Tags: faculty

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Momany selected as MSA Fellow

University of Georgia faculty member Michelle Momany has been selected as a Fellow of the Mycological Society of America. Momany, professor of Plant Biology and associate dean in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, was announced as an MSA Fellow at the organization’s first-ever virtual meeting in mid-July. The Mycological Society of America Fellow Award is granted to an outstanding member of the society for extended service and…

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$23M NSF grant accelerates glycomaterials research

Glycomaterials are produced by every living organism. They contain chains of sugars, called glycans, that have critical roles in health and disease. Of the four building blocks of life — glycans, proteins, lipids and nucleic acids — glycans are the most complex and most challenging to understand. The tool set for understanding these glycans, so crucial to life itself, lags far behind those available for understanding DNA, RNA and proteins.…

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AMA: Why Does COVID Affect Us Differently?

Ask Me Anything is an interactive online session between alumni and UGA faculty members from diverse academic disciplines. Experts from UGA will discuss the effects of this global pandemic on their specific area of expertise and provide participants the opportunity to ask questions. This month, there are two extraordinary opportunities with Franklin Faculty, beginning tomorrow August 4, with assistant professor of sociology Ryon Cobb.…

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Physical basis of language comprehension

With an assist from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, researchers are getting a better handle on where and how the brain assembles individual words into full sentences when a person listens to a story being read. In a new study, an international team of researchers, including a UGA cognitive scientist, report that a computational model based on the concept of "phrase structure” most closely matches functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)…

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Cyanotracker created to detect toxic algae

Outbreaks of harmful algae have increased in recent years due to warming trends and longer summer seasons. Also called cyanobacterial algal blooms or CyanoHABs, these large-scale ecological disturbances are often caused by increased urbanization, nutrient pollution, poor waste management and warming weather. The algae can produce toxins that are harmful to humans, pets and aquatic ecosystems. The CyanoTRACKER project, a collaboration between…

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Preparing for hurricane season during COVID-19

As COVID-19 cases continue to increase, the South faces another hazard in what experts are predicting to be a more active than normal hurricane season. The University of Georgia’s Marshall Shepherd shares what we need to know about preparing for the brunt of storm season during a global pandemic: Hurricane season 2020 is already shattering records, and it’s only July. The average hurricane season has about 12 named storms.…

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New leadership in UGA plant sciences

University strengths in plant sciences, genetics and across the life sciences attract world-renown expertise to campus that has built the UGA Plant Center into a research powerhouse. This summer, the plant sciences community welcomed two new leaders, as Jim Leebens-Mack and Wayne Parrott were named directors of the Plant Center and the Integrated Plant Sciences program, respectively, effective July 1: Taking over from interim director C.J.…

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Students pursue summer research through virtual REUs

REUs or Research Experiences for Undergraduates programs, funded by the National Science Foundation, typically offer students hands-on research experience through campus-based programs dedicated to a variety of topics. Shady Kuster is participating in an REU focused on genomics and computational biology that’s led by Jonathan Arnold. Additional REUs hosted online at UGA this summer include programs on nanotechnology and biomedicine, led by…

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Ancient oyster shells provide historical insights

An interdisciplinary team of scientists studying thousands of oyster shells along the Georgia coast, some as old as 4,500 years, has published new insights into how Native Americans sustained oyster harvests for thousands of years, observations that may lead to better management practices of oyster reefs today. Their study, led by University of Georgia archaeologist Victor Thompson, was published July 10 in the journal Science…

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EMPOWER Lab receive $1 Million SAMHSA Grant

The EMPOWER Lab in the department of psychology - Engaging Minorities in Prevention Outreach Wellness Education and Research – is an important new development within our campus community. Racial stressors, the verbal, behavioral, or environmental stressors that individuals experience because of their race, may include being ignored or insulted by White coworkers, not being considered for jobs or positions, being told that…

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Research unlocks genetic key to sunflower resilience

How do sunflowers grow in the desert? Wild sunflowers display extensive variation, both between and within species, and scientists have now reported that variation is preserved by blocks of “supergenes” that permit adaptation to different environments. Such evolutionary changes are normally broken apart across generations of mating. Considered one of the world’s most important oilseed crops, this finding should improve breeding of the…

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Krause receives IOM honor

The International Organization of Mycoplasmology has selected Duncan Krause as the 2020 Emmy Kleineberger-Nobel award for research in Mycoplasmology. The award for Dr. Krause, Professor Emeritus in the department of microbiology, was announced by the IOM in June.  Emmy Klieneberger-Nobel (February 15, 1892 – September 11, 1985) was a German Jewish microbiologist and a founder of mycoplasma bacterial research. She…

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Resuming research

Under Phase 1 reopening protocols, the UGA research enterprise is up and running, marking the end of three anxious months for researchers across the university who had to suspend their work as the country grapples with the coronavirus pandemic: With its 17 schools and colleges spanning hundreds of scholarly and creative disciplines, UGA’s research enterprise is nearly as varied as its faculty. Anticipating the issues and concerns…

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Burrowing animals control carbon cycling on the sea floor

Researchers from ETH Zurich and UGA show that the activity of burrowing worms, clams, and shrimp are the most important driver of the community structure of microorganisms in the Earth's biggest carbon sink: continental shelf sediments. The results were published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: Sediments underlying the world’s oceans and shelf seas cover >70% of the Earth’s surface area. These…

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Great Commitments: GRA Eminent Scholar Art Edison

As part of the CCRC and the department of biochemistry and molecular biology, Art Edison's wide-ranging expertise in metabolomics – used to characterize and identify the molecules that make up an organism, tissues, or cells – is an important resource for faculty collaborations in a range of critical research areas, including COVID-19: “Metabolites are the things that are responding to what’s going on in a…

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Juneteenth 2020

The 155th anniversary of the holiday commemorates the end of slavery in the United States: From its Galveston, Texas origin in 1865, the observance of June 19th as the African American Emancipation Day has spread across the United States and beyond. Today Juneteenth commemorates African American freedom and emphasizes education and achievement. It is a day, a week, and in some areas a month marked with celebrations, guest speakers, picnics…

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Joye consults on new video game ‘Beyond Blue’

In a gaming experience that takes players into the near future to explore the mysteries of the ocean, “Beyond Blue” is a new video game launched by E-Line Media in conjunction with the BBC and the researchers behind its “Blue Planet II” series. The game allows players to become part of a new research team using groundbreaking technologies to see, hear and interact with the ocean in a meaningful way. University of Georgia Regents’ Professor…

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Writing & Thriving at UGA: writing support and instruction

A February panel discussion featured by Write@UGA 2020 and moderated by Cristyn Elder, Associate Professor of Rhetoric and Writing and Director of Writing Across the Curriculum at the University of New Mexico, focused on strengthening the community around writing at UGA. The Writing and Thriving panel featured nine writing leaders from seven schools and colleges across UGA:     Ben Ehlers, Associate Professor of History, Writing…

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The effects of teleworking during COVID-19

From Zoom meetings to marathon telephone calls, the COVID-19 pandemic and social distancing protocols have effected how workers of every stripe conduct business from home, altering our work environments while we continue our organizations' operations. The effects of the rapid transition to working remotely is the focus of a new research project in the department of psychology: There is not a lot of…

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New books by Art History faculty

Congratulations to two Art History faculty members in the Lamar Dodd School of Art who recently had books published. Dr. Alisa Luxenberg, Professor of Art History, teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in 18th- and 19th-century European art and the early history of photography. Her recent research has resulted in a volume edited with Reva Wolf: Freemasonry and the Visual Arts from the Eighteenth Century Forward:…

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2020 Virtual CURO Symposium

UGA undergraduates, including hundreds of Franklin College majors, shared their research endeavors in a new way this spring during the 2020 Virtual CURO Symposium held April 21-24: After mentoring from faculty members across various UGA colleges, students shared a total of 580 posters and oral presentations using UGA’s eLearning Commons. Student presenters, faculty members and anyone who requested access were able to…

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Religion in the Age of Social Distancing

The UGA Center for Theologically Engaged Anthropology podcast new episode, "Religion in the Age of Social Distancing," examines the rapid religious changes happening in churches due to the Covid-19 pandemic. In a discussion that includes interviews with Derrick Lemons, director of CTEA and associate professor of religion, and Debra Mason, Professor Emeritus at the University of Missouri, host Lily Baldwin looks at how…

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Kudos, April 2020

New books, service, SEC and Honors Week highlights dominate the recent accolades for Franklin College faculty, postdocs and graduate students. A sample: The Poetry Society of America published  “Someone’s Getting the Best, the Best, the Best of You . . .”  a poem by Ed Pavlić, professor of English and creative writing on poem from and short essay about his new book. The poem is about Prince, on the…

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Archaeologists verify Florida’s Mound Key as site of elusive Spanish fort

Archaeologists from UGA and the Florida Museum of Natural History have discovered the location of Fort San Antón de Carlos, home of one of the first Jesuit missions in North America. The Spanish fort was built in 1566 in the capital of the Calusa, the most powerful Native American tribe in the region, on present-day Mound Key in the center of Estero Bay on Florida’s Gulf Coast. Archaeologists and historians have long suspected…

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Morrison named Meigs Teaching Professor

  Richard Morrison, associate professor in the department of chemistry, is one of five University of Georgia faculty members named Josiah Meigs Distinguished Professors for 2020, the university’s highest recognition for instruction at the undergraduate and graduate levels: As director of Organic Chemistry Instruction in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences department of chemistry, Richard Morrison oversees all aspects of…
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