Research and Creative Strengths

Climate, Environment & Resilient Communities

Understanding a changing planet and helping communities respond.

Across climate and environmental research, CAS scholars examine the systems that sustain communities, ecosystems, water, wildlife, and natural resources in a changing world.

Strengths include climate science, hydrology, biodiversity, wildlife ecology, aquatic systems, conservation, ecosystem response, environmental governance, and impacts on communities and natural resources.

Human Health, Behavior & Well-Being

Understanding what shapes healthier lives.

CAS researchers examine health and well-being across the lifespan, with attention to how biology, behavior, culture, environment, and social conditions shape healthier lives.

This work includes mental and behavioral health, child development, substance use prevention, cognition, sleep, reproductive and maternal health, infectious disease, aging, and disparities in access, experience, and outcomes.

Nuclear Science, Materials & Extreme Conditions

Discovering how matter behaves and what becomes possible because of it.

CAS has distinctive strengths in nuclear science, materials research, condensed matter physics, and matter under extreme conditions.

Researchers study nuclear and radiochemistry, actinide and f-element chemistry, nuclear materials, nuclear theory, shock physics, high-pressure chemistry and physics, advanced ceramics, semiconductors, and surfaces and interfaces.

This foundational research advances understanding of matter and opens opportunities in energy, national security, advanced materials, and emerging technologies.

Life & Social Sciences, Ecology & Evolution

Exploring life from molecules to ecosystems.

In the life sciences, CAS faculty examine and analyze living systems from genes and cells to organisms, populations, and ecosystems.

Research spans ecology and evolution, genetics and molecular biology, plant and animal biology, disease ecology, reproductive and developmental biology, plant-soil interactions, biodiversity, and adaptation to environmental change.

These discoveries deepen our understanding of life and contribute to questions in human health, food systems, conservation, and environmental resilience.

Society, Communities & Institutions

Understanding how societies work and how they change.

CAS social scientists examine how people organize, govern, adapt, and make meaning within families, communities, institutions, and societies.

Research across the College explores inequality, family and community life, culture and behavior, politics and public policy, criminal justice, identity, and social and demographic change.

Through evidence, analysis, and engagement, our researchers help highlight the systems that influence people’s lives and provide new ways to understand some of society’s most complex challenges.

Humanities, Culture & the Human Experience

Understanding where we’ve been, who we are, and where we’re going.

Humanities scholars explore how people interpret meaning, remember the past, imagine futures, and understand their responsibilities to one another and the world.

Through history, philosophy, languages, literature, rhetoric, and interdisciplinary inquiry, CAS scholars examine ideas, texts, traditions, and experiences across time and place.

Their work provides essential historical, ethical, and cultural perspectives on questions ranging from identity and democracy to technology, artificial intelligence, environmental change, and the future of society.

Where Disciplines Connect

Some of the most interesting questions don’t belong to a single discipline.

When climate science intersects with public policy, psychology informs technology, philosophy shapes AI, artists collaborate with scientists, or history reframes today’s challenges, new questions and possibilities emerge.

The College of Arts and Sciences creates the environment for those possibilities.

With expertise spanning the sciences, social sciences, humanities, and arts, CAS brings together different ways of asking questions, testing ideas, interpreting evidence, and creating knowledge.

Creative Scholarship, Arts & Expression

Creating new ways to experience and understand the world.

Creative activity expands what discovery can look like.

Across visual art, music, digital media, performance, and interdisciplinary creative practice, CAS faculty members create work that tests ideas, challenges assumptions, and connects audiences with new ways of seeing.

Creative scholarship also crosses disciplinary boundaries, bringing artistic practice into conversation with technology, science, history, culture, and contemporary social questions.