charles J. Sharp/Wikimedia Commons)

The basics of genome sequencing

Genome sequencing is the process scientists use to determine a large amount, if not the entirety, of an organism’s DNA, which is packaged in threadlike structures called chromosomes. Because the entire length of a chromosome cannot be sequenced at once, several strips are sequenced and then combined in what is known as a genome assembly.

The product of the researchers’ work is called a reference assembly. According to Carminati, this means that the chromosomes are represented well enough to be used in comparison with the DNA of other organisms. “It’s like having the full book of an organism’s DNA,” she says. “In our case, we are only missing 0.0003% of the entire genome.”

This level of accuracy distinguishes their assembly from others, such as the scaffold-level assembly of the humpback whale genome that already existed. To continue the book analogy, this level of assembly can be compared to a collection of passages that cannot be definitively ordered or associated with a particular “chapter,” or chromosome.

Such uncertainty is partially the result of short read lengths. “Short reads are cheaper, so often, labs will do short reads,” Carminati says. “The problem with a short read is that you are only getting, say, a couple of sentences from each page in the book.” These few sentences are less distinctive than longer passages, which leaves more doubt in the final genome assembly.

The DNA in the researchers’ assembly was created from long reads, which allows it to be organized into chromosomes. Their assembly also had a high depth, which is to say that reads were performed 30 times to ensure accuracy, consistent with the platinum standard introduced by Philip Morin of the Cetacean Genomes Project.

Insight and annotation

While this chromosome-level genome was created too recently for researchers to have made discoveries by using it, Carminati says that the resource can be expected to provide insights into interesting traits of humpback whales, such as their cell regulation, large size and cancer resistance, as well as the formation of subspecies and other elements of genetic variation.

A humpback whale breaches off the coast of Tahiti. (Photo: Jérémie Silvestro/Wikimedia Commons)

“We are right at the beginning of this process,” Carminati explains, “but the reason that you can start making those insights is because if you have a platinum-level assembly, you have a far greater degree of certainty of what genes are and are not there.” This will allow scientists to tell with certainty whether a gene exists, does not exist or exists and is expressed multiple times.

“That goes to cell regulation and cancer resistance,” Carminati says, “because, for example, if you have a lot of genes that relate to cell regulation, cell repair and cell control, that indicates a cancer-preventing or cancer-halting mechanism because cancer is the result of the misregulation of cell division.

“So, if you have multiple genes like this, that might be one way that these enormous, 40-ton creatures are able to get so big and have so much cell division but not develop cancer.”

Other insights could be provided by synteny analyses, which are comparisons between sets of chromosomes. According to Carminati, these comparisons can help identify conserved areas: regions of genes that are unlikely to be rearranged between generations. When genes are together in a conserved area, this could indicate that they work together or are necessary for each other’s function.

The researchers performed a synteny analysis between the chromosomes from the humpback whale reference genome and the chromosomes of a blue whale. Synteny analyses can also indicate evolutionary relationships, and their analysis showed that there is a high level of consistency in the evolutionary relationships between the two species.

They also used BUSCOs (benchmarking universal single-copy orthologs), which are genetic reference guides developed in Switzerland, to evaluate genome completeness. BUSCO genes for mammals correspond to common mammalian traits, Carminati says, like lactation, placentas and live births. This analysis showed high completeness, too, but also represents another possible application of the reference genome: comparing whales to other mammals.

“We said, ‘What genes within this mammal BUSCO reference list do both of these creatures [humpback and blue whales] have, but more interestingly, which ones do they not have?’” Spending more time with this sort of analysis in the future could provide information about the evolution of whales, since missing mammalian genes would have either served no purpose to whales or even been counterproductive.

Finally, the researchers asked Cantata Bio start to annotate the reference genome. “Annotation tells you what genes are where,” Carminati says, and it is a necessary part of genome analysis. The annotation has not been made public yet, since the process is ongoing.

However, the research has already drawn attention, since Carminati presented it at the International Marine Conservation Conference in Cape Town, South Africa, last month. “So,” Carminati says, “I went from seeing a humpback whale in Hawaii to presenting a genome in Cape Town. Four years ago, I was trying cases. It is a very surreal trajectory.”

*Contributing graduate students are Vlonjat Lonnie Gashi, Ruiqi Li, Daniel Jacob Klee, Sara Rose Padula, Ajay Manish Patel, Andy Dick Yee Tan and Jacqueline Mattos.

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How a team of ��ƷSM��ӰƬ PhD students produced the first chromosome-level reference genome for humpback whales.

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Humpback whale with calf off Moorea, French Polynesia (Photo: Charles J. Sharp)

Student-curated exhibit focuses on labor and the work of art

Anonymous — Fri, 09 Feb 2024 18:23:56 +0000

Student-curated exhibit focuses on labor and the work of art Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 02/09/2024 - 11:23

Rachel Sauer

‘(Art)work: Systems of Making’ opens with a celebration Friday afternoon at the CU Art Museum

As the 12 graduate students gathered around a long table discussing art, over several weeks their conversation eventually wound its way to labor. They were inspired by the labor movements happening in the United States and around the world.

“These movements inspired wage-related discussions for us as students at ��ƷSM��ӰƬ,” explains Rachel DeNagy. “We empathize with labor rights groups, because we feel both underrepresented in society and underpaid as student-workers for our labor.”

The conversations began as brainstorming the theme for an exhibition they would curate at the University of Colorado Art Museum and grew into “(Art)work: Systems of Making,” which opens with a celebration from 4:30-6:30 p.m. Friday at the CU Art Museum and runs through March 22.

"The Artist Eroticized (Alina)" (2020), an oil on linen by Jenna Gribbon that is included in "(Art)work: Systems of Making."

“(Art)work: Systems of Making” features artworks that offer different perspectives on labor and the workplace. Some of the featured themes include artist collaborations and networks of creation, the coding of labor according to gender and race, labor movements and the connections between labor and nationalism.

It is the culmination of a graduate-level curatorial practicum taught by Hope Saska, acting director, chief curator and director of academic engagement for the CU Art Museum.

“Our focus has been curating from a social justice perspective,” Saska says. “The students guided the discussion to topics and issues around labor, and I’m really impressed by how they took this key topic and expanded it in a lot of really innovative ways.”

Focusing on labor

In discussing how to approach the various issues and topics relating to labor, the students “felt there were a lot of ways to use the museum's collection, and the format of an art exhibit, to cover ‘labor’ as a theme, ways that would intersect the museum's collection with this broad concept from different angles,” says dani wasserman, giving as an example the labor of artmaking, “or hidden or underrepresented labor in society—what people might immediately think of as ‘blue collar labor.’ There's a lot of interesting interpretive and curatorial work that can be done around depictions of this kind of work in art, especially with a collection as broad and eclectic as CU Art Museum’s.”

The students delved into the CU Art Museum’s collections, as well as those of University Libraries, to curate an exhibit that includes works as varied as manuscript pages on vellum from the early Renaissance paired with inexpensive magazines produced by the Guerilla Girls activist and artist collective.

There are works that address how labor intersects with race and gender, posters for labor unions and works—such as Japanese wood block prints—produced by artist collectives.

"Henequenero" (1945), a lithograph by Alfredo Zalce that is part of "(Art)work: Systems of Making."

“Given my research focus on Japanese art, I was immediately drawn to the Japanese artworks,” explains Kat Bertram. “Collaborating with another art history graduate, Sam Hensley, who shares a Japanese focus, we centered our discussions around the theme and identified Ukiyo-e (a genre of Japanese art from the 17th-19th centuries; its artists produced woodblock prints and paintings) as a fitting subject. Our interest lay in exploring the collaborative dynamics within art creation, particularly in the context of Ukiyo-e, where the traditional emphasis on the designer overlooks the contributions of carvers, printers and publishers.”

‘More than a stroke of genius’

Because the exhibition is happening in a post-COVID-lockdown world, Saska says, a lot of the students’ discussion also focused on how labor does or doesn’t define people.

“I hope that, at best, people might leave the show with an impression of how labor is really central to our lives and our society,” wasserman says. “How through analyzing our attitudes about work, whether that be through art— that's just one way— we can ask some really interesting questions about how we got to this world we are in and maybe even start to consider how reimagining that relationship to labor and to work can help us imagine a different, more equitable future. At the least, I think people will leave with a new concept of how much labor goes into artmaking itself.”

DeNagy adds that another goal for the exhibit is for “people see how art is layered. An artwork that we see in a gallery is a product of hours spent ideating, planning, laboring and fine-tuning.

“Art is more than a stroke of genius,” DeNagy says. “I hope that people see art as a group effort. There is more to a painting, a sculpture, a poster or a print than what first meets the eye. Art is a collective process, between an artist and their work, or between multiple people working together to create a finished product.”

Top image: "Men of Steel" (1939) by Samuel L. Margolies; the work is included in "(Art)work: Systems of Making"

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‘(Art)work: Systems of Making’ opens with a celebration Friday afternoon at the CU Art Museum.

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Your brain remembers what your fingers used to do

Anonymous — Thu, 02 Nov 2023 14:50:58 +0000

Your brain remembers what your fingers used to do Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 11/02/2023 - 08:50

Rachel Sauer

New ��ƷSM��ӰƬ research demonstrates that, with practice, older adults can regain manual dexterity that may have seemed lost

Despite what ads for wrinkle cream would have us believe, there’s no magic reversal for aging. As the years pass, a certain amount of change is inevitable but not, it turns out, inexorable.

Fingers that feel less nimble in doing the normal tasks of life—buttoning a shirt, writing a list—are not doomed to stay that way, new research shows. It also demonstrates that, to some extent, age is just a number.

Researchers in the ��ƷSM��ӰƬ Department of Integrative Physiology—first author Sajjad Daneshgar and Taylor Tvrdy, both PhD students, and Professor Roger Enoka—worked with more than two dozen study participants ages 60 to 83 to understand whether manual dexterity can improve with time.

Sajjad Daneshgar, a PhD student in the ��ƷSM��ӰƬ Department of Integrative Physiology, conducted research that found manual dexterity can improve with practice in older age.

Over six sessions, participants completed a pegboard exercise multiple times, and after the sixth session, data showed that the average time it took to complete the pegboard had decreased for all participants.

“We saw that in older adults, training can improve hand function to a level it was at in middle age,” Daneshgar says. “In a way, practicing helped them go back a decade or two. Most people believe that aging has many negative challenges in terms of function in the hands, but this study shows that what you achieved in the past can really help you as you get older.”

Simple puzzle, complex process

For the study, Daneshgar and his research colleagues recruited right-handed older adults with no history of neurological disease. After an initial familiarization session and evaluation session, participants completed a grooved pegboard test 25 times in each of six sessions.

The test required participants to fit small, keyhole-shaped metal pegs into 25 holes on a board as quickly as possible. The keyholes had different orientations on the board, so participants not only had to manipulate the pegs with their fingers to get them situated correctly, but then fit them correctly.

“At first glance, this looks like a simple puzzle or game, but it’s actually a very complex process,” Daneshgar says. “Your mind is controlling your physical function—and we’re doing a lot more studies on this physical function and what’s going on in the muscles, in the nervous system—and we’re seeing that cognition of the mind, how you learn things, is connected to the muscles and how dexterous you are.”

For example, one of the study participants was a 67-year-old woman who played the piano in her youth. While the average time to complete the pegboard was between 40 and 50 seconds, she could do it in 36—a time faster than some of the researchers could achieve.

“Even though she wasn’t regularly playing the piano during the study, that tells us that perhaps the memory your brain has of controlling those muscles still exists,” Daneshgar says. “Some activities that people do—playing a musical instrument, rock climbing—can be very beneficial for manual dexterity, and even if they’re done earlier in life, the brain may remember controlling those muscles.”

During the research, study participants fit small, keyhole-shaped metal pegs into 25 holes on a board as quickly as possible.

Practice leads to improvement

However, those who reach their later years without a longtime history of guitar-playing or bouldering shouldn’t despair. Wherever study participants started at baseline—even if their initial times for completing the pegboard were comparatively slow—each saw improvement in their times by the sixth session.

“Manual dexterity can be improved by the brain,” Daneshgar says. “It’s not just at the level of the fingers. Signals from the brain are controlling function and practicing aids learning. This study shows that, as far as function in the limbs and hands, learning in terms of muscle training never ends. Whatever level you’re at, you can go back to this training and practicing to see improvement in function.”

Another important outcome from the research is demonstrating that categorizing people’s performance based on chronological age during their later years may not be the best way to understand manual dexterity.

“Whatever you learned in the past is going to be a main player in performance in older age,” Daneshgar says. “Of course, not all people in older age are going to have the same performance, but people who had better practice in the past can, in older age, practice and get to a place where they perform better than middle-age adults.

“But we also showed that practice helps everybody. It doesn’t matter if you have particular experience earlier in life, practice helps all people to do better with no exception.”

Manual dexterity is one of the National Institutes of Health Toolbox biomarkers of neurological health and motor function across the span of life. Daneshgar notes that the research demonstrates manual dexterity is not something that must inevitably worsen over time. With practice, the brain can remember what the fingers once did.

“Manual dexterity relates to our ability to button a shirt or hold a pen,” Daneshgar says. “These are the activities of daily life that we want to be able to do throughout our lives, and they’re abilities that we don’t need to lose.”

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New ��ƷSM��ӰƬ research demonstrates that, with practice, older adults can regain manual dexterity that may have seemed lost.

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Should I be laughing at this?

Anonymous — Thu, 10 Aug 2023 19:55:37 +0000

Should I be laughing at this? Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 08/10/2023 - 13:55

Rachel Sauer

In a recent defense of strong comic immoralism, ��ƷSM��ӰƬ philosophy student Connor Kianpour argues for the aesthetic value of immoral humor

A priest and a rabbi walk into a bar and … have a lovely evening of conversation and libation, because we’re not supposed to tell those kinds of jokes, right?

You know the ones: the jokes we laugh at and then immediately look around to check whether anyone saw us laughing. The jokes that are just wrong, that maybe indicate we’re terrible people for laughing. The jokes that dare not speak their name, that there’s just no defending.

Or is there?

In a recently published defense of strong comic immoralism, Connor Kianpour, a PhD student in the ��ƷSM��ӰƬ Department of Philosophy who studies the philosophy of humor, argues that strong comic immoralism—that is, the view that humor involving a moral defect that is aesthetically enhanced by that defect—is true. This does not mean that immoral jokes are always OK to tell, he emphasizes, but it does mean that people are not mistaken for finding them funny.

In a recently published analysis of strong comic immoralism, Connor Kianpour, a PhD student in the CU Department of Philosophy, argues that immoral jokes may not be OK to tell, but people aren't wrong for laughing at them.

He further argues that laughing at strong comic immoralism does not mean accepting that all immorality in all art makes art better, or that morally defective jokes are always more funny than jokes without moral defects. The argument is just that immoral jokes are funny in ways that “clean” jokes are not.

He recently elaborated on the philosophy of humor and the intellectual value of studying the humor that we’re not sure we should laugh at.

Question: Humor and philosophy don’t immediately seem like natural partners; how did you arrive at this intersection?

Kianpour: In terms of how I got interested in philosophical questions about humor, the first thing is: I have a funny dad. He loves bathroom humor and I’ve always appreciated that. As a philosopher, I also recognized that there is a similar sort of thing that happens in people when they realize that an argument works and when they realize that a joke is successful. There’s a sort of recognition, an aha moment, when you get a joke and when you get an argument and I always found that really fascinating.

I also noticed there are a lot of comedians—George Carlin comes to mind—who seem to approach comedy from a philosophical perspective. They use jokes to indirectly construct and build arguments about attitudes that people should have about certain practices and the way that the world is.

I started really looking into questions about humor, what it is, what makes things funny. A lot of philosophers have had a lot to say about humor, but one thing missing from all of these discussions was a defense of strong comic immoralism. In the late 20^th century, the consensus in philosophy seemed to be that moral defects in jokes make them less funny. But in “In Praise of Immoral Art,” (author) Daniel Jacobson takes the position that moral defects in jokes can sometimes make jokes funnier. I am of the mind that moral defects in jokes might always make them funnier, and I think there’s been a silence on this position that strikes me as utterly plausible.

Question: But as a society we don’t always sit comfortably with immoral humor. For a lot of people, there’s the sense that, “If I laugh at this, I’m a bad person.”

Kianpour: There are two ways to analyze that kind of quandary. On one hand, it’s important that we uphold a distinction between moral value and aesthetic value. It could be the case that by laughing at an immoral joke maybe you are a worse person, but it doesn’t mean that by laughing at an immoral joke you were wrong to think it was funny. That’s at least one thing to keep in mind—it’s possible for us to live in this space where something could be aesthetically very virtuous, but morally not so.

A good example of this is Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov. Many people recognize the book is a literary masterpiece, but at the same time acknowledge there are a lot of morally fraught things going on in it. There’s also moral value in being able to recognize the immorality in a joke. So, if we come to realize that people, when they laugh at immoral jokes, are laughing precisely because they recognize something is immoral, in a sense we could say that the telling of the joke educated people about something that’s wrong. Jokes may provide us with a low-stakes arena to point out moral problems that people might not be comfortable talking about in earnest.

Question: How do you even get your head around strong comic immoralism when morality itself doesn’t have a universally agreed-upon definition?

Kianpour: I think there are two ways that somebody could conceive of the strong comic immoralist position. The first way is to say that a moral defect in a joke only counts as a moral defect when the joke traffics in something objectively wrong, when we know somebody’s been offended with objectively good reason. But I don’t subscribe to that position. I say that a moral defect in a joke counts as a moral defect when the society in which somebody resides has come to the consensus that the thing that’s being joked about is immoral. I think it’s very presumptuous for somebody to say they know everything that morality demands of us. When we laugh at a joke that our society tells us is an immoral one, we are recognizing something our society has told us is not good thing to do.

My defense of strong comic immoralism focuses on what the empirical psychological literature tells us about amusement and offense as emotions. We have a lot of reason to believe that it is impossible to be at once amused and offended by the same thing. So, if the whole point of comedy and making jokes is to induce amused states in the listeners of the jokes, but the listeners are being offended when they hear the joke, they’re essentially being impaired in their ability to judge the merits of the joke. You could compare it to presenting a sound and valid argument to someone who’s drunk. That someone who is drunk cannot recognize that an argument is a good one does not speak against the argument; likewise, that someone who is offended cannot recognize that a joke is a good one does not speak against the joke.

Question: Humor is so subjective and people’s senses of humor vary so widely; how does that affect addressing humor as a philosopher?

Kianpour: I agree that people have different tastes when it comes to humor, 100% that’s just a fact. I think we could compare this to people’s judgments about the culinary arts. There might be some whose personal tastes don’t allow them to enjoy umami flavor profiles and I don’t think that those people are doing anything wrong or they’re not virtuous for not enjoying those foods. But I also don’t think that somebody who is able to appreciate umami flavor profiles would be mistaken to say that those who can’t enjoy the flavor profile are missing out on something special. Likewise, I completely accept there are people who do not have a taste for dark humor or immoral humor; they do no wrong for lacking this taste. However, I also think it is consistent to claim those people who don’t enjoy immoral jokes are potentially missing out on something special because they don’t.

Question: Are you worried about getting “cancelled” or people thinking you’re a jerk for making a philosophical case for strong comic immoralism?

Kianpour: I have thought about that, yes. The norms of academia and of society might prevent us from being able to fully explore the philosophy of humor to its fullest extent. In academia and in society, we are encouraged to think constantly about audience and optics, and in some cases, this prevents us from getting at the question of what is it that makes a joke funny. In some ways, we’ve gotten to a place where talking about why something is immoral is itself considered immoral, and that limits intellectual inquiry. People don’t really take humor seriously, no pun intended, and I wish they did.

Regardless, having conversations about immoral humor is extremely timely given that every two years Dave Chapelle gets cancelled for something he says in a Netflix special. People all have very strong opinions about whether he should have his platform. That polarization, in addition to fact that we can’t really talk about issues in way that’s authentic to the issue, can make it nearly impossible to get to the bottom of what makes humor funny. However, I still feel it is extremely important to think about and discuss these issues, which is why I have tried in the ways I have to do so.

Question: Do you ever run the risk of studying a joke too much and it stops being funny?

Kianpour: I do think there’s a risk of maybe not being able to enjoy jokes as much when you study them closely. However, in my own case, I feel like I’ve gotten to a point where I have two modes of navigating the world. The first is as a philosopher, and the second as somebody who just exists in the world. I think that I’m very unlikely to find jokes funny when I’m writing about them in papers, but I can still really be blown away by a surprisingly good comedy set. The reason for that is because when I go to comedy shows, I’m not trying to analyze the jokes; I’m just trying to laugh.

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In a recent defense of strong comic immoralism, ��ƷSM��ӰƬ philosophy student Connor Kianpour argues for the aesthetic value of immoral humor.

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Russia retools Soviet propaganda against Ukraine, expert says

Anonymous — Tue, 08 Aug 2023 15:00:59 +0000

Russia retools Soviet propaganda against Ukraine, expert says Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 08/08/2023 - 09:00

Bradley Worrell

In her master’s thesis, CU grad student highlights how the current Russian regime is making use of Soviet narratives and symbols to justify its war with Ukraine

For Daria Molchanova, the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine feels very personal.

“First of all, because I’m Russian, I’m literally a part of it,” she says. “My family was in Russia when it (the invasion) all started, I have a lot of friends in Ukraine, and I have been to Ukraine many, many times.”

So, perhaps it’s no surprise that when Molchanova was completing her master’s degree in the Department of Germanic and Slavic Languages and Literatures at the ��ƷSM��ӰƬ, she decided to write her thesis on how the current regime in Moscow has co-opted propaganda and symbols from the Soviet era to justify its armed conflict with Ukraine.

Molchanova is pictured here in her native Russia; a Russian Orthodox church is pictured in the background. Molchanova has studied Russian war propaganda efforts, first when she earned a PhD in history from Moscow State University in 2016, and more recently when obtaining a master’s degree in the Department of Germanic and Slavic Languages and Literatures at the ��ƷSM��ӰƬ, where she wrote her thesis on how the current regime in Moscow has co-opted Soviet World War II propaganda and symbols and made use of them in its current armed conflict with Ukraine.

“I have taken it (the invasion) very harshly, so I guess writing about it was one way to maybe have some personal input, and maybe (expressing) just a little bit of the feeling of guilt for what my country was doing,” she says.

Also, while earning a PhD in Russian history from Moscow State University in 2016, she wrote her dissertation on Russian propaganda in the country’s war with Japan and “instantly noticed a lot of similarities in terms of how some symbols were used and how some of the linguistic aspects are basically the same.”

Observing Russia’s initial propaganda efforts related to its invasion of Ukraine in 2020, Molchanova says she first noticed how chaotic and ineffective those efforts were.

“The propaganda was not effective from the beginning, because the main function of propaganda is to explain things,” she says, adding that the government failed to make a convincing case justifying an invasion of Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin and others in his government were confident the conflict would be over in almost no time, she says, so comprehensive propaganda efforts were not formulated in the beginning.

“I guess that by now it’s obvious that nobody was prepared that this so-called ‘special military operation’ would last for years,” she says. Instead, the government likely hoped it could achieve its goals quickly, like it did in its 2008 military campaign against the former Soviet republic of Georgia. That conflict lasted a matter of days and resulted in a defeat for Georgia and the loss of some of its territories.

As the war with Ukraine has dragged on, however, Russian propagandists have had more time to shape their narratives—some have fallen flat, but others have taken hold with at least part of the Russian populace.

Recently, Molchanova talked about the Russian government’s propaganda efforts and how some borrow symbols and terminology from the former Soviet Union, especially those relating to War II narratives. Her responses were lightly edited for style and clarity.

Question: When Russian propagandists talk about Ukrainian leaders being Nazis and fascists, is there more charged meaning to those words than the average American might understand?

Molchanova: Specifically using this Nazi card, it all comes from the biggest trauma of—not just Russian people, but from Slavic people, in general—because the losses Russia had during World War II were just unheard of, more than 20 million people. And if you talk to any Russian family, they had someone who either died in World War II or was severely injured.

So, I think it’s just very hard for some (in the West) to understand on the personal level. Imagine speaking to every American family and they would say, ‘We lost that person in that war’ or ‘We lost five people in that war.’ In Russia, every family had this sacrifice.

So, of course, the word Nazi for Russians, it’s something we grew up hearing about non-stop … because for Russians it’s much more personal than I think it is for most people. That’s why it’s so effective. And that’s why, unfortunately, modern propaganda is trying falsely to use this.

Question: It seems part of the recent propaganda efforts are focused on making the Russian soldiers seem very heroic?

Molchanova: They have this whole section in the news every day, showing how some brave Russian soldiers saved a family, or children, or a dog and her puppies. So, it’s always some emotional story of some soldier savior. That’s what they’re showing—and they’re completely denying every single accusation that comes from Ukraine.

If you go to any Russian news source … it’s like the opposite (of what Ukraine says happened), no matter what happened. For example, this church was destroyed in Odessa. The western side, of course, said Russian missiles hit the church. The Russian version said a Ukrainian rocket hit the church (because) Ukrainians can’t use their air defense system. They destroyed the church. So, it’s never, never admitted that Russians did anything wrong—complete opposite representation.

Question: One example of propaganda from a few years back that you highlighted in your thesis was a story of Ukrainian soldiers supposedly crucifying a young boy in a Ukrainian eastern province. Do average Russians really believe a story like that?

Molchanova: I think it’s one of the most successful propaganda stories, about the crucified boy back in 2014 in Slovansk (in eastern Ukraine). This young woman, a mother, was sharing this super emotional story (on Russian TV) about how Ukrainian Nazis crucified the boy and how he bled to death.

But when (independent journalists) tried to find any witnesses—it’s a very small town, and obviously someone would have seen, and she said the crowd was on the square, so everybody was there to witness it—they couldn’t find a single witness there at all. Never, ever was there any proof of this happening, and I think the dates that she was talking about, the Ukrainian army was not even there in those days. So, it’s a completely made-up story.

But the problem with propaganda is that once something so strong is thrown into the public, unfortunately, nobody is coming back (to check) if that story in 2014 was actually true. …

A lot of Russians sitting somewhere far away in the countryside in the evening were watching the news. They’re not interested in doing some further research or anything. No, it’s just the fact for them. So yeah, even today, a lot of people still think that it happened. Nobody wants to double-check, unfortunately.

Question: In your thesis, you note that there was a deliberate decision in Russia to play up Great Patriotic War mythology in recent years—even before the invasion of Ukraine. How have things changed, specifically?

Molchanova: Yeah, it (the May 9 holiday celebrating victory over Nazi Germany) was not as strong in the Soviet Union—especially in the first two decades after the victory. Even in the 1990s, it was a very quiet holiday. I remember it in my childhood, there were no festivities, there were no fireworks, no military parades, nothing like that. We would just buy some flowers and we went to the local memorial, where we laid the flowers. That was it.

But later, when I was starting at the university, I noticed every single year how it was just changing. I don’t even know what to compare it with—almost like cosplay. People were dressing their babies in the Red Army uniforms.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, Russians lost the unifying force that communism provided. In recent years, the Russian government has promoted the myth of the Great Patriotic War (Russia’s defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II) as a rallying point for the population. More recently, Russian leaders also have made use of propaganda efforts to justify the war with neighboring Ukraine.

And it looks fun at first, but when you start thinking about it, the main phrase that every single Russian veteran from World War II says was, ‘Never again. The only important thing is there is no war.’

Now, there is no sense of how terrible the war is. They replaced the idea of ‘never again’ with, ‘How amazing we are; how heroic we are; how we do this and that from one of the latest movies.’ On Amazon, there’s a movie called T-34 about tanks, and Russian media were presenting it as, basically, Fast and Furious with tanks. So, that’s how they’re portraying the most horrifying war in history. Now, there is no trace of how horrible war is; it’s only beautiful stuff and heroism.

Question: Are there other things you think it’s important to mention about Russian propaganda or the state of Russia today?

Molchanova: I think it’s important, especially for Western people, to understand that it (war propaganda) is not something unique to Russia. War propaganda has happened every single time in every single war, including in the United States. If you look for it, American propaganda has all the same patterns, the same rules, the same symbolics. So, there’s nothing new here. …

There is a massive brainwashing campaign in Russia now. There is this term ‘zombification’ right now, and it does work successfully on some groups of people. But a lot of Russians don’t support this war. And the proof is that millions of Russians had to leave the country.

There were Russian protests against the war. … Unfortunately, there is very little news from Russia of Russians being against the war. I think that should be shown more, because I don’t know a single person who supports it. Not one.

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In her master’s thesis, CU grad student highlights how the current Russian regime is making use of Soviet narratives and symbols to justify its war with Ukraine.

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