News from the Chronicles - October 2024

With so many opportunities to get involved in the Athens community, and a student body attuned to helping others, the September Dawg Day of Service set a new standard for the number of participating students and service sites across Athens. It's never to early to learn that investing in your community is a hands-on experience: Organized by Serve UGA – student-led groups within UGA’s Department of Engagement, Leadership, and Service – students…

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-…

The University of Georgia celebrated the completion of renovations to the Holmes-Hunter Academic Building on UGA’s historic North Campus on Oct. 4. The building is named in honor of Hamilton Holmes and Charlayne Hunter-Gault, the first African American students to attend UGA: The renovations included restored historic features, improved accessibility, enhanced functionality and a courtyard that pays tribute to the building’s namesakes. The $30…

The Franklin College hosted alumni, staff, students and friends at the 2024 Homecoming Tailgate on Brooks Hall on Oct. 5. With catering by Flying Biscuit, corn hole, and conversation, everyone enjoyed a beautiful afternoon in the run-up to the Auburn game. Photos by Audrey Bradstock/Franklin College of Arts and Sciences.  

What's an artist to do when they want to pursue medicine alongside piano? Choose UGA and continue with both. Caroline Malcom, a second-year student and Cora Nunnally Miller Scholar in the Fine Arts, is majoring in piano performance in the Hugh Hodgson School of Music while also on a pre-medical track in the Franklin College. She chose to major in piano performance to grow as an artist, by “studying music in its entirety and learning the…

UGA alumnus Steve Yockey (A.B. Theatre, '01) visited the department of theatre and film studies Oct. 4, sitting for three Q+A sessions with students interested in pursuing careers both on stage and behind the camera. In addition to the Q+A sessions, Yockey attended Dr. John Bray’s Dramatic Writing class for a more focused discussion on his career as a playwright, who has seen much of his theatrical work produced throughout the US, Europe, and…

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,…

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.…

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…

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…