Category: graduate students

Graduate students often participate in conferences, in formal presentations and conversations about their work with other participants during poster sessions and other events. Most frequently, academic conferences are organized by discipline but the UGA Graduate Student Association tried something different in April with their Interdisciplinary Research Conference and it seems to have been an overwhelming success. Among the unusual outcomes was the presentation of People's Choice Award at the conference, which went to psychology graduate student Brian Stone:

Stone's research focuses on the way the brain uses information from the senses to keep track of where the body is in space. This sensory information lets the brain know what is part of the body and what is an outside object.

By manipulating people's senses in the lab, psychologists have found that the brain can be tricked.

In his presentation, Stone highlighted the connection between sensory psychology and fields like robotics and engineering. Short-term applications include designing better prosthetics.

"(We can use) sensory tricks to incorporate an external object, like a prosthetic, into the body for someone like an amputee," Stone said.

The chance to discuss these broader implications of his research was what drew Stone to present at the Interdisciplinary Research Conference.

The idea of a conference like this is great and the Grad Student Association is to be commended. They know the importance of getting feedback from outside their disciplines and interacting with colleagues from other areas, which is why they organized such a conference. Even picking a favorite presentation is less of a competition and more of an acknowledgement of insightful work. Great job, and congratulations to Stone for being the People's Choice.

Students and faculty in the department of geography have pioneered a terrific new collaboration with NASA set to begin this summer:

University of Georgia's department of geography will partner with NASA through DEVELOP, a national student internship program created to enhance training and development in Earth science. The UGA collaboration is only the second housed strictly at a university in the U.S.

Initial UGA projects include analyzing the marshes of coastal Georgia, examining the correlations between public health and air quality in Washington County, Ga., determining the effects of ozone on hemlock conifers in the Great Smoky Mountains and assessing forest connectivity in Costa Rica.

"The DEVELOP Program gives the university a unique opportunity to engage further with NASA, attract and train a new cohort of student-scientists and extend our results to local communities," said Thomas Mote, professor and head of the department of geography, which is housed in the UGA Franklin College of Arts and Sciences. "The program is geared toward the use of NASA tools and resources to address local issues, and we're proud that geography has played the lead role in bringing the DEVELOP Program to the university."

Several faculty members in the department of geography have long had associations with NASA; Ph.D. student Steve Padgett-Vasquez, who worked at NASA before coming to UGA, is to be commended for connecting the department with this particular program. DEVELOP will help students gain important experience in research projects that will add to the body of knowledge concerning Earth science. We're glad to welcome this collaboration to the campus.

The Atlanta Chapter of the ARCS - Achievement Rewards for College Students - Foundation awarded $70,000 to nine doctoral students in the biomedical and health sciences at the University of Georgia, one of whom received a special $10,000 grant to study global health research abroad:

The ARCS Foundation was founded in Los Angeles in 1958 and is dedicated to helping meet the country's needs for scientists and engineers by providing scholarships to academically outstanding university students. UGA recipients of the award are selected through the UGA Biomedical and Health Sciences Institute.

This year's ARCS Scholars represent five UGA schools and colleges and two institutes-the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, the College of Pharmacy, College of Public Health, the College of Veterinary Medicine, the Odum School of Ecology, the Institute of Bioinformatics and the Biomedical and Health Sciences Institute.

Seven of the nine recipients are Franklin College students or in programs with Franklin College affiliations. Congratulations to all and to the faculty in these units who have supported and guided the advancement of this next generation of health researchers.

English professor Judith Ortiz Cofer is one of our most distinguished faculty members and prolific authors. A poet and novelist, Cofer is also subect of a new book edited by two graduate alumni, Lorraine Lopez (Ph.D., creative writing) and Molly Crumpton (Ph.D., English). The new monograph, Rituals of Movement in the Writing of Judith Ortiz Cofer, is the first book-length collection of scholarship on Cofer's writing and establishes her as an important contemporary American author:

This collection discusses almost all of Ortiz Cofer’s writing, including her most popular and influential works such as Silent Dancing, The Latin Deli, and A Love Song Written in Spanish. This book is organized into sections that highlight her achievements in prose, poetry, and the mixed-genre writing that is a major innovative contribution to American letters.

The contributors include award-winning poets, fiction writers, and scholars of American Literature, Latino/a Studies and Women’s Studies, which makes this collection a unique and much-needed addition to the scholarship of Hispanic, Caribbean, Puerto Rican, multicultural, and women’s literature.

Judy I-Chia Wu, a recent doctoral graduate from the department of chemistry, was one of six young chemists recently honored by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry.

Wu, who earned her doctorate in 2011, was awarded the IUPAC Prize for her Ph.D. thesis work titled “Quantification of Virtual Chemical Properties: Strain, Hyperconjugation, Conjugation, and Aromaticity.” She was chosen from more than 40 applicants from 19 countries, and will receive a cash prize of $1,000 and a trip to the 44^th IUPAC World Chemistry Congress in Istanbul, Turkey, where her award will be presented during the opening ceremony of the Congress.

Her work focuses on designing and establishing reliable computational approaches for quantifying chemical properties that are thought to be non-measurable. In the process, she has reexamined and reinterpreted many fundamental explanations regarding the stability of molecules.

Wu’s dissertation advisor was Professor Paul von Rague' Schleyer, and she is currently a research professional in his group. She earned her bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Tung-Hai University, Taiwan.

To learn more about Wu’s work, see http://www.iupac.org/news/cont/2012/dr-wu-quantification-of-virtual-chemical-properties-strain-hyperconjugation-conjugation-and-aromaticity.html.

The Lamar Dodd School of Art presents the exhibition "Tiny Universe," on view from June 20th to August 3rd in the Gallery 307 on the third floor of the school of art.

The exhibition brings together six artists who use a variety of concepts and media to create a unique framework for understanding the world around us. Employing memory, experience, religion and humor, the artists in this show have essentially made their own universes for the viewer to enter. 

"Tiny Universe" is a group show featuring six artists: Mark Leibert, Scott Ingram, Andy Moon Wilson, Diana Behl, Andrew Kozlowski and Dayna Thacker. All of the artists are Atlanta-based except for Behl, who lives and works in South Dakota. The exhibition was curated by Elliot Walters, an MFA candidate in printmaking and a graduate assistant in the art school galleries.

"It's an exciting show because you can see how much can be done on a small scale," Walters said. "Especially for students, 'bigger is better' has become a kind of mantra and this show questions that idea."

A recent review of "Tiny Universe" in Flagpole magazine called the show, "unexpected, concise and conspicuously rowdy in its tonal shifts."

"This is the second year in a row we've given our graduate assistants the opportunity to curate a show during the summer," said Jeffrey Whittle, gallery director in the art school. "It's a great experience for our students to oversee the entire curatorial process, from selecting the artists and the artwork to deciding on the layout of the gallery and designing the poster and showcard."

Image: The siren call of business by Dayna Thacker. Collaged paper, graphite and pastel on panel, 2010.

Ten UGA students and alums received graduate fellowships from the National Science Foundation to conduct research during their master's and doctoral studies, including four from Franklin College:

Christopher Abin, of Miami, Fla., is pursuing a doctorate in microbiology at the University of Georgia. As a Florida International University undergraduate student, Abin made the dean’s list every semester and received a National Institutes of Health Research Initiative for Scientific Enhancement Fellowship. He will be studying microbes that survive in high saline and heavy metal habitats to see how they transform toxic compounds. His research may eventually help bioremediation of heavy-metal contaminated sites worldwide, and may also provide insight into life on other planets.

While an undergraduate student at UGA, Ashley Edwards, a computer science major from Conyers, Ga., presented a research paper on machine learning at an international symposium held in Paris by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, the world’s largest association for professionals in those fields. She is now pursuing a doctorate in robotics at Georgia Technical Institute, with an emphasis on artificial intelligence and machine learning. Edwards’ research project will allow multiple people to train a robot by interacting with a virtual representation of it.

Katie Orlemanski, of Lilburn, Ga., received her undergraduate degree in women’s studies and international affairs from UGA in 2007. Since then she has worked in Africa for an international development agency and now plans to pursue a doctorate in cultural anthropology at Rutgers University. Her research focuses on understanding violence against women in sub-Saharan Africa.

Matthew Schultz, of Roswell, Ga., majored in genetics at UGA and is now pursuing a doctoral degree in biomedical sciences at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Schultz is studying how carbohydrate structures in cells affect, and possibly regulate, protein function. He received an honorable mention last year.

Attention UGA graduate students: a competition sponsored by the Provost’s Office, the Graduate School, and the Office of the Vice President for Research, the university will select a particularly promising graduate student for an award to attend the 10-week experience at Singularity University (SU) this coming summer.

The competition submission deadline is March 21, 2012.  Interviews with the finalists will be held April 10, 2012, 1:00-4:00 pm.  Complete eligibility requirements, application information, and submission instructions can be found on the Graduate School website.