Jonatan Noriega ’17 ’19 got a scholarship to an elite Phoenix prep school followed by a full ride to the U of A, making him the first member of his family to go to college. Now he’s teaching middle school back near where he grew up in hopes of setting an example for kids like himself.

Since their founding in 2017, the U of A’s K-pop dance team, UnderSkore, has amassed a sizeable following posting covers and routines to YouTube while evangelizing for their shared love of Korean pop. More importantly, they’ve created a space for students to bond and build community, turning fandom into friendship.

In 2023, the U of A Women’s Triathlon team was recruited for its first year of competition. IN 2024, they won the NCAA Division 1 championship, ending a seven-year championship streak for Arizona State. They’re already thinking about next fall.

The U of A Women’s Hockey team recently wrapped their first season in 18 years. Read more about how Coach Caitlin Hogan brought the team together, and what she’s doing to get a desert city interested in a game played on ice.

Gain Jue came to the U of A on scholarship when she was 18. Now a finance director for Microsoft, a member of the U of A Foundation’s Board of Trustees as well as the Alumni Advisory Council, and an active participant in the Wildcat Mentor Society, Jue has given back all she has gotten from the U of A and then some. Why? Because she loves it.

The U of A recently surpassed $1 billion in research expenditures — a major milestone. We talked with new Senior Vice President of Research Tomás Díaz de la Rubia about his background and vision, including an investment in fusion energy, the combination of artificial intelligence with medical research and what continues to fascinate him about Formula 1 racing.

Did you know the U of A’s MFA in Creative Writing is routinely ranked as one of the best of its kind in the country? True story. Here’s a roundup of some recent books published by some of MFA alums.

Last summer, a satellite called CatSat left Earth on a Firefly Aerospace Alpha rocket. The launch was part of a broader NASA effort called the CubeSat Launch Initiative, which provides opportunities to educational and nonprofit organizations to pitch in with the expansion of the small-satellite industry. Did we mention the satellite was built by U of A students? It was. Hello up there.

Wildcat basketball fans are no doubt familiar with the ritual of cutting down a net after a historically significant game, whether it’s Mike Bibby on the ladder after the men’s team beat Kentucky in the 1997 NCAA championship, or Coach Adia Barnes and the women’s team before heading to the Final Four in 2021. But what about the humble practice nets the teams cut their teeth on day in, day out?

Native American and Alaska Natives make up just .4% of the nursing workforce. Additionally, native patients often struggle over long distances and cultural barriers to access basic care. The U of A’s INCATS Nursing Scholars Program is hoping to change that, bringing providers back to the communities that need it most.

School of Education professor Melanie McKay-Cody discovered a book on Native American sign languages at the Oklahoma School for the Deaf when she was 10. Now she’s building a video dictionary to preserve those languages for future speakers.

Every day at 4 A.M. and 4 P.M., a meteorologist from the National Weather Service releases a balloon from the rooftop of a building at the edge of the U of A campus. Data from that balloon helps tell us the weather. A story of wonder, string and the daily ritual of letting go.

U of A Regents Professor Dante Lauretta and the sample analysis team at NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission have been looking into the asteroid Bennu for nearly two years now. Recent findings suggest that the solar system it came from had the chemical ingredients to create life years long before the Earth formed — a possible breakthrough in discovering how all of us came to be.

TBI, or Traumatic Brain Injury, is one of the most common injuries in military conflict. It can also be one of the most debilitating. Researchers at the U of A Health Sciences SensorLab are combining virtual reality and artificial intelligence in a project called the Virtual Reality Military Operational Neuropsychological Assessment, or VRMONA, to help make TBI diagnoses faster — and soldiers safer in turn.

Daniel Collazo ’22 and Chloe Penna ’23 fell in love under the branches of a bunya-bunya pine tree here on the U of A campus. Despite the tree being one of many torn down during the heavy monsoons this past July, Daniel and Chloe are as strong as ever. This is the story of love, loss and some truly enormous pinecones.

Parkinson’s is the second most-common neurodegenerative disease in the United States, affecting an estimated 1 million Americans. New research at the U of A is helping us understand how it works — and maybe pointing a way out.

For more than a hundred years, researchers at the University of Arizona have combined plant science with landscape architecture and day-to-day facilities management to make the living experiment we call campus. Read about the history of the Campus Arboretum, its place in our land-grant mission and what they’re doing to help us prepare for a hotter, drier future.

The College of Medicine – Tucson recently received an extraordinary gift from a woman named Patricia Gerleman — from Patricia’s late husband Jim, from Jim’s late brother, John — toward scholarships for med-school students in the interest of them coming out of their education debt-free. A story of trust, generosity and a family who made good on what they had.

Hank Willis Thomas has appeared in museums from New York to Paris to Hong Kong and Bilbao. Now, this U.S. Department of State Medal of Arts-winning artist has made his way to Tucson through a show from the collection of the Jordan Schnitzer Family Foundation.

Yuma is a major force in American agriculture, ranking third nationwide in sales of vegetables and melons. New public-private partnerships and researchers from the University of Arizona are helping expand the county’s production capacity and bring it the Internet it needs to stay connected.