Innovation

This rural Pennsylvania field station is an ecologist’s dream

It’s autumn at the Pymatuning Reservoir. The water lies flat and blue; color is beginning to tinge the trees; and the summer’s cohort of students and researchers has mostly left Pitt’s lakeside biological field station, the Pymatuning Laboratory of Ecology (PLE).

But the students have left a little reminder of their presence on the lab’s white boards: whimsical sketches of the semi-aquatic, croaking creatures they study. There are frogs eating ice cream. Frogs dressed as princesses. Frogs with pouting lips.

GES worked alongside the Frick Environmental Center to help clean up our parks

The Department of Geology and Environmental Science, in partnership with the Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy, hosted an impactful volunteer day at the Frick Environmental Center in Frick Park. Participants worked alongside Parks Conservancy staff to manage invasive plants and maintain ecological restoration sites, which directly contribute to the care and stewardship of Pittsburgh’s treasured park system.

This recent Dietrich School alum’s gothic short film premiered on February 28

This story was originally published on Pittwire and written by Donovan Harrell

As ‘The Points Guy,’ this Pitt alumnus helps travelers leverage loyalty

Of course, Brian Kelly was aboard a flight, waiting for liftoff, when he heard the news. The week it hit shelves in March 2025, his first book-length travel guide became an instant New York Times bestseller, soaring to No. 5 on the Advice, How-To & Miscellaneous book list.

Beth Shaaban Studies the Social and Biological Forces Shaping Brain Health

As a child, Beth Shaaban watched her mother, a nurse, open one of the first memory units in a long-term care facility in Sun City, Arizona. The compassionate care she witnessed there later catalyzed her own career in Alzheimer’s disease and dementia research.

“Sometimes I would go with her to work as a kid and meet the folks who were there, and it felt very natural to me,” Shaaban said. “I’ve always had an affinity for helping people that way.”

This newly discovered, 11.5-billion-year-old galaxy shares a striking feature with our own

Research led by Daniel Ivanov, a physics and astronomy graduate student in the Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences at Pitt, uncovered a contender for one of the earliest observed spiral galaxies containing a stellar bar, a sometimes-striking visual feature that can play an important role in a galaxy’s evolution.

This finding helps astronomers get a better handle on when such bars could have first emerged in the universe. Analysis of light from the galaxy, called COSMOS-74706, places it on the cosmic timeline at about 11.5 billion years ago.

This Dietrich School professor added fresh context to artwork at the heart of the new Pittsburgh International Airport

Since the opening of Pittsburgh International Airport’s new landside terminal late last year, travelers have been welcomed by a familiar artwork reintroduced in a dramatically new way — along with an interpretation crafted by a University of Pittsburgh scholar.

Suspended in the center of the terminal’s grand atrium, Alexander Calder’s “Pittsburgh” mobile now occupies the most visible position in its 70-year history.

This fearless senior is the definition of ‘cool under pressure’

As a Pitt athlete, Ellie Breech had been required to take CPR classes after Pitt alum Damar Hamlin suffered a cardiac arrest in 2023 while playing an NFL game. So, when her father’s heart suddenly stopped later that year on Christmas Day, Breech was ready to save his life.

Since then, she’s made it her mission to ensure others are ready, too.

Research and Innovation Live with Nature at Pitt's Pymatuning Laboratory of Ecology

Pitt’s Pymatuning Laboratory of Ecology is only one hundred miles north of the University’s bustling Oakland campus, but for some it seems like a different world. Surrounded by quiet forest on the shore of a fishing lake that straddles the Pennsylvania-Ohio state line, Pitt students and researchers have enjoyed field and laboratory experiences here for generations. Known informally as PLE, the facility has space for large-scale research and ecosystems studies where students and researchers can get their hands on plants and animals in their natural environments.