Science and Technology

Three University of Kansas professors — K. Christopher Beard, Jianming Qiu and Michael S. Wolfe — have been elected as 2025 American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) fellows, a distinct honor within the scientific community.

Hayley Beltz, a postdoctoral researcher in physics & astronomy, won a highly competitive NASA Hubble Prize Fellowship, making her the first KU scientist to receive the prestigious award in its 36-year history. The fellowship will enable her to use data collected from the Hubble Space Telescope to analyze magnetic fields on planets outside our solar system — known as exoplanets.

Researchers at the University of Kansas found three-point shooters with greater flexion in their hips, knees and ankles during the prep phase of shooting were the most accurate. They are using these findings to help a former college player prepare to set a world record for most consecutive made three-point shots.

For almost 30 years, the Office for Advancing Success in Science at KU has provided opportunities for undergraduates to engage in research through grant support from the National Institutes of Health. KU has recently been awarded a $2.2 million Maximizing Access to Research Careers (MARC) grant from the NIH that will carry on this tradition for another five years.

An theoretical astrophysicist from the University of Kansas recently published work largely solving the mystery of the Crab Pulsar's zebra pattern. Now, Mikhail Medvedev has honed his analysis by incorporating gravity's lensing effects.

Today’s tornado warnings rely on radar data and regional spotters. By contrast, the Warn-on-Forecast System synthesizes observational data in real time and runs high-resolution simulations to gauge uncertainties and produce guidance for tornado and severe weather threats well before they form.

A University of Kansas researcher found lightning-stroke density — the number of individual lightning discharges, or “strokes,” per square kilometer — to be about 36% lower than before the 2020 IMO sulfur cap. Findings were published in the peer-reviewed journal Climate and Atmospheric Science.

Six years into a study on the effect of plant pathogens in grasslands, University of Kansas researchers have the data to show that species diversity — a hallmark of native prairies — works as a protective shield: It drives growth and sustains the health of species-diverse ecosystems over time, functioning somewhat like an immune system.

Experimental particle physicists working at the MicroBooNE experiment at Fermilab National Accelerator Laboratory have found evidence against the existence of a “sterile” type of neutrino hypothesized to be responsible for previous experiments’ anomalous results, as detailed in a paper recently published in Nature.

Researchers at the University of Kansas Biodiversity Institute and Natural History Museum recently uncovered a slipup from decades ago: the misidentification of a poison frog specimen from Peru used as a holotype.