But Where Did York Sleep?

Wanda Pillow, PhD, Dean, College of Humanities and School for Cultural & Social Transformation

“This question asked by my then 10-year-old son has changed the way I do research and how I think about American history,” said Wanda Pillow in her 2025 RED Talk. 

After her son’s question during a visit to Fort Clatsop on the Lewis and Clark historic trail, Pillow began searching for York, a Black man enslaved by William Clark, in the historical record. However, York didn’t leave any written records and mentions of him in other primary source documents are few and rarely represent him as a complete person. 

Pillow said this question mattered to her and her family because it explores who counts in American history. Despite the lack of records, Pillow realized there was much she could piece together about York’s life because she knew where he was for the entirety of the expedition, an effort that expands the story of American history.

Watch the entire talk here.

Color and the Hidden Knowledge of Artists

Edward Bateman MFA, College of Fine Arts

Many people, especially artists, have feelings about color and how to use it. But if you ask them to explain their philosophy, they’ll say it’s intuition. As an art professor, Edward Bateman finds this very frustrating. 

“I can’t teach intuition,” Bateman said during his 2025 RED Talk. 

To expand his and his students’ understanding of color in art, Bateman used computer technology to analyze 400 years of art making. He started with the Impressionists because this generation of artists began having easier access to paint, which made them freer in their use of color. 

The patterns Bateman saw in his analysis changed the way he interacted with color in his own life and he hopes thinking more about color will do the same for others.

Watch the entire talk here.

Healthcare Providers Ignoring Stop Signs— An Odyssey to Novel Drug-Drug Interaction Management

Daniel Malone RPh, PhD, FAMCP, College of Pharmacy

Daniel Malone’s research interest in drug safety harkens back to the tragic death of his neighbor, a 37-year-old mother of two, who died suddenly of an apparent heart attack, explained Malone, a research professor of pharmacotherapy, in his 2025 Red Talk.

It turned out the family had a cardiac condition precipitated by certain medications taken in combination, in this case an oral antibiotic and an allergy medication.

The death illustrated a glaring problem in the nation’s drug safety system, something Malone calls “alert fatigue.” Clinicians receive warnings when a particular patient can be harmed by taking certain drugs together, but those warnings are often overridden, according to Malone’s research.

“Why do we keep ignoring medication safety stop signs?” said Malone. “It’s because these alerts are so common and the systems we use to generate them use very simplistic rules.”

The solution his team is implementing at U Health, called DDInteract, combines patient data with safety information about medications and provides a visual display of the risks associated with a particular drug combination for that patient.

Watch the entire talk here.

Understanding and Overcoming Division in a Divided America

Samantha Moore-Berg MA, PhD, College of Social & Behavioral Science

Political divisions don’t come from different values, said Samantha Moore-Berg during her 2025 RED Talk. They come from misunderstanding the lenses other people use to view the world. This is something Moore-Berg observed in her own family, which now shapes the work she does as a researcher. 

Through research, Moore-Berg has learned that not only do people misunderstand the beliefs of people in other groups, but they also assume their group is viewed more harshly by others than it is in reality. With this in mind, it’s no wonder that political divisions run deep and are becoming worse.

To address this challenge, Moore-Berg suggests three actions:

• Challenge your beliefs
• Listen to understand
• Lead by example

Watch the entire talk here.

Toward a Science of Game Design

Rogelio Cardona-Rivera PhD, College of Architecture & Planning

Video games saved Rogelio Cardona-Rivera’s eyesight.

At the age of five, he was diagnosed with amblyopia, a condition commonly called lazy eye, for which his doctor prescribed surgery. His parents responded by buying him a Super Nintendo game console. The eye movements required to play Nintendo games wound up improving his condition to the point it no longer required surgery. 

“I am living testament of the transformative power of video games,” Cardona-Rivera said. “I mean that quite seriously.”

As an assistant professor and founding faculty of the U’s Division of Games, he is focusing his research on developing AI tools to augment the design of story games.

“These are sandbox environments that enable us to practice creativity in overcoming the challenges that they pose,” he said. “They allow us to enact agency in making decisions and choices, and seeing the results of them in a way that’s intrinsically rewarding, and important for our quality of life, both physical and mental.”

Watch the entire talk here.

Mathemagic of Sea Ice, Semiconductors and Harry Potter

Ken Golden MS, PhD, College of Science

Mathematics acts as a universal language that can be applied in ways to understand seemingly unrelated areas of science engineering in a process Ken Golden calls cross-pollination in his 2025 Red Talk.

During his many scientific expeditions to the Arctic and Antarctic, Utah’s distinguished professor of mathematics developed a mathematical theory of connectedness, called percolation theory, to explain the movement of water through sea ice. But it hardly ended there.

 “We used the mathematics that we developed for understanding the propagation of electromagnetic waves in sea ice to develop a new method of monitoring the onset and progress of osteoporosis,” Golden said.

 It turns out percolation theory can help explain many other things, such as human bone, semiconductors and even compressed powders used in stealthy coatings that cloak aircraft from radar.

Now his team hopes to use these principals to develop a new class of meta-materials—called twisted bilayer composites—with novel electronic and other properties.

Watch the entire talk here.