Tags: research

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Interdisciplinary seed grants propel UGA AI

As machine learning techniques and the reach of large language models (LLMs) become integrated into leading-edge research projects that span the university, the Institute for Artificial Intelligence is creating early leverage for collaborative faculty projects to access greater external support. Four university-wide research projects have been awarded seed grants under the new initiative: “Artificial intelligence is not just about creating…

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UGA projects spotlight strategies to integrate the arts into team research

The UGA Arts Collaborative helps support faculty and graduate students across the  Franklin College and the entire campus to advance interdisciplinary projects through engagement with the arts. UGA Research Communications spotlights the Arts Collaborative as a catalyst for creative research, the program launched a new, multi-year partnership with the Willson Center for Humanities and Arts: Three UGA projects, all supported by funding from…

Get away
Time away, time to play, keeps work in perspective

The critical element of life balance and time away from professional duties provides an ever-green yet timely focus of new research from UGA psychology. Employees and employers can enhance both work and life by adhering to a regular cadence of vacation rest and relaxation – and honestly unplugging from work obligations: The meta-analysis of 32 studies from nine countries suggests that not only are vacations more beneficial for boosting employee…

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The pesky business of pesticides

Pesticide-resistant crops create prosperous opportunities but spark concern about health for both humans and the environment.    Agricultural biotechnology has created pesticide-resistant crops that are central to many Argentinian farmers. Franklin College faculty member Pablo Lapegna, associate professor of Sociology and Latin American and Caribbean Studies, explores the way these farmers view the pesticides sprayed on their crops and…

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New tools for finding the right whales

North Atlantic right whales, hunted to extinction by the end of the 19th century, return to the Georgia Bight for calving. Marine scientists search the large ocean sector stretching from Cape Hatteras, North Carolina to Cape Canaveral, Florida to document the number of new calves, which remains below average. Franklin faculty at the Skidaway Institute of Oceanography are using a new technology to help track conservation and rebuilding of the…

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Mobility and education are reshaping Black accents in Georgia

The vanishing Southern accent in Georgia has been well-documented, most recently by linguists from the University of Georgia and Georgia Tech in 2023. In a new study, the same research team shifted their investigation from the White population to the accents of Black Georgians, with results that highlight the effects of migration and education on the accents of Black Generation Z speakers. The study, published by the American Dialect Society,…

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UGA professor authors 'Educator’s Guide to James Baldwin'

Penguin Random House published "An Educator’s Guide to the Works of James Baldwin," written by Ed Pavlić, Distinguished Research Professor of English, African American Studies and Creative Writing in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences department of English. The "Educator's Guide" is a product of Pavlić's work with the James Baldwin Estate and the Estate's relationship to Random House as Baldwin's major publisher. In honor of his…

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Noted and Quoted, November – December 2024

From comment and opinion to groundbreaking work on reviving heritage crops and fighting disease, Franklin faculty expertise informs and leads by a continual presence in media around the globe. A sampling of the numerous stories over the previous few weeks: We knew lead pipes were bad 140 years ago – Stephen Mihm, professor of history and associate dean, writing in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette UGA researcher links broken corn chromosomes to cancer…

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Kudos, November - December 2024

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…

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UGA plant biologist leads new advances in biotech

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.…

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Gender & Society named top scholarly journal

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…

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New research connects peach reach to indigenous communities

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…

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Franklin hosts inaugural faculty research mixer

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…

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Comedy sends a message: Exploring "9 to 5"

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…

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Fish oil supplements bring a variety of health benefits

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…

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Ancestry of Sanford Stadium hedges goes into the lab

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…

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Protecting India’s tigers and wolves through art, collaboration and conservation

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…

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Sensing a new understanding of the world

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…

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New study details open-source vision-language model for biomedical applications

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…

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PBS series Weathered features UGA's Shepherd

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…

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Holland named Shellebarger professor in Geology

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.…

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Election 2024: four million disenfranchised due to felony convictions in the US

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,…

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NSF grant to explore philosophical perspectives of human and machine translation

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-…

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Noted and Quoted, September 2024

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…

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Where the ocean meets the air

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…
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