Sustainability, NSF Grad Fellowships and a Postcard

Seventeen UGA students and alumni were among the 2,000 fellows selected from nearly 17,000 applicants nationwide for the 2016 competition.

And Interim Associate Provost Noel Fallows shares with us this postcard from University of Liverpool professor Alan McCarthy, who recently spent three days at UGA courtesy of the department of genetics and the department of marine sciences:

“The focus of my research is the development and application of molecular biological techniques to analyse microbial activity in the environment. During my visit I gave a research seminar – which addressed the search for novel species and genes in the aquatic biosphere and beyond – to staff and students from across the life sciences at UGA. It was also streamed to those members of the Department Marine Sciences who were at sea!

“I also had extensive discussions on our submission of a National Science Foundation (NSF) Research Traineeship Program in Systems Biology, in which the Institute of Integrative Biology is the international partner, providing specialised PhD training in environmental metagenomics, host-pathogen systems and the biological clock.

“The University of Georgia has international partnerships with a number of universities worldwide, of which that established with the University of Liverpool is their most productive. Before I left I met with the Vice President for Research, and Deans of the Graduate School and Franklin College to discuss the NSF Traineeship programme in the context of the overall collaborative arrangements between our two universities, together with shared observations on the higher education sectors in the UK and US.

Whew. That's a week. And isn't there some kind of outdoor amateur athletic competition on campus tomorrow? Complete with pre-game entertainment? What's going on in your town this weekend? Whatever it is, make sure to get out and enjoy.