FRIDAY October 6, 2023 – UMC Aspen Room
June Gruber – The Pursuit of Happiness
Dr. June Gruber is an Associate Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of Colorado and Director of the Positive Emotion and Psychopathology Laboratory. Dr. Gruber has authored over 100 articles and chapters, and edited 2 books, that focus on mental health and positive emotion, with a focus on bipolar and related mood disorders. Dr. Gruber teaches courses on topics including emotion, affective science, psychopathology, and happiness and has created a free online course in Human Emotion. She is the recipient of the 2020 UROP Outstanding Faculty Mentor Award, has a monthly column for young scientists in Science Careers. Dr. Gruber is engaged in science outreach and dissemination of the science of emotions and mental health for students and the broader public, with a recent focus on the mental health crisis sparked by the COVID-19 pandemic.
TUESDAY November 7, 2023 – UMC 235
Devin Patrick Hughes – Boulder Symphony Director
Devin Patrick Hughes is Music Director and Conductor of the Boulder Symphony and Arapahoe Philharmonic. Previously he has held artistic leadership positions with the Northwest Florida Symphony Orchestra, Santa Fe Youth Symphony Association, Denver Young Artists Orchestra, and Denver Philharmonic Orchestra.
TUESDAY January 9, 2024 – UMC 235
Casey Fiesler – Issues with Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Associate CU Professor Casey Fiesler researches and teaches in the areas of technology ethics, internet law and policy, and online communities. She is a Fellow in the Silicon Flatirons Institute for Law, Technology, and Entrepreneurship, an ATLAS Fellow, and holds a courtesy appointment in Computer Science. Also a public scholar, she is a frequent commentator and speaker on topics of technology ethics and policy, as well as women in STEM (including consulting with Mattel on their computing-related Barbies). Her work on research ethics for data science, ethics education in computing, and broadening participation in computing is supported by the National Science Foundation, as well as Mozilla and Omidyar Network as part of the Responsible Computer Science Challenge.
TUESDAY, February 13, 2024 – UMC 235
Gerry Hudson – The Russian-Ukraine War: Two years later
Gerry Hudson is retired as Professor of Political Science and Director and founder of the Russian and Central Eurasian Studies Program at Wittenberg University, where he taught from 1972 to 2012. He specializes in Russian security issues and Russian-American relations. In addition to teaching at Wittenberg and The Ohio State University, he has also taught at the U.S. Military Academy, West Point (1983-84). He has edited two books and over ninety articles, op-ed pieces, letters, and conference papers about Russia and the Soviet Union in books and journals, and he is the recipient of the U.S. Department of the Army’s Outstanding Civilian Service Medal.
TUESDAY March 19, 2024 – UMC 235
Rebecca Cox – Sleep, Insomnia, and Aging
Dr. Rebecca Cox completed her PhD in clinical psychology at Vanderbilt University, where she studied sleep disturbance in anxiety-related disorders. She completed her clinical internship at Western Psychiatric Hospital at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, where she received advanced training in behavioral sleep medicine and behavioral treatments for obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). She is currently a postdoctoral associate at the University of Colorado Boulder, where she studies the role of sleep and circadian rhythm disruption in psychopathology.