Tags: research

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Databases to help cure diseases

Jessica Kissinger is using her expertise in biology and big data to help other scientists. Today, the University of Georgia professor not only studies deadly pathogens like malaria and Cryptosporidium (a waterborne parasite), but also is a driving force behind worldwide, groundbreaking collaborations on novel databases. During her time at UGA, she has received nearly $40 million in federal and private grants and contracts. These databases can…

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Shepherd wins SEC Faculty Achievement Award

J. Marshall Shepherd, the Georgia Athletic Association Distinguished Professor of Geography and Atmospheric Sciences in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, has been named winner of the 2022 SEC Faculty Achievement Award for the University of Georgia, the SEC announced on Wednesday. A leading international weather-climate expert, Shepherd is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering and American…

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Get moving! (Even just a little)

New research from the University of Georgia shows that physical activity could help protect your cognitive abilities as you age. And it doesn’t have to be intense exercise to make an impact. “This finding isn’t saying, ‘If you’re older, you need to go out there and start running marathons,’” said Marissa Gogniat, lead author of the study and a recent doctoral graduate in psychology from the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences. “This is…

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UGA Skidaway Institute Hawaii research resumes

After a pandemic-induced delay of nearly two years, scientists at the University of Georgia Skidaway Institute of Oceanography have started their 4-year research project to study how dust in the atmosphere is deposited in the ocean and how that affects chemical and biological processes there. The research team of [department of marine sciences faculty] Clifton Buck, Daniel Ohnemus and Christopher Marsay had originally planned to begin…

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Noted and Quoted, February 2022

A month with heavy traffic in current events means Franklin faculty were broadly visible in media around the world. Expert insights plus new research findings lead our news highlight for February – a sample: With $900K Falcons grant, Georgia Organics revamps food insecurity fight – associate professor of geography Jerry Shannon quoted by the AJC Quantum computing 2.0: How a UGA physicist builds on a century of knowledge to…

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When pollen comes of age

New research from the University of Georgia has determined when pollen comes of age and begins expressing its own genome, a major life cycle transition in plants. Each grain of pollen is actually its own multicellular organism – with two to 40 cells, depending on the species. Pollen expresses its own genome and is genetically distinct from its parent plant. That means pollen grains from a single flower can have different traits and…

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Learning in the lab can continue at a distance

As most of the world came to a halt at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers were trying to find a way to engage students through research at a distance. University of Georgia professor of biochemistry and molecular biology Erin Dolan and her research team carried out a study to appraise the remote programs that grew from this challenge. The study evaluated 23 programs at colleges, universities, and research institutions…

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Claire Bunn named Gates Cambridge Scholar

University of Georgia senior Claire Bunn of Marion, Arkansas, will continue her studies in lung biology this fall as one of 23 Americans selected for the 2022 class of Gates Cambridge Scholars. The scholarship fully funds postgraduate study and research in any subject at the University of Cambridge in England. Bunn is UGA’s ninth Gates Cambridge Scholar in the program’s 21-year history. The scholarship, which recognizes intellectually…

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Agricultural fungicides may be driving resistance

New research from the University of Georgia has shown, for the first time, that compounds used to fight fungal diseases in plants are causing resistance to antifungal medications used to treat people. The study focused on Aspergillus fumigatus, the fungus that causes aspergillosis, a disease that causes life-threatening infections in 300,000 people globally each year. Published in G3: Genes, Genomes, Genetics, the study …

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Palmer earns prestigious NEH Fellowship

Jennifer Palmer, associate professor of history, has been awarded a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities for 2022. The award was announced in January and will provide course release for a full academic year. Seventy-three fellowships were awarded by the NEH this year, among 208 grants worth $24.7 million for humanities scholarship and programming across the country: Palmer will use the fellowship for…

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Studying the impact of language on identity

Shannon Rodriguez studies a dialect of English spoken by Latinos born in Georgia, a particular blend of Southern drawl, clipped Latino vowels and a more general mainstream American accent. Speakers pull features from each to emphasize different parts of their identity. In January, she presented her dissertation on the topic “Latino English in Georgia:  a sociophonetic analysis of ethnicity and identity” to the board of regents. The…

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How Black science majors succeed

University of Georgia life science and education researchers investigated the stories behind one of the most successful groups of science majors on campus: Black undergraduate students. Despite an array of additional challenges beyond their coursework, Black science majors are able to complete their science degree programs. Black students persist at a higher rate than any other racial or ethnic subgroup on campus for many of the science majors…

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Kissinger, Yager elected as AAAS Fellows

Jessica Kissinger, Distinguished Research Professor of genetics, and Patricia Yager, professor of marine sciences, are among three UGA faculty named Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In a tradition stretching back to 1874, these individuals are elected annually by the AAAS Council for their extraordinary achievements leading to the advancement of science. Fellows must have been AAAS members for at…

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Local data: Athens Wellbeing Project

When the novel coronavirus pandemic struck in 2020, it delivered an array of unforeseen hardships including shutdowns, unemployment and overburdened hospitals in communities across the world. Athens-Clarke County, however, had a head start in reacting to its community’s needs, thanks to an ongoing research project from the University of Georgia’s College of Public Health. The Athens Wellbeing Project (AWP), which surveyed local…

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Noted and Quoted, January 2022

A variety of articles and columns, quoting or authored by Franklin Faculty members at the turn of the new year. A recent sample of insights and expertise: Photos, other mementos discovered hundreds of miles away after tornadoes – John Knox, professor of geography, quoted by KMOX in St. Louis, via Audacy Gerald Ford vowed to whip inflation; it whipped him instead – column written by Stephen Mihm, associate professor of history,…

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'Moonshot' for botany

A new Earth BioGenome Project paper published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences highlights the progress of plant genomics and includes a roadmap for the enormous task of sequencing the genomes of plants worldwide. The Earth BioGenome Project is a federated initiative promoting sequencing the genomes of all multicellular species on our planet. The paper, co-authored by professor of plant biology James…

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Third round of Presidential Interdisciplinary Seed Grants awarded

How can nanotechnology and big data be used to improve diagnosis of infectious viruses like SARS-CoV-2? That’s one of the questions that will be explored through funding provided by a third round of Presidential Interdisciplinary Seed Grants. Eleven grants totaling $1.5 million were awarded in November 2021 to recipients of the third round of Presidential Interdisciplinary Seed Grants. Overall the awards went to faculty from 13 UGA departments,…

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UGA-led team exploring ocean productivity near Thwaites Glacier

Scientists from around the globe have embarked upon the International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration(ITGC), an expedition to the Amundsen Sea Polynya in western Antarctica that includes a research team led by UGA marine sciences professor Patricia Yager: While an array of projects associated with the expedition are focused on sea level rise and the physical processes related to the melting, Yager is co-chief scientist and lead P.I. on the…

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Emotion regulation, coping with schizophrenia

A person with schizophrenia typically experiences more negative emotions and has more stressors than average. A new study by University of Georgia psychologists revealed a surprising finding that could help those who struggle with the illness: While people with schizophrenia tend to manage low-level negative emotions, they struggle to do so as those negative emotions increase. People regulate their emotions to get from one feeling to a more…

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New I-STEM Research Building 1 opens

The University of Georgia held a ribbon-cutting ceremony to celebrate the completion of the first phase of the Interdisciplinary Science, Technology, Engineering and Math Research Complex on Tuesday, Nov. 30. The 100,000-square-foot I-STEM Research Building 1 features flexible, open lab spaces designed to promote collaboration and elevate UGA’s expanding lab-intensive research activities, particularly within the disciplines of chemistry,…

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Heroic archetypes and the silver screen

Despite the rise of feminism, a new UGA research study describes how romance films persist in stereotyping women’s roles. Based on a sample of 250 romance films—from “The Notebook” to “Up in the Air”—that were released between 2000 and 2014, the study found that many of those movies seem to initially question the gender status quo by positioning the female lead as adventurous and independent. But they typically end essentially the same way: with…

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Roth book wins 2021 McLeod Prize

"A Miscarriage of Justice," Women’s Reproductive Lives and the Law in Early Twentieth-Century Brazil by Cassia Roth, Assistant Professor of History and Latin American and Caribbean Studies, has won the 2021 Murdo J. MacLeod Book Prize, sponsored by the Southern Historical Association, Latin American and Caribbean Section. A Miscarriage of Justice examines women's reproductive health in relation to legal and medical policy in Rio…

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UGA collaboration weaves story of Indigenous environmental relationships in a new book

A new children’s book published in three languages focuses on the Wounaan, Indigenous people of Panama and Colombia, and their relationships with birds. A collaborative effort, the book results from two projects supported by the Global Environment Facility and UNDP Small Grants Program and the US-based non-profit Native Future on bird guiding, birds and culture, and forest restoration in Panama. The Wounaan National Congress and the Foundation…

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Witnessing the Muslim world in pencil and ink

Art speaks truth in a way that history cannot. Integrating images with text, the graphic novel can illustrate an extremely personal point-of-view. Not only can it convey the internal dialogue of the work’s characters, but it can also deliver a visceral gut-punch with an image or the absence of one. Esra Mirze Santesso, associate professor of English in the Franklin College of Arts & Sciences, wasn’t always a critic and educator of…

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Andean cloud forests’ socioecology

Within a transdisciplinary framework, the Andean cloud forest belt was appraised and recommended into a new ecoregion of its own: the Andean Flanks. A team of Franklin College faculty in the Neotropical Montology Collaboratory has produced a book, published in Spanish, by the Institute for Sustainable Development of Cloud Forest Research and the National University Toribio Rodríguez de Mendoza of Amazonas in Peru. Authors Fausto Sarmiento,…
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