Skip to main content
Skip to main menu Skip to spotlight region Skip to secondary region Skip to UGA region Skip to Tertiary region Skip to Quaternary region Skip to unit footer

Slideshow

Tags: research

From rankings to renovations of beloved campus buildings to welcoming award-winning new faculty colleagues, a rich cohort of accolades and good news ushered in late fall on campus. A sampling of the terrific stories about our colleagues and alumni: UGA dedicates first phase of Science and Ag Hill modernization  Nathan Lewis, a professor of pediatrics and bioengineering at the University of California San Diego, joined UGA as the new Georgia…
The evolutionary lineage leading to Amborella diverged from all other flowering plant lineages approximately 150 million years ago. In 2013, an international research team co-led by UGA Plant Biology faculty member Jim Leebens-Mack and collaborators announced the newly sequenced genome of the Amborella trichopoda plant became the foundation for comparative analyses of genes tracing back to the origin of flowering plants and earlier.…
According to the most recent impact factor ratings, Gender & Society, co-edited by UGA faculty member Patricia Richards, is ranked #1 among Women’s and Gender Studies journals and — also #1 among sociology journals.   The ranking comes from the Journal Citations Report by Clarivate. The Impact Factor Report provides a measure of how much a given academic journal is cited — the higher the number the better. Gender & Society is 1 of…
Long before there was a Peach State, indigenous communities saw the promise of peaches – originally introduced to North America by Spanish explorers. A new study published in Nature Communications shows that Indigenous political and social networks and land use practices played key roles in the peach’s adoption and dispersal across the continent: The researchers analyzed historical documents that mentioned peaches, such as the travel writings of…
The Franklin College hosted the first-ever faculty research mixer on Nov. 14 at Normal Bar in Athens, bringing together faculty across the university who share research affinities to build multidisciplinary research and teaching teams. The evening featured seven brief research presentations and a social mixer of faculty interested in collaborating on areas related to "Health, Gender, & Equity." "There was an energy  about collaboration…
Pour yourself a cup of ambition and come to life with this fascinating research by Dyllon Glaze and the 9 to 5 movement. Theatre and history come together in a hilarious and inspiring production of "9 to 5: The Musical." Dyllon Glaze, a second-year Theatre and Entertainment & Media Studies major, is not only the Dramaturg for UGA’s fall production of "9 to 5: The Musical" but is also conducting undergraduate research through UGA’s Institute…
A new UGA study suggests the far-reaching benefits omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids may extend to lowering the risks of developing a variety of cancers: The study relied on data from a United Kingdom-based study of over 250,000 people who were followed for more than a decade. Of those participants, almost 30,000 developed some form of cancer during the study period. Some earlier research drew connections between levels of fatty acids and risk of…
In a terrific story combining genome analysis, a love for the hedges and UGA history— a Franklin College faculty member and his students found that the same family of hedges have stood tall for nearly 100 years: Plant biology professor and hedges researcher James Leebens-Mack decided to sequence the genome of the Sanford Stadium hedges. His goal was to combine service-learning with his own areas of research, comparative genome biology and the…
Integrative conservation starts with a paintbrush and glides its way between India’s tiger reserves and its indigenous communities.  Amit Kaushik, a PhD student in the Integrative Conservation and anthropology, is working on tiger conservation in India. He presented his work earlier this month at an Arts Collaborative Conversation at the Lamar Dodd School of Art, "The Gond Art and the Tiger: A Dialogue on Conservation, Displacement, and…
Since 1985, the UGA Center for Geospatial Research has been dedicated to advancing remote sensing, mapping, and geospatial research. Along with the technological changes over that nearly 40 year history, the center's technical capacities have grown to reflect the advanced capabilities of today in environmental remote sensing and GeoAI, photogrammetry, small satellite development, and graduate and undergraduate training. In service of promoting…
The potential of applications using Artificial Intelligence is quickly venturing into the medical field, with implications for patients and practitioners. A new study published in Nature Medicine presents an open-source multimodal vision-language foundation model, BiomedGPT, for various biomedical applications. AI techniques have also demonstrated potential in solving a wide range of biomedical tasks, including radiology interpretation…
A new PBS production WEATHERED: EARTH’S EXTREMES, a six-part docu-series debuts in October on YouTube, and PBS stations (check local listings). In 30-minute episodes, audiences follow host and science communicator Maiya May as she delves into the impacts of climate change and meets with the people inside communities on the frontline of extreme weather events. Throughout the series, Maiya May introduces audiences to scientists and community…
Steven Holland, paleobiologist and expert in stratigraphy, has been selected as the Shellebarger Professor in Geology in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences. The professorship is supported by a gift from Sydney (BSHE ’79) and Jeff (BS ’78, MS ’80) Shellebarger, former president of Chevron’s North American exploration and production operations. Jeff Shellebarger currently serves on the executive committee of the UGA Geology Alumni Board.…
A new report published by the Sentencing Project documents the four million people who are disenfranchised due to felony convictions in the United States. Locked Out 2024 reports these Americans will be unable to vote in the upcoming 2024 election due to felony disenfranchisement laws: Laws in 48 U.S. states ban people with felony convictions from voting. In 2024, an estimated 4 million Americans, representing 1.7% of the voting-age population,…
A new interdisciplinary project at the interface of philosophy, linguistics, cognitive science, and artificial intelligence seeks to explore the complicated relationship between human and machine translation. The project, led by professor of philosophy Yuri Balashov, is supported by an NSF Scholar's Award. "Translation from one language into another is a difficult and cognitively intense process requiring a broad set of linguistic and non-…
Fantastic start to the fall semester, with excellent research stories and expert comment alike finding purchase in media around the world. Great job by Franklin College scholars in a wide range of disciplines, prepared with authority, ready to share. A sample of stories from recent weeks: There might be more than one way to make a planet – The New York Times reports on new research from Cassandra Hall, assistant professor of computational…
A National Science Foundation collaborative project between researchers from the University of Delaware and the University of Georgia to better understand how nutrients, pollutants and organic matter are exchanged between the air and the sea recently conducted a research cruise in the North Atlantic Ocean. The cruise aboard UD’s Research Vessel Hugh R. Sharp to study the sea surface microlayer was designed to better understanding the role it…
Drew Abney, associate professor in the department of psychology, has blended his interests in statistics and engineering to forge a multifaceted psychology research career. Our colleagues in UGA Research Communications share the story of how Abney's journey informs his scholarship: While working on his master’s in education, Abney took a statistics class that, surprisingly, made his passing interest in psychology seem like a possible career…
The CyanoTRACKER project, a collaboration between University of Georgia researchers, collects and integrates community reports, remote sensing data and digital image analytics to detect and differentiate between regular algal blooms and Cyanobacyerial Harmful Algal Blooms (CyanoHABs). As the frequency and magnitude of CyanoHABs have grown, particularly in the summer months, CyanoTRACKER offers accurate, cost-effective, and targeted…
Mattia Pistone, assistant professor of Petrology and Volcanology in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences department of geology will serve as the 2024-2025 Distinguished Lecturer of the Continental Scientific Drilling Division of the Geological Society of America. Director of the MAGMA MIA Laboratory, Pistone is one of the seven PIs leading the ICDP DIVE (Drilling the Ivrea-Verbano zonE) project, and an enthusiastic researcher investigating…
UGA atmospheric sciences alumnus and the Georgia Climate Project have teamed with stakeholders to find solutions to mitigate urban heat islands in Georgia's Garden City: “I was actually really surprised at the urban heat island effect that we found in Augusta,” said Max Appelbaum, UGA masters alum and Wyoming doctoral student. Appelbaum wrote his masters thesis on the urban heat island effect in Augusta while attending the University of Georgia…
Two theories of planet formation have long-dominated astronomy - the first theory, “core accretion,” posits that planets grow slowly from particles of dust ultimately forming pebbles, then boulders, which coalesce to form planets over tens of millions of years.  The second theory – “gravitational instability,” in which planets form quickly from direct collapse of gas and dust, requiring hundreds to thousands of years instead – received new…
Three Franklin College scholars are among five UGA faculty selected to receive 2024 Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) foundation awards from the National Science Foundation for their research and potential as academic role models. Our colleagues in Research Communications share the details: The awardees are assistant professors Melanie Reber (Franklin College of Arts and Sciences Department of Chemistry), Christopher Newton (…
New research from the department of genetics attends to the complex relationship between diet, cholesterol, and disease. While fish oil has long been associated with heart health benefits for some people, the question of whether it's right for everyone with high LDL cholesterol continue to be a point of contention – and the focus of new findings: And a new study from the University of Georgia might encourage a new population to start looking…
Nicholas Foukal, physical oceanographer most recently at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), has joined the Skidaway Institute of Oceanography faculty. Foukal will begin his role as an assistant professor on August 1, 2024. “I am excited to join the faculty at Skidaway and get started,” said Foukal. “In many ways, I will be continuing what I began at WHOI and will keep the positive momentum going that I had built there on the…

Support Franklin College

We appreciate your financial support. Your gift is important to us and helps support critical opportunities for students and faculty alike, including lectures, travel support, and any number of educational events that augment the classroom experience. Click here to learn more about giving.