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.
AboutEducationAlumni & Community
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.
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.
Doug Leen, or Ranger Doug as many now know him by, graduated with his Bachelors of Science from UW ESS (then Geological Sciences) in 1970 after serving two years in Vietnam in the United States Navy Seabees Doug joined the National Park Service after graduating and spent the next seven years as a Grand Teton National Park climbing ranger at Jenny Lake.
Read moreThe Earth and Space Sciences Department has recently been granted ten academic use licenses for the powerful software package MOVE Suite by Petroleum Experts, Ltd. (Petex), valued at more than $2.7 million.
Read moreScientists and engineers from the UW School of Oceanography, Department of Earth and Space Sciences and the Applied Physics Lab, along with partners at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, recently were awarded more than $10 million to build an underwater observatory in the Cascadia subduction zone.
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