Tags: faculty

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Thomas to become Dean of Arts and Sciences at UAB

In her 27-year UGA career, Thomas has distinguished herself as an outstanding classroom teacher, graduate student mentor, and researcher. Her work on the psychology of workplace diversity has gained national attention, and she is an elected fellow of the American Psychological Association, the Society for Industrial-Organizational Psychology, and the Society for the Psychological Study of Culture, Ethnicity and Race. Thomas has also held several…

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UGA microbiology postdoc receives Life Sciences Research Foundation Fellowship

John Ciemniecki, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Georgia, has been awarded a fellowship from the Life Sciences Research Foundation.  The Life Sciences Research Foundation (LSRF) is a non-profit organization that supports early-career investigators by connecting them with philanthropic donors. Less than 5% of applicants receive a fellowship, which will support Ciemniecki’s salary and research expenses for three years…

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Lyall among new SEC leadership fellows

Neil Lyall, associate dean for physical and mathematical sciences and professor of mathematics in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, is one of four accomplished University of Georgia faculty members named as Fellows of the 2025-2026 Southeastern Conference Academic Leadership Development Program: The program, which launched in 2007, seeks to prepare campus leaders for executive careers in higher education. Fellows are selected through a…

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Art professor works to help 'Restore the Night Sky'

Oxford American features UGA art faculty member Marni Shindelman, whose work investigates the impacts of ambient LED lighting on our views of the night sky – and our perceptions of the light sources. Associate Professor in the Lamar Dodd School of Art at the University of Georgia where she heads the photography area, Shindelman brings a keen eye to the effects of a networked world, connecting the invisible to actual sites, anchoring the…

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Ancient bald cypress trees archive climate secrets, future clues

A new research study led by UGA anthropology alumna Katherine Napora (Ph.D. '21) reveals how dramatic shifts in climate can have long-lasting effects on even the toughest, most iconic trees – and offers a glimpse into the powerful forces that shape our natural world. Researchers from Florida Atlantic University and the UGA Museum of Natural History studied bald cypress trees from a buried subfossil deposit at the mouth of the Altamaha River near…

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Professor brings American history into view through art

Museum studies is one of the most popular humanities fields, situating visual art within the cultural and historical contexts in which it emerges. Franklin College of Arts and Sciences assistant professor Tracey Johnson takes the disciplines one step further, showing how art as an educational tool influences culture and history.  "The popular front and cultural front periods of the 1930's influenced the pedagogy of Harlem Renaissance-…

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Childhood adversity leads to health problems later in life

UGA and the Franklin College welcome back alumna Sierra Carter (PhD, '16, clinical psychology), who will join the Department of Psychology faculty and become the next associate director of Center for Family Research in August. Carter is co-author of a new study that suggests growing up with negative events and in dangerous communities in early adolescence can alter an entire lifetime, particularly for Black men and women. “Things that happen to…

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Higher CO2 levels leading plants to contribute to warmer temperatures

One of the elevated dangers of global climate change is discoveries outside the boundaries of expected changes – whether temperature, sea level and other predicted results of higher atmospheric carbon concentrations. UGA scientists now have added plants to net contributors to rising global temperatures. The scientists detail the findings in a study published in the Nature journal Climate and Atmospheric Science documenting the impact of…

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UGA partners with Rowen on climate resilience

The University of Georgia Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences and the College of Engineering in partnership with the Rowen Foundation has launched a two-year Hydrometeorology and Land Cover Change Observational Study (HALOS) that will begin this summer.  HALOS will generate critical baseline data to monitor how large-scale development impacts local weather, geography and watershed…

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UGA's Perdisci receives Amazon Research Award

Roberto Perdisci, Patty and D.R. Grimes Distinguished Professor of Computer Science and Director of the UGA Institute of Cybersecurity and Privacy, was selected as a recipient of an Amazon Research Award.   Amazon Research Awards (ARA) provide unrestricted funds and AWS Promotional Credits to academic researchers investigating various research topics in multiple disciplines. This cycle, ARA announced 73 award recipients who represent 46…

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Genetics professor puts UGA on the corn map

A career of investigation and groundbreaking discovery in maize genetics has helped Kelly Dawe, Distinguished Research Professor in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, reshape how researchers understand—and improve—a vital crop. Through the rich genetic diversity of corn, Dawe has unlocked pathways to long-sought breakthroughs with cross-scale impacts in genetics, cell biology and genome evolution. Our colleagues in Research…

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Plates, spinning, fixed crater origins on Vesta

Vesta, one of the largest bodies in the asteroid belt, has long occupied human imagination – from Roman mythology to 20th century science fiction.  The protoplanet's Divalia Fossae, massive surface troughs comparable in size to the Grand Canyon, encircle two-thirds of Vesta's equator. Rather than erosion, these deep basins were the result of large meteorite impacts that changed the asteroid’s gravitational field which, in turn, affected…

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Computing faculty member receives UGA's first Google Research Scholar Award

Ninghao Liu, assistant professor in the UGA School of Computing, is UGA’s first Google Research Scholar Award recipient.Liu's proposal, "Enhancing Medical Knowledge in Multimodal Foundation Models through Self-Synthesized Data," was awarded $60,000 by the Google Research Scholar program after review by several teams of Google engineers and researchers. "The project explores a new framework to enhance medical understanding in multi-modality AI…

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New study documents declining health of coastal marshes

Scientists from Colorado State University, Georgia Southern, the University of Georgia and the University of Texas at Austin developed a model to provide an early warning and opportunity to protect an ecosystem that serves as the first line of defense against coastal flooding. By using satellite observations, the model identified vulnerable marshes along Georgia’s coast by locating declining root production – a harbinger of marsh failure. The…

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UGA's Song receives Webb Telescope support to observe low-mass stars

Inseok Song, associate professor of astronomy in the University of Georgia Franklin College of Arts and Sciences department of physics and astronomy, has revived a grant from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). Song's JWST program, "JWST Mid-IR Observations of Warm Debris Disks around Nearby M-dwarfs", will observe 19 M-type stars, the lowest mass stars that are the most common in the Universe.  "M-dwarf stars are the most common type of…

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Prashant Doshi appointed Institute for Artificial Intelligence director

A distinguished scholar and prominent researcher with more than two decades of experience in the field of artificial intelligence, Prashant Doshi has been appointed the inaugural executive director of the Institute for Artificial Intelligence (IAI) at the University of Georgia following a national search: The Institute for Artificial Intelligence is an interdepartmental research and instructional unit jointly supported by the Office of the…

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The Spirit of Socialism by Joseph Kellner

A new book by Joseph Kellner, assistant professor in the department of history, tells the complicated life story of Soviet Communism.  The Spirit of Socialism, published this week by Cornell University Press, presents the powerful story of Soviet collapse in all its rich complexity: The Spirit of Socialism is a cultural history of the Soviet collapse. It examines the millions of Soviet people who, during the cascading crises of the collapse…

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UGA's Kurup on the PATH to stop malaria

UGA faculty member But Samarchith “Sam” Kurup is determined to strengthen  immune defenses against malaria. Now, thanks to a prestigious Investigators in Pathogenesis of Infectious Disease (PATH) award from the Burroughs Wellcome Fund, his lab is one step closer. Burroughs Wellcome recently announced its 2025 cohort of eight innovative scientists. Kurup is the first University of Georgia faculty member to receive this highly competitive…

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Undersea plumes super-charge carbon cycling, offer potential biotech breakthroughs

The complex and dynamic microbial communities and microbially-mediated processes that occur in the ocean help stabilize the earth's climate.  Far below the ocean's surface, along the seafloor, hydrothermal vents release heat and chemicals into the deep water that fuel vibrant, breathtaking ecosystems. The microbial communities associated with hydrothermal vents are hot spots of biological production in the deep sea. In shallow waters and…

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NIH funding supports ‘One Health’ model to fight Chagas disease

Funded by a $3 million grant from the National Institutes of Health, researchers at the University of Georgia and Texas A&M are using improved detection and treatment methods to understand Chagas disease – a serious, often overlooked illness affecting both dogs and humans.  Rick Tarleton, UGA Athletic Association Distinguished Professor, will co-lead a new project focused on strategies to detect, treat and monitor treatment outcomes in…

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Connecting earth sciences to policy and decision making

An emerging international leader in volcanology, Franklin College faculty member Mattia Pistone serves as a principal investigator on research projects underway in Sicily, Ecuador, the Arctic poles, and the Italian Alps.  For Pistone, assistant professor of petrology and volcanology in the Department of Geology, drilling into the Earth to understand the past and future of its processes is a mission he takes seriously – and passion he shares…

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Social and behavioral sciences research notch top 10 ranking

Research production in psychology, sociology and communications continues to secure UGA's place among the nation’s top research institutions. According to the 2025 College and University Rankings for Federal Social and Behavioral Science R&D Funding, released by the Consortium of Social Science Associations (COSSA), UGA ranks 10th nationally, with $37.3 million in federal funding for research in these fields during fiscal year 2023. This…

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Psychology goes global: UGA’s study abroad transforms students and faculty

The University of Georgia Franklin College of Arts and Sciences Department of Psychology offers transformative study abroad programs that immerse students and faculty in diverse cultures, fostering personal growth, academic enrichment, and global perspectives. From Tanzania’s savannas to Italy’s historic hills, these experiences blend psychology with cultural exploration, leaving lasting impacts on participants’ academic and career paths. We…

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Radiocarbon dating techniques re-setting Indigenous histories

A session organized by UGA faculty at the Society for American Archaeology Meetings in early May discussed the ways recent innovations in radiocarbon dating are rewriting the history of Indigenous sites.  Many of these new histories are challenging conventional wisdom about Indigenous persistence, or the lack thereof, in the face of European contact, researchers reported during a session co-organized by Jennifer Birch, professor of…

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High blood pressure linked to degenerative diseases in Black Americans

A new research study found that Black Americans diagnosed with diabetes and hypertension in midlife had significantly higher levels of a dementia-related biomarker more than a decade later. The study followed more than 250 participants with high blood pressure, diabetes or both conditions. The researchers found that while one diagnosis alone did not indicate a dramatic neurological effect, having both led to striking results: “This matters. This…
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