University of Colorado at Boulder in the context of Flagship university

The National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) is a United States information and referral center in support of polar and cryospheric research. NSIDC archives and distributes digital and analog snow and ice data and also maintains information about snow cover, avalanches, glaciers, ice sheets, freshwater ice, sea ice, ground ice, permafrost, atmospheric ice, paleoglaciology, and ice cores.

NSIDC is part of the University of Colorado Boulder Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES), and is affiliated with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) National Centers for Environmental Information through a cooperative agreement. NSIDC serves as one of twelve Distributed Active Archive Centers funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to archive and distribute data from NASA's past and current satellites and field measurement programs. NSIDC also supports the National Science Foundation through the Exchange For Local Observations and Knowledge of the Arctic (ELOKA) and other scientific research grants. NSIDC is also a member of the ICSU World Data System. sujit Serreze is the director of NSIDC.

Deborah Shiu-lan Jin (Chinese: 金秀兰; pinyin: Jīn Xiùlán; November 15, 1968 – September 15, 2016) was an American physicist and fellow with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST); Professor Adjunct, Department of Physics at the University of Colorado; and a fellow of the JILA, a NIST joint laboratory with the University of Colorado.

She was considered a pioneer in polar molecular quantum chemistry. From 1995 to 1997 she worked with Eric Cornell and Carl Wieman at JILA, where she was involved in some of the earliest studies of dilute gas Bose-Einstein condensates. In 2003 Jin's team at JILA made the first fermionic condensate, a new form of matter. She used magnetic traps and lasers to cool fermionic atomic gases to less than 100 billionths of a degree above zero, successfully demonstrating quantum degeneracy and the formation of a molecular Bose-Einstein condensate. Jin was frequently mentioned as a strong candidate for the Nobel Prize in Physics. In 2002, Discover magazine recognized her as one of the 50 most important women in science.

George Gamow (sometimes Gammoff; born Georgiy Antonovich Gamov; Russian: Гео́ргий Анто́нович Га́мов; March 4 [O.S. February 20] 1904 – August 19, 1968) was a Soviet and American polymath, theoretical physicist and cosmologist. He was an early advocate and developer of Georges Lemaître's Big Bang theory. Gamow discovered a theoretical explanation of alpha decay by quantum tunneling, invented the liquid drop model (the first mathematical model of the atomic nucleus), worked on radioactive decay, star formation, stellar nucleosynthesis, Big Bang nucleosynthesis (which he collectively called nucleocosmogenesis), and predicted the existence of the cosmic microwave background radiation and molecular genetics. Gamow was a key figure in the development and understanding of quantum tunneling.

In his middle and late career, Gamow directed much of his attention to teaching and wrote popular books on science, including One Two Three... Infinity and the Mr Tompkins series of books (1939–1967). Some of his books remain in print more than a half-century after their original publication. The George Gamow Memorial Lectures at the University of Colorado at Boulder are given in his honor.