Next month, the College of Natural Sciences at Colorado State University will celebrate the achievements of its faculty and staff at the fall 2017 Professor Laureate Lecture and Teaching and Mentoring Awards. The event will begin at 4 p.m. Dec. 1 in the Lory Student Center Cherokee Park Ballroom.

The program will feature awards for teaching and mentoring, dean’s recognition awards, as well as this year’s patent awards. Concluding the event will be a lecture from one of this year’s two Professor Laureates, Dan Cooley, assistant professor and assistant chair of the Department of Statistics. Professor Laureate is the highest academic honor the college bestows. It is granted for three years and comes with an honorarium and funding for research.

Cooley’s talk, “Extremes and Tales of Tail Dependence,” will delve into his work in extreme value analysis, which he employs to make sense of rare but extreme events, such as massive hurricanes or floods in the face of climate change.

The other 2017 Professor Laureate is Melissa Reynolds, associate professor in the Department of Chemistry, associate dean for research and 2017 Montfort Professor. Reynolds delivered her laureate lecture at the Professor Laureate Awards and Lecture event in April. Her talk, entitled “Systemic or Localized: Paths to Better Science and Improved Clinical Outcomes,” detailed her research into biocompatible materials that can help combat antibiotic resistance.

The fall program will be followed by a reception.