Arizona State University in the context of "Arizona Board of Regents"

Pillars of Creation is a photograph taken by the Hubble Space Telescope that depicts elephant trunks of interstellar gas and dust in the Eagle Nebula of the Serpens constellation, some 6,500–7,000 light-years (2,000–2,100 pc; 61–66 Em) from Earth. These elephant trunks had been discovered by John Charles Duncan in 1920 on a plate made with the Mount Wilson Observatory 60-inch telescope. They are so named because the gas and dust are in the process of creating new stars, while also being eroded by the light from nearby stars that have recently formed.

Taken on April 1, 1995, it was named one of the top ten photographs from Hubble by Space.com. The astronomers responsible for the photo were Jeff Hester and Paul Scowen from Arizona State University. The region was rephotographed by ESA's Herschel Space Observatory in 2011, again by Hubble in 2014 with a newer camera, and the James Webb Space Telescope in 2022.

Léon Marchand (French pronunciation: [leɔ̃ maʁʃɑ̃] ; born 17 May 2002) is a French swimmer. He is the World record holder in the long course 200 and 400 metres individual medley, and in the short course 200 metres individual medley; the Olympic record holder in the 200 and 400 metres individual medley, 200 metres butterfly and the 200 metres breaststroke; the European record holder in the long course 200 and 400 metres individual medley and the 200 meters breaststroke, in the short course 100 and 200 metres individual medley and the French record holder in the long course 200 and 400 metres individual medley, 200 metres butterfly and the 200 metres breaststroke, and in the short course 100, 200, 400 metres individual medley and the 200 metres breaststroke. At the 2024 Summer Olympics, he won gold medals in the 200 m medley, 200 metre breaststroke, 200 metre butterfly, and 400 metre medley. He became the fourth swimmer and third male swimmer in Olympic history to win four individual gold medals at a single Games.

As a member of the Arizona State University swim team, at the 2022 NCAA Division I Men's Swimming and Diving Championships, Marchand won NCAA titles in the 200 yard breaststroke and 200 yard individual medley. At the 2023 NCAA Division I Men's Swimming and Diving Championships, he won NCAA titles in the 200 yard breaststroke, 200 yard individual medley, and 400 yard individual medley. At the 2024 NCAA Division I Men's Swimming and Diving Championships in his last year before going pro, he won NCAA titles in the 200 yard breaststroke, 500 yard freestyle and 400 yard individual medley. He won with his college swim team the NCAA championship title for the first time ever.

The University of Arizona (Arizona, U of A, UArizona, or UA) is a public land-grant research university in Tucson, Arizona, United States. Founded in 1885 by the 13th Arizona Territorial Legislature, it was the first university established in the Arizona Territory. The University of Arizona is one of three universities governed by the Arizona Board of Regents (the University of Arizona, Arizona State University, and Northern Arizona University). As of fall 2025, the university enrolled 54,384 students in 22 separate colleges/schools, including the Eller College of Management, the Wyant College of Optical Sciences, the College of Medicine – Phoenix, the College of Medicine – Tucson, and the James E. Rogers College of Law.

The university is classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity". UA also is a member of the Association of American Universities. The University of Arizona is affiliated with two academic medical centers, Banner – University Medical Center Tucson and Banner – University Medical Center Phoenix.

James Joseph O'Donnell (born 1950) is a classical scholar and University Librarian at Arizona State University. He formerly served as University Professor at Georgetown University (2012–2015) and as Provost of Georgetown University (2002–2012). O'Donnell was previously Vice Provost for Information Systems and Computing at the University of Pennsylvania (1996–2002). He is a former President of the American Philological Association (the national learned society for academics who work on the ancient world) and a Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America. From 2012 to 2018, he chaired the Board of the American Council of Learned Societies.

O'Donnell writes and lectures on topics of the late Roman Empire, Augustine of Hippo, and also on the impact of information technology in the modern academic and cultural world. He was an early adopter of the World Wide Web for academic collaboration within the humanities. He co-founded and has been involved with Bryn Mawr Classical Review since it was founded in 1990. In 1994, he offered the first Internet massive open online course (MOOC) when 500 students around the world participated (through gopher and email) in his University of Pennsylvania seminar on the life and work of St. Augustine.

The Arizona State Sun Devils are the athletic teams that represent Arizona State University. ASU has nine men's and eleven women's varsity teams competing at the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I level as a member of the Big 12 Conference. The mascot was adopted in 1946; earlier nicknames were the Normals and later, the Bulldogs. The Sun Devil mascot, Sparky, was designed by Bert Anthony, a former Disney illustrator. ASU's chief rival is the University of Arizona Wildcats, and both universities' athletics departments compete against each other in the Territorial Cup Series.

On August 4, 2023, Arizona State accepted an invite to join the Big 12 Conference, effective August 2, 2024.

The Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) is a camera on board the 2001 Mars Odyssey orbiter. It images Mars in the visible and infrared parts of the electromagnetic spectrum in order to determine the thermal properties of the surface and to refine the distribution of minerals on the surface of Mars as determined by the Thermal Emission Spectrometer (TES). Additionally, it helps scientists to understand how the mineralogy of Mars relates to its landforms, and it can be used to search for thermal hotspots in the Martian subsurface.

THEMIS is managed from the Mars Space Flight Facility at Arizona State University and was built by the Santa Barbara Remote Sensing division of Raytheon Technologies Corporation, an American multinational conglomerate headquartered in Waltham, Massachusetts. The instrument is named after Themis, the goddess of justice in ancient Greek mythology.

Elinor Claire "Lin" Ostrom (née Awan; August 7, 1933 – June 12, 2012) was an American political scientist and political economist whose work was associated with New Institutional Economics and the resurgence of political economy. In 2009, she was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for her "analysis of economic governance, especially the commons", which she shared with Oliver E. Williamson; she was the first woman to win the prize.

Trained in political science at UCLA, Ostrom was a faculty member at Indiana University Bloomington for 47 years. Beginning in the 1960s, Ostrom was involved in resource management policy and created a research center, the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis, which attracted scientists from different disciplines from around the world. Working and teaching at her center was created on the principle of a workshop, rather than a university with lectures and a strict hierarchy. Late in her career, she held an affiliation with Arizona State University.

Frank Anthony Wilczek (/ˈvɪltʃɛk/ or /ˈwɪltʃɛk/; born May 15, 1951) is an American theoretical physicist, mathematician and Nobel laureate. He is the Herman Feshbach Professor of Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Founding Director of T. D. Lee Institute and Chief Scientist at the Wilczek Quantum Center, Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU), distinguished professor at Arizona State University (ASU) during February and March and full professor at Stockholm University.

Wilczek, along with David Gross and H. David Politzer, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2004 "for the discovery of asymptotic freedom in the theory of the strong interaction". In May 2022, he was awarded the Templeton Prize for his "investigations into the fundamental laws of nature, that has transformed our understanding of the forces that govern our universe and revealed an inspiring vision of a world that embodies mathematical beauty."