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Ana Maria Rey, a theoretical physicist at JILA, a joint institute of the °µÍø½ûÇø and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, has been honored by the White House with a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers. PECASE is the highest honor bestowed by the U.S. government on science and engineering professionals in the early stages of their independent research careers.

I wish to add my voice to those of the Executive Committee of the Association of American Universities (AAU) and other organizations, media organizations, and individuals around the world in voicing opposition to any proposed boycott of Israeli academic institutions. This is a violation of academic freedom for American, global and Israeli scholars, an unnecessary injection of politics into the research process itself, and an obstruction to the spirit and substance of academic inquiry.

NASA Television will provide live coverage of the launch of Orbital Sciences Corp.’s commercial Cygnus spacecraft on Tuesday, Jan. 7 from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia, which will be carrying two °µÍø½ûÇø payloads to the International Space Station.

°µÍø½ûÇø Vice Chancellor for Strategic Relations Frances Draper today named Ryan Huff as spokesperson and issues coordinator for the CU-Boulder campus, effective Jan. 21, 2014. Huff currently serves as the spokesperson for the CU-Boulder Police Department and brings nearly 15 years of combined journalism and media management experience to the post.

More than 80 speakers and presenters from 23 countries will be part of the Media and Religion: the Global View conference at the °µÍø½ûÇø Jan. 9-12. CU-Boulder’s Center for Media, Religion and Culture (CMRC) will host the conference. All plenary sessions at the event are free and open to the public and will be held at the University Memorial Center, Eaton Humanities and Old Main Chapel on campus.

By Off-Campus Housing & Neighborhood Relations Approximately 22,000 CU students live off campus. After freshman year, most students rent units managed by local landlords and property management companies. Now is a great time to start thinking about your plans for next August.

As we prepare to launch into the spring semester and 2014, it is worth taking a moment and reflecting back on the highlights of the past calendar year. As a community, we faced challenges like the September flooding head-on. Teams succeeded in research labs and on the field, with group efforts like the MAVEN launch exemplifying the collaborative and world-class work we do at CU-Boulder. Some of our brightest stars received national recognition, and the lights of others were extinguished after full and long contributions to our community and the world.

The confidence of Colorado business leaders has increased slightly going into the first quarter of 2014 as economic conditions improve and some political issues have subsided, according to the most recent Leeds Business Confidence Index, or LBCI, released today by the °µÍø½ûÇø’s Leeds School of Business.

Trees with smoother bark are better at repelling attacks by mountain pine beetles, which have difficulty gripping the slippery surface, according to a new study by the °µÍø½ûÇø. The findings, published online in the journal Functional Ecology , may help land managers make decisions about which trees to cull and which to keep in order to best protect forested properties against pine beetle infestation.

CU-Boulder senior Ian Gammie has wanted to be a writer since the 5th grade when he rewrote the ending of "Where the Red Fern Grows" because he didn’t like the original ending. The experience of writing what he considered a happier and better conclusion to the 1961 coming-of-age novel set the stage for Gammie to pursue a career as an author.