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Geoscience Impacts Nearly Every Aspect of Our Lives

From sustainable energy and climate change, to earthquakes, volcanoes, rivers and glaciers, from the origin of life on Earth to the potential for life on other planets, we lead in educating and inspiring the next generation of scientists.

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Degrees and Programs

The Department of Earth and Space Sciences offers an expansive educational experience. We provide a rigorous interdisciplinary program in which students develop an understanding of the fundamentals of Earth, space, and planetary sciences, and learn relevant skills for a variety of careers.

Research in Earth and Space Sciences

The Earth and space sciences — geology, geophysics, geobiology and geochemistry — play a critical and unique role in the advancement of knowledge, improvement of the quality of life, and in understanding humanity’s place in the universe. Research in Earth and space sciences draws on methods and theory from chemistry, physics, biology and computational sciences.

Faculty in our department are concerned both with fundamental research and with the dissemination of Earth-science knowledge in the service of society.

Limited resources, geologic hazards, and related environmental change are among the most serious challenges we face.  We use our expertise to provide the training and education required to address these challenges, and we are engaged in serious efforts to include a more diverse community of scientists, students and stakeholders than in the past.

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News

| In the News

3 College of the Environment teams funded to pursue AI projects that support teaching and learning

Michelle Koutnik, ESS research associate professor, will lead a project, “Supporting interdisciplinary Arctic learning with AI chatbot tool,” that will design, develop and test an AI chatbot tool to support interdisciplinary learning about the Arctic. Akshay Mehra, ESS assisstant professor, is part of an interdisplinary team for a project, “Designing responsible AI for learning: A pedagogical framework for undergraduate education,” that will generate transferable resources, clarify expectations for appropriate AI use and provide scalable models for responsible AI-informed pedagogy across disciplines at UW.

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