Tags: faculty

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UGA receives $15.75M to combat human trafficking

Human trafficking involves recruitment, harboring or transporting people into a situation of exploitation through the use of violence, deception or coercion and forcing victims to work against their will. A process of enslavement,  trafficking affects millions of men, women, and children – including in the United States. It can happen in any community and victims can be any age, race, gender, or nationality, and now…

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Tackling youth vaping with neuroscience

Jiaying Liu and Lawrence Sweet are working to produce scientific data to inform the public about vaping products and to guide efforts toward enacting bans on flavored products: Liu, assistant professor of communication studies, and Sweet, professor of psychology and director of the Clinical Neuroscience Laboratory, have teamed up to investigate vaping among young adults. Liu secured internal grant funding through the Office…

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22-member faculty team to study the history of slavery at UGA

The University of Georgia has awarded a grant to a 22-member UGA academic team to study the history of slavery at UGA from the institution’s founding in 1785 until the end of the Civil War in 1865. The research team—which spans multiple schools, colleges and other units across the university—will conduct a multidisciplinary study of enslaved African Americans who labored on the UGA campus. In September, the team submitted a proposal, which was…

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Scientists identify mechanism of coastal water flow

Great new work by marine scientists Patricia Medeiros, Caitlin Amos and Renato Castelao published in Nature: The 200-mile zone that hugs the curvature of the coast bursts with life, from phytoplankton to whales. Out in the open ocean, this activity is comparatively diminished. Understanding how coastal water is moved offshore fertilizing the open ocean is a long-standing goal of ocean scientists. Now, a new study from…

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Spotlight on the Arts 2019

The performance and exhibition offerings continue to reach ever-higher in this, the eighth annual Spotlight on the Arts Festival, Nov. 6-17: The creative work presented over the 12-day festival highlights the breadth of arts offerings on campus, and it includes performances and exhibitions by UGA faculty and students as well as visiting artists from around the world. Many of the events are free or discounted for UGA students, and the annual…

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'By Our Hands' from The Georgia Incarceration Performance Project

UGA Theatre presents By Our Hands from The Georgia Incarceration Performance Project, directed by Amma Y. Ghartey-Tagoe Kootin, Emily Sahakian, Julie B. Johnson and Keith Bolden, a first-of-its-kind, cross-institutional collaboration between faculty, students and alumni at the University of Georgia and Spelman College of Atlanta and Common Good Atlanta, an organization that teaches college-level courses in prisons across Georgia:…

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Noted and Quoted, October 2019

Franklin faculty contributed popular press articles about issues of the day and had their research reported around the world. A sample from over the past month: The grimy history of the Attorney General’s Office, associate professor of history Stephen Mihm in his regular column at Bloomberg Here’s your answer when someone asks “How can it be so cold if there’s global warming?”  Georgia Athletic Association…

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Kudos, October 2019

Fantastic news about faculty, staff and students inside and beyond the classroom over the last month: Distinguished Research Professor of Geography Andy Herod was recently re-appointed by Governor Kemp to the State's Complete Count Committee for the 2020 Census, by Executive Order in September. Herod had previously been appointed to the Committee by Governor Deal Barbara McCaskill, Professor of English and Associate Academic…

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Ancient marine molecules, bursting from the sea

Waves crash in the ocean and inject tiny particles into the air, which contain molecules of organic carbon more than 5,000 years old. New research published in Science Advances by Steven Beaupré of Stony Brook University’s School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences (SoMAS) and a national team of scientists, helps to solve a long-standing mystery about what finally happens to these ancient marine…

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Study provides framework for 1 billion years of green plant evolution

Gene sequences for more than 1,100 plant species have been released by an international consortium of nearly 200 plant scientists, the culmination of a nine-year research project. The One Thousand Plant Transcriptomes Initiative (1KP) is a global collaboration to examine the diversification of plant species, genes and genomes across the more than 1 billion-year history of green plants dating back to the ancestors of flowering…

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Viral Maps: when content catches on

When you think about content going viral, maps don’t typically come to mind, but “The Eclipse: Smothered and Covered,” a map with the 2017 eclipse path of totality overlaid with the best Waffle House locations for viewing, did just that. The map was created by University of Georgia assistant professor of geography Jerry Shannon. After being retweeted by Waffle House, Shannon’s map quickly went viral. Almost 200,000 people viewed the tweet, and…

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Plant physiology and river flooding

Earth system scientists have identified another culprit (other than rain) that causes a river to overflow its banks: leafy plants. In a study published today in Nature Climate Change, the UCI researchers describe the emerging role of ecophysiology in riparian flooding. As an adaptation to an overabundance of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, trees, plants and grasses constrict their stomatal pores to regulate the amount of…

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Sharing the Knowledge: NIH Award Supports Expanded Genomics Data Resource

A team led by scientists at the University of Pennsylvania and University of Georgia provides thousands of researchers around the world with access to the Eukaryotic Pathogen Genomics Database (EuPathDB.org), a collection of resources for analyzing large-scale datasets associated with microbial pathogens. These include the parasites responsible for malaria, sleeping sickness, and toxoplasmosis; the fungi responsible for thrush, aspergillosis and…

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New research traces the spread of Neolithic practices into Europe

The spread of agriculture from the Near East and Fertile Crescent through Turkey and into Europe around 10,000 years ago was a complex and multifaceted process, one that archaeologists are trying to understand using one of the latest scientific techniques: stable isotope analysis.  A new paper published in the journal PLOS One by Suzanne Pilaar Birch, assistant professor of geography and anthropology at the University of Georgia, and…

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ARCO, Faculty Artist Series, and Faculty Concert this week at Hodgson

Hodgson School of Music ensembles and solo performers offer a strong week of concert opportunities for the campus community, beginning tonight with the ARCO Chamber Orchestra at 7:30 p.m. in Hodgson Concert Hall: The opening program is the Concerto in D minor for Two Violins and Orchestra by Bach. It will be performed by Regents Professor Levon Ambartsumian, who also is Franklin Professor of Violin and artistic director of…

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UGA Theatre presents " She Kills Monsters"

Cue the dragons, demons, and orcs as UGA Theatre presents Qui Nguyen’s “She Kills Monsters,” directed by T. Anthony Marotta, October 3–5, 8–11 at 8 p.m. and October 13 at 2:30 p.m. in the Cellar Theatre of the Fine Arts Building: the core of the story centers on high school teacher Agnes and her quest to find a meaningful connection with her recently-deceased sister Tilly. After a car accident claims the of lives of her family,…

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Gable Distinguished Chair brings focus on Colonial American history to UGA

The University of Georgia welcomes renowned historian and anthropologist James F. Brooks as the inaugural holder of the Carl and Sally Gable Distinguished Chair in Southern Colonial American History. An innovative scholar and teacher, Brooks is author of the prize-winning book Captives and Cousins: Slavery, Kinship and Community in the Southwestern Borderlands, which garnered seven major prizes including the Bancroft, Parkman and…

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Noted and Quoted, September 2019

A few of the top stories featuring the scholarship and expertise of Franklin College faculty members during September: Tiny Albino lizards are the first gene-edited, mutant reptiles, research by associate professor of genetics Doug Menke reported in Newsweek, Courthouse News Service, News Atlas, Science Codex, Earth.com, EcoWatch, Sci-News, The Scientist Magazine   Evacuating for a hurricane…

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Research finds that insulin drug may be used to treat brain tumors

Fascinating new work from colleagues in the UGA Regenerative Bioscience Center. A research team, including faculty from the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, the College of Engineering and associate professor of physics Qun Zhao: has found that a compound molecule used for drug delivery of insulin could be used to treat glioblastoma, an aggressive, usually fatal form of brain cancer. Glioblastoma, also known as…

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GlyGen will integrate glycoscience data to combat pathogens

Glycans, or complex sugars, cover the surfaces of our cells and play a key role in biological processes ranging from interacting with other cells to recognizing and fighting pathogens. A new informatics portal is helping to illuminate the world of glycoscience: UGA partnered with George Washington University to create GlyGen (glygen.org), a glycoscience informatics portal funded by a $10 million grant from the National…

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Symphony Orchestra kicks-off new season

The University of Georgia’s Symphony Orchestra, the Hugh Hodgson School of Music’s premiere orchestra ensemble, will begin the new season with an exciting performance on the newly renovated Hodgson Hall stage. Students will take their chairs to perform challenging repertoire on September 5th in the opening concert of the 2019-2020 Thursday Scholarship Series Season. The concert will open with what has been recorded as the first “concert waltz”…

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Focus on the Faculty: Emily Sahakian

Associate professor of theatre and French Emily Sahakian integrates her work on campus with community partnerships that include a mentorship program at local high schools, an after-school theatre program at a middle school, and workshops at local nonprofit organizations: As part of the Experience UGA program, I worked with high school teacher Ashley Goodrich and Claire Coenen of the Office of Service-Learning to concoct an…

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Noted and Quoted, August 2019

Franklin faculty continue to lead by sharing their expertise on many international issues of the day. A recent sampling: Greenland’s in the middle of a record melting event - Distinguished Research Professor and Franklin College associate dean Thomas Mote quoted in a widely circulated article, Science Alert Academics, sports or both? A personal reflection from an atmospheric scientist - Georgia Athletic Association…

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Kudos, Summer 2019

Franklin College faculty and students continue to shine with distinguished accomplishments, honors, awards, prizes and fellowships. Congratulations and kudos to: Military historian and professor John H. Morrow is the 13th recipient of the Pritzker Military Museum and Library Literature Award for Lifetime Achievement in Military Writing  Professor of geography John Knox will receive the Edward N. Lorenz Teaching…

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Shepherd receives AGU Climate Communications Prize

The American Geophysical Union has awarded its 2019 Climate Communications Prize to Marshall Shepherd, Georgia Athletic Association Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Sciences and Geography at the University of Georgia. The award for recognition of the communications of climate science is among the class of 2019 Union honorees announced August 22. An international nonprofit scientific association with 60,000 members in 137…
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