The search for new knowledge is one of the most challenging activities of humankind. We search for an understanding of the world around us, and this inevitably leads to remarkable progress in how we live. Discovery drives us, and today this requires a rapidly growing interplay between all the scientific disciplines.

For this reason, and with widespread support from faculty, staff, and students, effective October 4, 2010, the University established the College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences (CMNS) by integrating the former colleges of Chemical and Life Sciences (CLFS) and Computer Mathematical and Physical Sciences (CMPS). This integration will facilitate and encourage the rapid development of collaborations among faculty from across the two former colleges.

As well as six research institutes, our integrated college includes the following departments: Astronomy, Atmospheric and Oceanic Science, Biology, Cell Biology and Molecular Genetics, Chemistry and Biochemistry, Computer Science, Entomology, Geology, Mathematics, and Physics.

The faculty in the College are making major advances across the full range of our disciplines. Our astronomers probe the origin of the universe with one of the world's premier radio observatories, and have just discovered water on the moon. The first ever teleportation of information between atoms just happened in our physics laboratories and computer scientists are developing the principles for guaranteed security and privacy in information systems.

Bioscience is emerging as a key area in almost all College disciplines. Entomologists are learning how climate change affects the behavior of insects and earth science faculty are coupling physical and biosphere data to predict that change. Geochemists are discovering how our planet evolved to support life, and biologists and entomologists are discovering how evolutionary processes have operated in living organisms. Our biologists have learned how human generated sound affects aquatic organisms, and cell biologists and computer scientists use advanced genomics to study disease and host-pathogen interactions. Mathematicians are modeling the spread of AIDS while astronomers are searching for habitable exoplanets.

Nationally recognized for education and research, many major programs in the College of Computer, Mathematical and Natural Sciences are ranked among the top 10 public research universities in the nation. The College offers every student a high-quality, innovative and cross-disciplinary educational experience, and a degree that commands respect around the world. Strongly committed to making studies in the sciences available to all, the College actively encourages and supports the recruitment and retention of women and minorities.

College students have the opportunity of working closely with first-class faculty in state-of-the-art labs both on and off campus on some of the most exciting problems of modern science, reflecting the evolving nature of our disciplines to the rapidly changing world of science and mathematics. Students with degrees in CMNS disciplines have a wide variety of rewarding career options. Many continue on to graduate school; others find challenging positions in high tech industry or federal laboratories, and some join the professions: such as medicine, teaching, and law.

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