The Poetry Center is thrilled to continue our partnership with the College of Science, that will pair a poem with each upcoming lecture in the Spring 2026 College of Science lecture series in Centennial Hall. This year's theme is "Today's Science, Tomorrow's World: Building a Better Future." Working with Tucson-based writers, the collaboration will connect the inquisitive possibilities of imaginative and introspective language with findings ffrom leading University of Arizona researchers. Each lecture takes place at 7pm at Centennial Hall. Be sure to visit the Poetry Center table in the lobby to pick up a broadside from each presenting poet.
February 4th:
Featured poet: Peggy Shumaker
Lecturer: Dr. George Sutphin
Seven of the top ten causes of death — Alzheimer's, heart disease, diabetes, cancer — share a single risk factor: age. Our current "sick care" system waits for disease to strike, then tries to fix it. Aging science offers a different approach.
In this talk, Dr. George Sutphin will explain how researchers are targeting the biological processes that drive aging, aiming to prevent many of our most common diseases simultaneously while extending healthspan—the healthy, functional years of life. This shift from reactive treatment to prevention, from addressing diseases individually to targeting their shared root cause, represents a coming revolution in healthcare. Discover how understanding aging can transform medicine. Get your free tickets here.
February 11th: From Fruit Flies to Future Cures: How Tiny Insects are Driving Big Discoveries in Brain Science
Featured poet: Karen Falkenstrom
Lecturer: Dr. Martha Bhattacharya
Insects outnumber humans by billions and predated us on earth. While we diverged early in the evolutionary tree, we still share a vast majority of our genetic sequences, making studies of the insect nervous system insightful for understanding the building blocks of learning, memory, motion, aggression, and development of complex organs like the brain.
In this talk, Dr. Martha Bhattacharya will explain how scientists use fruit flies to uncover fundamental tenets of how the brain responds to injury, disease, and stress. In the process, she will describe how her work in flies has identified new genetic pathways involved in dermatitis, epilepsy, and cancer. In the future, insect studies could also provide information on how to survive in a warming world. Get your free tickets here.
February 17th: Harnessing the Power of Stars: Shaping the Future of Energy with Fusion Science
Featured poet: Sara Sams
Lecturer: Dr. Lise-Marie Imbert-Gérard
Nuclear fusion, the reaction that powers the Sun, offers the promise of a clean, safe, and abundant energy source capable of meeting the ever-growing global demand. Today, the stellarator — one of the earliest types of toroidal devices developed to confine fusion fuel with magnetic fields and control the reaction — is at the forefront of research and innovation across both science and engineering.
Stellarator design involves strategic choices about the device’s geometry to enhance performance while reducing construction costs. In this lecture, the speaker will focus on mathematical modeling and computational methods for stellarator optimization, highlighting some key challenges, recent progress, and future goals in this field. Get your free tickets here.
February 25th: Earth's Story: The Importance of Human Understanding in the Age of AI
Featured poet: Alison Hawthorne Deming
Lecturer: Dr. Laura Condon
Human curiosity, for millennia, has driven us to explore the mysteries of our blue planet and its place in the cosmos. The story of the Earth, as we tell it, is really a synthesis of Earth science. Today, we have access to more data and computation than at any other point in human history. Artificial intelligence shows great promise for simulating Earth systems and uncovering new patterns. Will this render human investigation obsolete?
In this talk, Dr. Laura Condon will explain how these advances are transforming our ability to study the planet, while also highlighting why human insight remains essential. Now, more than ever, we need human reason and ingenuity to ask the right questions and build new understanding that can drive us forward. Get your free tickets here.