Tags: faculty

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UGA PowWow 2022

Native American students made history on November 11, 2022, hosting the first-ever PowWow on UGA grounds since the school's charter in 1785. The Native American Student Association (NASA) is the smallest and youngest student organization at UGA, yet their event played host to an audience of more than 100 people. The PowWow was originally scheduled to be held on Reed Field and had to be moved to Tate Theater due to rain,…

graphic illustration of house without roof or exterior walls
Smart home hubs leave users vulnerable to hackers

Smart technology claims to make our lives easier. You can turn on your lights, lock your front door remotely and even adjust your thermostat with the click of a button. But new research from the University of Georgia suggests that convenience potentially comes at a cost—your personal security. The study focused on smart home hubs, the centralized device that enables you to control all your smart devices in one easy spot. These…

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UGA welcomed academic, industry partners for Georgia Statistics Day

Faculty members, students and visitors gathered for the 2022 Georgia Statistics Day (GSD) hosted by the department of statistics. The GSD is an annual event designed to promote interdisciplinary statistics research among the three flagship academic institutions in Georgia – the University of Georgia, Georgia Institute of Technology, and Emory University.  UGA hosted the inaugural GSD in 2015 to serve as a platform for bringing together…

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Stepanova brings lifetime of passion to the piano

Liza Stepanova’s story begins with a find at a Russian antique store. The find was an antique 19th-century piano, complete with built-in candleholders and engravings of famous composers. The finder was Stepanova’s grandmother, a World War II survivor who loved piano but whose circumstances had not allowed her to pursue music. Stepanova was instantly taken with the piano as a young child, and her family arranged for her to have lessons near…

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Johnson-Bailey receives inaugural Centennial Professorship

University of Georgia professor Juanita Johnson-Bailey was announced at the first recipient of the Centennial Professorship, an endowed professorship for a Women’s Studies faculty member in recognition of the centennial anniversary of women's education at UGA.  Founded in 1977, the Institute for Women’s Studies at UGA is one of the senior Women’s Studies programs in the United States. It also holds the distinction of being the first…

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Locked Out: Sentencing Project 2022 report

New research by the Sentencing Project, a nonprofit organization that advocates for restoration of voting rights for people with prior felony convictions, estimates that 2% of the voting age population in the United States will be ineligible to cast ballots during this year's midterm elections due to state laws banning people with felony convictions from voting. The Sentencing Project advocates for effective and humane responses…

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New book focuses on global land governance

Should Africa’s land be owned? Westerners have a crucial blind spot when it comes to engaging with other landholding systems. Private, exclusive title backed by statutory law is sacrosanct in the West, and has been sold to the rest of the world on our behalf through international development agencies such as USAID and the World Bank.  Many benefits are said to flow from this outside intervention in African land relations, from greater…

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Anthropology study on land use, herding in Bronze Age Cyprus

New research findings, the first comprehensive study of stable isotopes from both animal and plant remains on the island of Cyprus, expand the archaeological understanding of the dynamics of landscape management in Cyprus during the development of social complexity that led to the first cities on the Mediterranean island The new study, led by UGA associate professor Suzanne E. Pilaar Birch with colleagues Patricia Fall, Steven Falconer, and…

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Ruppersburg receives Lindberg literary award

Congratulations to Emeritus Professor of English, former associate dean and great friend of the Franklin College Hugh Ruppersburg, who received the 2022 Stanley W. Lindberg Award Oct. 11 in Athens. The Lindberg Award is presented to persons who contribute to the literary history of Georgia with previous recipients including Pat Conroy, Marion Montgomery, Tina McElroy Ansa and Terry Kay. Lindberg was editor of The Georgia Review from 1977…

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The intersection of culture, biology in Hispanic youth development

The Hispanic community has been steadily growing in Georgia for many years, yet despite its increasing visibility, this community continues to be underrepresented in research around families and human development. Our colleagues in Research Communications share the story:   For Cynthia Suveg, this was a call to action. Suveg, professor of psychology in UGA’s Clinical Doctoral Program, has long been interested in bridging this research…

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Art Education Research Symposium

UGA and the Franklin College welcome guests and presenters to the 2022 Art Education Research Institute Annual Symposium Oct. 27-29 at the Lamar Dodd School of Art: The Art Education Research Institute (AERI) supports critical, systematic, empirical, and theoretical research and scholarship, which addresses key intellectual and practical issues in the field of art education.  AERI seeks to promote a broad range of rigorous research…

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Noted and Quoted, October 2022

From tempests in the physical world to the discovery of an ancient canal to the reintroduction of heritage apple crops, expertise from and research by Franklin faculty was present in media around the globe. A same of stories over the past month:    As moms return to the office, companies need to demonstrate empathy – Malissa A. Clark, associate professor of psychology, quoted at Indeed Historic storm surge. Record flooding.…

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Classics professor documents changing climate

UGA's Jordan Pickett recently published findings which reveal that environmental and climatic changes in the eastern Mediterranean were part of a “perfect storm” that led to widespread settlement abandonment or transformation in the early medieval period, roughly 1,500 years ago. This new body of research, which challenges decades of scholarly work, provides modern humans with a case study for how our ancestors adapted creatively…

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Special issue focuses on growth of archeological science

Suzanne Pilaar Birch, associate professor of anthropology, served as co-editor of a special issue published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences featuring articles outlining the state of the art in archeological science. A collection of articles from the Recent Advances in Archaeological Science Techniques Special Feature explores developments in archaeological science, highlighting advancements in radiometric…

photo of ground with uncovered skeletons of humans and horse
Research opens up new revelations about Ancient Greece

Thanks to trade and colonization, 1st millennium BCE Mediterranean was characterized by an unprecedented increase human mobility. New anthropology research co-led by the University of Georgia on the diverse genetic origins of the Classical period Greek army reveals a broad mix of ethnic identity within Greece and throughout the region – as well as the use of mercenaries in battle. Accounts by ancient historians Herodotus and Diodorus…

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Genetics professor receives two NIH awards

University of Georgia researcher Pengpeng Bi received a pair of National Institutes of Health grants in September: a Maximizing Investigators' Research Award (MIRA, 2022–2027) and an Exploratory/Developmental Research Grant Award (R21, 2022–2024). The $2.3 million awards will support efforts to uncover the molecular mechanism of human muscle development and homeostasis. The MIRA is a funding mechanism to provide support for a program of…

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Joye selected for Walsh Award for Ocean Exploration

University of Georgia oceanographer Samantha Joye has been awarded the 2022 Captain Don Walsh Award for Ocean Exploration. Awarded jointly by the Marine Technology Society and the Society for Underwater Technology, the award is named for American oceanographer and marine policy specialist Capt. Don Walsh, who co-piloted the bathyscaph Trieste when it made its daunting record descent on Jan. 23, 1960, into the deepest point of the world…

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UGA’s Guggenheim fellows - the history trio

What does it take to become a Guggenheim fellow? A big idea. Boldness coupled with humility. A keen awareness of just how much time the project will require. And an unwavering curiosity about what it means to be a citizen of our world. Since 2019, the Department of History in UGA’s Franklin College of Arts and Sciences has seen three faculty members awarded fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.…

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Noted and quoted, September 2022

A new naming system for microbes, Greenland's zombie ice, a Finnish scholar on a American history, and tributes to a beloved campus colleague and friend lead Franklin College media mentions and experts During September: Greenland ‘zombie ice’ an ominous warning for future, new study finds – Tom Mote, Distinguished research Professor of geography and associate dean, quoted at Yahoo! News Jackson’s water crisis – A stark warning about…

graphic shape of Georgia and text
2022 State of the Public’s Health Conference

Convening the public health workforce, policymakers, academia, community-based organizations, and others passionate about improving the public’s health, the State of the Public’s Health Conference aims to drive meaningful, solutions-oriented discussion to advance the health of all Georgians. Thursday, October 27, 2022 UGA Center for Continuing Education & Hotel Now in its 11th year, the conference will explore approaches to tackle the most…

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Correcting peers is key in small-group learning

Collaborative group work is increasingly prioritized across higher education, particularly in the life sciences and STEM-related fields. But how students communicate within these smaller groups is key to their success. New research from the University of Georgia suggests that students who understand what they do and do not know, and who are willing to ask for clarification and correct misinformation in the group, are more successful in…

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New therapy shows promise for stem cell stroke treatment

A new combination therapy developed at the University of Georgia’s Regenerative Bioscience Center (RBC) has shown promising results in models of ischemic stroke, or strokes caused by blood clots, significantly reducing disability within a three-month period. Building on more than a decade of work using pig models for stroke research and induced pluripotent stem cell-derived neural stem cells (iNSCs), Professor Franklin West and a research team…

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Kudos, September 2022

New rankings, art exhibitions, awards and grants highlight recent achievements of colleagues from across the Franklin College: The University of Georgia has been ranked 10th on the latest list of Top Public Universities in the U.S. by the rankings platform Niche UGA Skidaway Institute of Oceanography director Clark Alexander, professor in the department of marine sciences, was voted the 2022-23 president-elect of the Southern…

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Cellular biology researcher uncovers humans’ natural weapon against malaria

Parasitologist Samarchith “Sam” Kurup has been awarded a five-year National Institutes of Health grant to study the natural immune response to the Plasmodium parasite in liver cells, with designs on uncovering how the human immune system naturally fights malaria in the liver stage will lead to an effective malaria vaccine. Our colleagues in the Office of research share the story: Malaria is one of the most studied parasitic…

two photos of men, at right with piano
Duo opens Faculty Recital Series

Michael Heald and Anatoly Sheludyakov will present a recital of violin and piano music at the Ramsey Concert Hall in the Performing Arts Center on Monday, Sept.19, at 7:30 pm. This is part of the Hugh Hodgson School of Music’s Faculty Recital Series. They will perform sonatas by Mozart, Amy Beach, and Edward Elgar. Audiences may be less familiar with the works of Beach and Elgar, but they are both wonderful examples of…
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