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Dr. Jessica Finlay has been at the forefront of several major initiatives in aging and cognitive health. In May 2024, she led  to launch the Life Course Cognability project, a study exploring neighborhood experiences and perspectives across different life stages. Workshop participants, including contributors and collaborators, engaged in brainstorming, method development, and strategic planning to expand the project nationwide. Dr. Finlay and her team are preparing to apply for R01 funding for the project in 2025.

In addition, Dr. Finlay co-founded the Geographies of Aging and the Life Course (GOAL) research group, which provides a supportive network for social scientists studying aging. With over 130 members, GOAL facilitates collaboration through in-person events at conferences like PAA, IMGS, and GSA, as well as virtual workshops. At the October virtual meeting, an NIH officer shared insights on navigating funding applications. GOAL will host multiple symposiums at AAG Detroit in 2025.

Dr. Finlay’s expertise was also highlighted in August 2024 when she was invited to present at a National Academies session titled . She shared findings from her Life Course Cognability research on how early- and mid-life neighborhood environments influence later-life cognitive health, contributing to an important discussion among researchers and policymakers on advancing health outcomes across the life course.

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A special appeared in the Cartography and Geographic Information Science journal (volume 51, number 5) was put together to recognize Prof. Barbara P. Buttenfield's (Babs') 35+ years of contributions to cartography and GIScience. It was co-edited by three of her former PhD students who are native from three different German-speaking countries. One of the editors is a CU alumna (, PhD 2000) and the other two are doctoral students that babs advised at SUNY Buffalo. The special issue contains five co-authored articles including one by a CU alumnus (, PhD 2001, and another authored by a former CU post-doctoral researcher , 2012-2014 whom she advised. Three other papers were authored by GIScience scholars, who were influenced by her work, including one by Professor May Yuan (a former doctoral student at SUNY-Buffalo, where Babs served as a doctoral committee member) and one co-authored by Tumasch Richenbacher, whom she taught as visiting Professor at the University of Austria in Summer Semester 1997). The fifth authored by a former colleague now teaching in Europe references Magritte's painting ‘this is not a pipe’, a poster that used to hang in babs' office.

Photo taken in front of Guggenheim in Fall 1996 with Ming Tsou and Sara Fabricant as incoming graduate students…

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Jennifer Balch recently published in  about how the speed of fire spreading is the key factor in determining the damage they cause, with the article making the cover of Science. CIRES released a  on this with more information. Below are some excerpts from this article.

“Some of the most deadly and destructive wildfires in US history have occurred in recent years, with most having the common characteristic of extremely rapid growth. The 2018 Camp Fire in California burned >21,000 ha the day it started, killing 85 people and destroying >16,000 homes. The 2021 Marshall Fire, the most destructive wildfire in Colorado history, was driven by winds >100 mph; it traveled 3 miles within the hour it started and burned >1000 homes. The 2023 Lahaina Fire in Hawaii killed 101 people and destroyed >2200 structures when a small brush fire escaped containment and burned through the town to the shore in 2 hours. The modern era of megafires is often defined based on wildfire size (1), but it should be defined based on how fast fires grow and their consequent societal impacts. Speed fundamentally dictates the deadly and destructive impact of megafires, rendering the prevailing paradigm that defines them by size inadequate. Although big fires change air quality, ecosystems, and carbon dynamics (2), fire speed matters more for infrastructure risk and evacuation planning (3). …

… Herein, we delineate a new class of the fastest growing and most destructive fires, or fast fires. This class is akin to “mega-fires” but is defined based on a maximum daily growth rate of >1620 ha/day, where we document most of the structures destroyed (78%) and suppression costs (61%) despite these fires only accounting for 2.7% of all wildfire events (2001-2020). A major advance is that this class of fast fires is defined by both the physical behavior and societal impact, representing coupled social-environmental extremes (48). … Current national fire risk models and planning efforts tend to focus on fire probability, intensity, or area burned (50) rather than on fire speed and consequent settlement exposure or potential damage. Fast fires matter for life safety and structure impacts; large fires matter more for ecosystems and they generate substantial smoke. The speed of a fire determines (i) whether firefighters are more focused on evacuation than home protection (17) and (ii) how effectively they can extinguish burning firebrands and new ignitions on structures before the home becomes fully involved (38, 39). …

… We also document that fires are growing significantly faster across nearly half of the CONUS land area and 2.5 times faster across the Western US in just 20 years. Increasing speed will challenge emergency response, evacuation plans, and community preparedness (52). Incident command reports indicate that at least 925 emergency evacuation orders affected >1.5 million households between 2001 and 2020 (44), and approximately half of these were within 1 km of a fast fire (Fig. 4). Wildfire-related emergency evacuation success will be influenced by the density of human settlements, road access (53), and efficient use of early warning systems and information delivery to affected communities (54), all of which will be compromised by faster-moving fires. With maximum daily growth occurring within the first 5 days after ignition for 83% of all events (fig. S2B), we also need to focus on proactive measures that slow fires down or promote fire resilience of the built environment. …”

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On September 24 and 25, Geography Professor and Director of CU’s Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) joined the Vice Chancellor for Research and Innovation, Massimo Ruzzene on visits with Agency leaders in Washington DC to discuss the value the government’s science investments at the University of Colorado. They met with The NASA Deputy Administrator and the Associate Administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, the Assistant Administrator for NOAA’s Ocean and Atmospheric Research, and Paul Shawcross, Chief of the Science and Space Branch in the White House's Office of Management and Budget for the last three US Presidential Administrations. Their conversations focused on challenges to the federal science budgets and how universities like CU can enhance the value of the federal investments.

Dr. Abdalati also serves on the . The advisory council’s members are chosen by NASA and serve at the pleasure of the NASA Administrator. They provide consensus advice and make recommendations to the NASA Administrator. Abdalati, who represents the council’s Climate Priority Focus Area, provides perspectives on NASA’s efforts in the area of climate change, participated in their most recent meeting on October 1 and 2. The Council’s discussion and recommendations spanned the full range of the NASA portfolio from human spaceflight to aeronautics to space science to Earth science.

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