UW in the News

State, national and international media frequently feature the University of Wyoming and members of its community in stories. Here is a summary of some of the recent coverage:

Multiple media outlets covered the 25th anniversary of a horrific crash that killed eight UW cross-country runners, including the Wyoming Tribune Eagle, Cowboy State Daily, the Gillette News Record, Wyoming News Now and the UW Branding Iron.

In a Cowboy State Daily article about a lawsuit over the use of artificial intelligence to generate and distribute pornography depicting a Wyoming woman, UW Assistant Professor Ken Hanson says this case of alleged abuse fits a well-established pattern of child abuse typically perpetrated by someone known to the victim.

The hundreds of thousands of wild ungulates dwelling across Wyoming’s 62 million acres are worth nearly $6 billion, according to UW Associate Professor Jake Hochard. He’s scheduled to present his research to the Wyoming Game and Fish Commission today in Evanston, WyoFile reported.

UW Professor Mark Clementz is one of the co-authors of a paper about the discovery of the fossilized tooth of a capybara that lived in the Atacama Desert in northern Chile almost 9 million years ago. He told EurekAlert and earth.com that what is now one of the driest places on Earth may have provided enough habitat for the water-loving rodents, even if drier land existed nearby.

In a Netzender article about a proposal from Anthropic to embed third-party safety evaluators inside frontier artificial intelligence companies to slow the advance of increasingly capable models, UW College of Law Dean Julie Hill says comparing such an approach to embedded “supervisors” in the banking industry is inaccurate. Contrary to the AI proposal, government bank examiners can direct a bank to stop a practice, restrict its growth, force management changes and, in extreme cases, close it, Hill said.

Ski resorts across the western United States are seeing fewer days of reliable natural snow and further opportunities for snowmaking, but a UW-led study finds the risks vary significantly by location. The Casper Star-Tribune picked up UW’s release about the new research led by UW research scientist Pramod Adhikari.

UW’s Survey and Analysis Center compiled data for the Wyoming Community Foundation’s new 2026 Wyoming Counts Kids Data Book, according to a Wyoming Tribune Eagle article.

UW President Shane Reeves spoke at the Boys & Girls Clubs of Central Wyoming’s 28th annual awards and recognition breakfast, according to Oil City News.

Modern Campground reported that the national Outdoor Recreation Roundtable has released policy recommendations aimed at strengthening the 5.2 million Americans whose jobs are powered by outdoor recreation, outlining priorities for state and federal policymakers in a new report titled “Building a Thriving Workforce for America.” In that article, Dan McCoy, director of UW’s Jay Kemmerer WORTH Institute, calls for dedicated research funding on wages, seasonality and skill gaps in that workforce sector.

The Sheridan Press published UW’s release about a generous gift from Martha Brown Wyrsch that establishes the Wyrsch Family Deanship in the UW Honors College.

The Laramie Boomerang picked up UW’s release about four F-35 fighter jets from the Alabama Air National Guard’s 100th Fighter Squadron conducting a flyover of War Memorial Stadium before the Cowboys’ home opener against Northern Colorado.