News from the Chronicles - October 2016

graphic over sheet music
Thursday Scholarship Series with Mozart, Puccini

The UGA Opera Theatre returns to Hodgson Concert Hall for the Thursday Scholarship Series, performing two one-act comic operas—Mozart's "The Impresario" and Puccini's "Gianni Schicchi"—in two performances on October 20 and 21 at 7:30 p.m.  The Opera Theatre will combine with the UGA Symphony Orchestra to stage these opera masterpieces, semi-staged with English supertitles. This is the first time the Hugh Hodgson School…

graphic illustration with microscope, thespian
STEM education and the humanities

Scientific American weighs in on the tendency to prioritize STEM disciplines over the humanities and how Voltaire and Camus have an important role to play, especially in a high-tech future: Promoting science and technology education to the exclusion of the humanities may seem like a good idea, but it is deeply misguided. Scientific American has always been an ardent supporter of teaching STEM: science, technology, engineering and…

man with plants
Focus on the Faculty: Jim Leebens-Mack

Professor of plant biology and Creative Research Medal winner Jim Leebens-Mack investigates the history of plant life on our planet while being an active member of the local community. His laboratory compares genome sequences to better understand the genetic basis of biological innovations that are of great practical importance for horticulture and agriculture: What are your favorite courses and why? I regularly co-teach three courses…

colored dots representing data
$1.3m NIH grant to develop statistical tools for disease research

Ping Ma, professor in the department of statistics, has been awarded $1.3 million in funding from the National Institutes of Health to develop statistical tools to further clarify the causes of many diseases-including cancer, heart disease and aging-related illnesses. Over four years, Ma and his team of researchers will look at something known as small RNAs, hoping to unravel their regulatory role on abnormal variations in genetic transcription…

climate statistics
Noted and Quoted, October 2016

New research, stormy weather and narcissism were some of the headlines featuring Franklin faculty during October, among many others. A sampling of the many media stories: Could You Spell that for Me, Please? Psychology professor W. Keith Campbell quoted in a San Diego State University News story on unique American bay names Can familiarity build trust? A white cop moves into black Atlanta neighborhood. Geography professor Steven Holloway quoted…

four people outside
Kudos, October 2016

Congratulations to these outstanding faculty, students and alumni on their recent accomplishments: Congratulations to former PhD Student, Marcus Williams of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Forest Service, who had the 2nd of his PhD dissertation manuscripts at UGA accepted for publication in the scholarly journal, Photogrammetric Engineering & Remote Sensing Journal. The paper, “Mapping the Spatio-temporal Evolution of…

students sitting ton the ground in front of brick building
Fall Break

Whether you are a student, faculty or staff member, the formula for academic excellence each and every semester is made up of unequal parts - study, preparation, classwork, rest, homework, effort, and the ability to take advantage of some downtime and recharge. This brings us to the Fall Break today - short and sweet, but very necessary for everyone. The intensity and pressure felt by so many needs a leavening agent in the form of a pause. A…

landscape with inset photos
Global Land Project - Future Earth

The third Open Science Meeting of the Global Land Project (GLP 3rd OSM 2016), was held last week at the China National Convention Center in Beijing. The conference, aimed at bringing together the Land System Science community to present, discuss and foster progress towards a sustainable land use future, included the presentation of a working paper (with a UGA anthropology faculty contributor) on lessons learned on biofuel…

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