Five CU Innovators Changing the World
CU Boulder is teeming with innovation, curiosity and thought leadership. And the people who comprise the university — CU Buffs — make global impact.
We’re highlighting five stellar Buffs — CU Boulder students, alumni and faculty whose work is relevant, leading-edge and promises to create ripples out into the world. Their stories were written by five equally outstanding CU affiliates, who personally know and understand the importance of their work.
As journalist Tom Costello (Jour’87) wrote in his essay on his NBC colleague Savannah Sellers (Jour’13), she “breaks through.”
Many Buffs are breaking through — they bridge traditional silos, strive to think differently, and take huge risks. And just as many credit the university for equipping them to pursue their passions. CU Boulder is more than its stunning location — this university is the people who push for more.
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Idowu Odeyemi (PhDPhil’27)
Charting New Paths as a Rising Philosopher
Idowu Odeyemi came to CU Boulder to refine his philosophical acumen while carving a path for young Africans like him who aspire to study philosophy.
Beyond his research, he said, “I want to challenge and expand the traditional boundaries of the discipline so that the philosophical community must either engage with African thinkers or justify why not.”
Idowu’s work — centered on oppression and blame — delves into how oppressive systems like patriarchy, colonialism, Nazism and slavery affect moral agency. He invites us to consider haunting questions such as why a battered wife doesn’t simply leave while her husband is out, illustrating how the threat of severe harm to one’s welfare can override considerations of morality and compel individuals to remain in oppres-sive circumstances.
Consider a battered wife who faces an oppressive double bind: resisting her abuser risks her safety, while compliance perpetuates the very system that oppresses her. This leads to an untenable situation where she is damned if she revolts, and damned if she doesn’t. In Idowu’s view, this dilemma complicates blaming oppressed individuals for not revolting.
Another facet of Idowu’s scholarship introduces the term “epistemic disgust” — a neglected psychological response that prompts us to reject certain beliefs and utterances because they repulse us. If someone says, “All white men smell like hot dog water,” for instance, many listeners feel revulsion that blocks such an utterance from entering our belief system. Idowu’s ground-breaking theory on how disgust can shape belief formation was published in the prestigious journal Episteme.
He also ventures beyond academia: His essay “On Accent and Confidence” in Isele Magazine was nominated for the 2025 non-fiction prize and recognized as one of the 50 notable essays from Africa in 2024, and another piece, “Living in America, Leaving Nigeria” (published by The Republic), was named among the 18 notable essays by a Nigerian in 2023.
As a graduate student, Idowu has published four peer-reviewed papers in leading journals — an achievement typically expected of faculty. Recently, he delivered a philosophy colloquium at the University of Missouri — uncommon for a graduate student. He was a Harper PhD Fellow at the Benson Center, a fellow at the Center for African and African American Studies and, in 2023, a fully funded fellowship took him to the University of Oxford. This summer, he will be visiting the National Archives in London through a research award from CU Boulder’s Center for African and African American Studies.
Through Idowu’s compelling research and prolific achievements, he exemplifies how CU Boulder’s nurturing environment fosters tomorrow’s transformative thinkers.
CU Boulder philosophy associate professor Ajume Wingo serves as Odeyemi’s advisor. Ajume is a member of the royal family in the Nso kingdom, located in the northwest region of Cameroon. In addition to being widely published in political and social philosophy, he is the founder of several NGOs, including PridePads Africa and Pathfinders4peace.
Photo by Alastair Norcross
Savannah Sellers (Jour’13)
Serious, Fun, Whimsical — and Never Dull
As the face of “the Generation of Now,” Savannah Sellers co-anchors the streaming morning newscast of NBC News NOW, then reports for The Today Show and NBC Nightly News. She demonstrates how a journalist can break through a saturated news market and reach a new generation of consumers who crave accurate information on their own terms.
While transitioning from CU Boulder to NBC News in New York could have been daunting, Savannah quickly established herself as smart and determined, yet easy-going and relevant. This rare combination made her a natural choice to help lead NBC’s outreach to younger viewers, where they are — on social media.
She helped map a new look and pacing for NBC News. The target age: 20-to-40- somethings who want news on the go for their 24/7 lifestyle. Almost immediately, the audience was there. The newscasts moved fast. They were serious, fun, whimsical — and never dull.
Savannah took Snapchat viewers to Parkland, Florida, hours after a former student murdered 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. Her coverage was raw and real. A record 18 million people tuned in: mostly kids seeking information about a tragedy affecting other kids they didn’t know, but who were their age.
She has documented America’s heroin epidemic with an Emmy award-winning Nightly News series, revealing that the victims are not always stereotypical drug addicts — they could be your own neighbor or family member.
She has detailed and explained the confusing fight over banning TikTok, the app-of- choice for her younger audience, led honest discussions on diversity, equity and inclusion, and shared the deeply personal and painful struggle she and her husband have faced with fertility.
To meet Savannah is to discover a person of tremendous warmth, charm and insatiable curiosity who wants to know your story — what motivates you, and why. Those are the traits of a great broadcast journalist.
As one NBC exec put it, “She breaks through! She pops!”
It delights me to see a fellow CU alum become such a trusted voice and valued colleague at The Peacock. Go Buffs!
Tom Costello (Jour’87) is the senior correspondent at NBC News. With nearly 30 years of experience at CNBC and NBC News in London, New York and Washington, D.C., he reports daily across all NBC News platforms.
Photo by Nate Congleton
Dania Arayssi (MPolSci’22; PhD’26)
Vital Work in Transnational Politics
Dania Arayssi doesn’t just care deeply about the big social and economic problems that affect people’s everyday lives — she rigorously studies them and takes action.
Before coming to CU Boulder, she participated in the U.S.-Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI) at the U.S. State Department and earned multiple advanced degrees. She then founded the Gleam of Hope Group, which works with thousands of young people and women to address food and health needs. For many, these accomplishments would constitute an entire career. For Dania, this was just the beginning.
Dania brought her passion for understanding pressing socioeconomic and political issues to CU Boulder in 2021. Her dissertation work centers on remittances, money sent by those working abroad back to their families in their home countries. Remittances are an important source of income for families around the world. Dania’s research seeks to explain how these remittances affect people’s incentives to be politically active. Does the added economic security make people more likely to pressure the government for change? Or does economic security dampen any potential dissent, making people less likely to vote or protest? What issues do people who receive remittances care about the most?
Dania uses a rigorous combination of interviews, focus groups and original survey data to study these questions in her home country of Lebanon. Her work helps us understand how diaspora communities affect politics around the world. In an era of transnational politics, her work is vitally important.
Dania represents the best of CU Boulder. After completing her dissertation, she plans to work at the New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy in Washington, D.C. During these politically contentious times plagued by myriad challenges, I personally find enormous hope that CU alumni like Dania will be out in the world contributing their expertise, knowledge and wisdom.
Sarah Wilson Sokhey works as an associate professor in CU Boulder’s Department of Political Science, a faculty associate at the Institute of Behavioral Science and the founding director of the Studio Lab for Undergrads in the College of Arts and Sciences. Her current research focuses on the local provision of public services in Ukraine during wartime. In 2024, she was inducted into the President’s Teaching Scholars Program, one of the highest CU teaching awards.
Photo courtesy Dania Arayssi
Jun Ye (PhDPhys'97)
Using Quantum for High-Tech Innovation
My friend and colleague Professor Jun Ye is an ever-flowing fountain of scientific and technological innovation.
One of the greatest laser scientists in the world, he and his students have built several generations of record-setting optical clocks. The technology has advanced to the point where Jun’s clocks would gain or lose less than a second in the whole age of the universe. These highly accurate clocks are tied into technology improvements to support better navigation, communication and the ability to sense unseen things (for example, small changes in gravity associated with objects buried underground). Additionally, his lab created the world’s first nuclear clock.
Through his research at JILA, Jun uses lasers to detect slight traces of unusual elements in gas samples. His group is now examining the air exhaled by people with various diseases to find tiny traces of certain chemicals associated with a particular disease. If this works, one day cancer testing might be as easy as puffing some air into a soda straw.
Much of his research is built around using the properties of quantum mechanics to do high-tech research — precision measurement, secure communication, exotic material design — that eludes the reach of “old-school” classical mechanics.
Perhaps as impactful as anything else he does, Jun has trained an entirely new generation of elite scientists and engineers, who are now the beating heart of Colorado’s, and the nation’s, high-tech industry. When I visit high-tech Colorado companies, it often seems that the technical leadership are CU Boulder alums who earned their degrees while working in Jun’s group.
On top of his research, Jun is working with me on a joint project to understand why there is more matter than antimatter in the universe. It sounds like a very abstract topic, but it is part of a bigger question: How are the conditions in the universe such that the development of humankind is possible? I feel very privileged to collaborate with Jun. I’ve learned a lot from working with him. Sometimes I wonder if the man ever sleeps!
Eric Cornell has been at CU for 34 years and wears many hats. He teaches first-year physics for the CU Boulder Department of Physics; he is a JILA fellow; and a scientist with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), part of the U.S. Department of Commerce. In 2001, he and CU Boulder professor Carl Wieman won the Nobel Prize in Physics for creating Bose-Einstein Condensation, the “world’s coldest stuff.”
Photo courtesy Jun Ye
Steve Swanson (EngrPhys’83)
Space Commander Gains and Gives Respect
Steve Swanson was one of the most highly respected members of the NASA astronaut office during the Shuttle and Space Station Programs in the 1990s and 2000s.
Steve and I met in the late 1980s when we were both in the aircraft operations division at Johnson Space Center. I was an instructor pilot in the space shuttle training aircraft. Steve was a software wizard and the flight simulation engineer responsible for managing the computer that enabled a Gulfstream II business jet to fly like a space shuttle. We were both interested in becoming astronauts. I was selected in 1992, and
Steve was named an astronaut in 1998 after obtaining a PhD in computer science from Texas A&M University.
Steve excelled right away in the astronaut office and was selected as one of the four extra-vehicular activity (EVA) crewmembers to install one of the four solar array elements of the station. It was considered an honor to be chosen for such a significant mission on his first flight — he was clearly a rising star!
I began working at CU Boulder thanks to Steve. He talked to me after his post-flight trip to Boulder to visit with the students and return items he had flown for the university. CU asked him to consider a professor position in the CU aerospace department, but he wanted to fly more for NASA and so asked if I might be interested instead.
Steve also led the EVA team to install the final solar array element two years later. His final mission in 2014 was serving as a station crewmember and the mission commander.
That fall, I was proud to arrange a live video conference in the Fiske Planetarium so Steve could talk to the students while he was on the Space Station. Today, Steve shares his experiences at Boise State University, leading and advising student teams participating in NASA’s Artemis Challenges, inspiring them to do great things in science and engineering.
Joe Tanner is a retired NASA astronaut, Navy pilot and CU Boulder teaching professor. During his 16-year career as an astronaut, he flew four missions on the space shuttle, one to the Hubble Space Telescope and two to the International Space Station. He also mentored astronaut Sarah Gillis (AeroEngr’17) when she was a CU student; Gillis traveled to space in fall 2025 with SpaceX.
Photo courtesy NASA
