Live Faculty Talks
Join us for unique and thought provoking live talks throughout the year.
The University of Colorado at Boulder is a Tier 1 research university and employs many of the world's expert scientists.
This lecture series provides a great opportunity to hear from these leading researchers about their work and the impact on the scientific community and our society as a whole.
These are a part of our regular talk series. Regular ticket prices apply.
CU Boulder students are admitted FREE on THURSDAY NIGHT TALKS with valid Buff OneCard.
Please be aware that our shows and some talks may incorporate one or several of the following features: bright lights, flashing visuals, loud sounds, or intense motion effects.
Upcoming Live Faculty Talks
February 12 & 13, 2026 at 7pm
Scientists have theorized for decades that Pluto's unusually large moon Charon formed through a process similar to Earth's moon – a massive collision between two planet-sized bodies, that left Pluto and Charon behind. The process by which this giant impact occurred, and how Charon became subsequently captured as Pluto's satellite, remained poorly understood until recently. In this talk, we'll learn about some of the cutting-edge simulations that revealed new insight into Pluto and Charon's initial collisions, as well as how that impact may have big implications for the system's geological evolution, including how we get to the surfaces that were imaged by New Horizons in 2015.
Bio:Dr. Adeene Denton is a geophysicist and planetary scientist at Southwest Research Institute interested in giant impacts and their influence on the history, evolution and tectonic activity of icy satellites, ocean worlds, and Kuiper Belt Objects. Adeene uses a combination of numerical tools, from shock physics codes to finite element modeling, to explore the effects of giant impacts and their implications for habitability in the outer Solar System. She is trained as a scientist, historian, and dancer, which informs her scientific and artistic research process. Adeene is an avid astrohumanist focused on approaching future planetary exploration from a scientific and humanistic perspective. Asteroid 16883 adeenedenton is named for Adeene’s research on impact processes on outer Solar System worlds, including Pluto.
February 19 & 20, 2026 at 7pm
Giant Jupiter is easy to recognize by it’s stripes and Great Red Spot. Shiny rings make Saturn stand out. But, what’s so special about the other two gas giant planets Uranus and Neptune? What makes them blue? Why is Uranus tipped on its side? They both have a bunch of moons - and rings too!
NASA’s Voyager 2 briefly flew by in 1986 and 1989. It’s time to go back and orbit these mysterious planets in the outer solar system.
Enjoy an evening with Dr. Fran Bagenal and Dr. Nick Schneider, two of our highly esteemed APS professors and researchers at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics.
April 2 & 3, 2026 at 7pm
In the last three decades, the explosion of exoplanet discoveries has demonstrated that, on average, every star in the Milky Way hosts a planetary system. With so many planets now discovered, our next challenge is characterizing the atmospheres of those planets to assess their potential habitability and search for the signs of active biology. In this talk, Dr. France will highlight recent exoplanet discoveries and describe the role that the University of Colorado’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) is playing in developing the science, hardware, and training the next generations of scientists and engineers for NASA’s upcoming flagship exoplanet mission, the Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO). Dr. France will describe the HWO mission and how the University of Colorado is developing hardware on small satellites and rocket missions, and how we use these missions to train the students who will lead NASA’s future missions like HWO and beyond.
Bio: Kevin France is a professor in the University of Colorado’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics and in the Department of Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences. He is an expert on space instruments for astrophysics and the study of extrasolar planets. He had led approximately 10 NASA rocket and small satellite missions at LASP, works extensively with the Hubble Space Telescope, and is engaged with NASA’s development of future observatories to find habitable planets beyond the solar system.
Watch this space for more amazing talks at Fiske.