Faculty
Mock Trial Mavens
UF’s LitiGators win major national tournaments. UF’s Mock Trial team, the LitiGators, celebrated its 10-year anniversary in 2017 in grand style — by having its winningest year in the team’s history, placing in several regional meets. In only its second trip to nationals, the LitiGators placed 8th out of the 48 top teams at the […]
Justice in the Age of Locker-Room Talk
The University of Florida psychology professor and expert on bullying, sexual harassment and violence in schools knows the truth: “Not all bullies are rejected outcasts; many bully not just because they can, but also because they want to,” she said, “so, why are we not moving forward on bullying?”
Playtime with Moonshine
Moonshine the dolphin is a special cetacean. Although a chronic liver problem has confined him to human care for the rest of his life, an interdisciplinary team that includes UF professor of psychology Nicole Dorey and alumna Barbara Perez ’14 has developed an enrichment program that includes several custom-made toys. The study, published on Oct. […]
The Forest for the Trees
Twenty-seven professors in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences serve as affiliate faculty of UF’s Tropical Conservation and Development (TCD) program. Learn more about this essential initiative.
Global Issues — The Square Root of Poverty
UF researcher Calistus Ngonghala uses math to understand the spread — and prevention — of disease in sub-Saharan Africa.
Vodou and Valency
UF Haitian Creole specialist Ben Hebblethwaite unearths African and Haitian history from the mythology of Vodou songs and rituals.
Pure Imagination
The Imagining Climate Change Initiative analyzes how the threat of climate change impacts narratives.
Faculty Profile — Keith Choe, Biology
Keith Choe, associate professor of biology, studies mutations in C. elegans with the goal of understanding how cells respond to environmental stress and how this information could one day stave off aging and disease.
A Most Excellent Evening
On April 21, the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences launched an awards program to recognize the achievements and dedication of alumni, faculty, students, and staff in Emerson Alumni Hall.
Transforming Tunisia
Ed Kellerman shares a personal essay.
Newsworthy
UF physicists and astrophysicists are making waves.
Donor Profile — Linde and Alan Katritzky
Kenan Professor of Chemistry Alan Katritzky began his tenure at UF in 1980 and continued working in the Department of Chemistry until his death in 2014.
The Starving Snakes of Seahorse Key
Mysteriously vanished waterbirds. Cannibalistic snakes. An island with no freshwater except for rainfall. It may sound like a Crichton novel or SyFy original movie, but it’s the reality of Seahorse Key, part of the Gulf Coast Cedar Keys that University of Florida biologists have been researching since the 1930s, when the renowned late zoologist Archie Carr first began studying the unusually large cottonmouth population there.
Solving Cosmic Puzzles
Neutron stars are dead stars collapsed into the densest form of matter known to humans, with a teaspoon of neutron star matter weighing a billion tons, and their collision creates a swath of galactic debris. Decades ago, stargazing scientists formed plans to detect signals from this debris. Now, in the new era of aptly named “multi-messenger astronomy,” two international projects have achieved this goal: On August 17 of this year, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO)’s two U.S.-based interferometers and the Virgo Collaboration’s Italy-based interferometer detected for the first time gravitational waves — ripples in space-time traveling at the speed of light — from the collision and subsequent merger of two neutron stars. The detection occurred just three days after yet another “chirp” from colliding black holes.
Transformative Topographies
UF anthropologist studies the lives of Peruvians who provide transportation through a post-war terrain. Richard Kernaghan, associate professor of anthropology, has received a fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies to pursue his new book project, Semblance in Terrain: On the Legal Topographies of Postwar, in Peru’s Upper Huallaga Valley. Expanding upon the work […]
A Man for All Seasons
UF’s beloved historian Michael Gannon passed in April. Michael Gannon PhD’62, who taught at UF for more than 30 years, passed away on April 10 at age 89. Gannon was nationally recognized for his research into the establishment of colonial Spanish Florida, including the introduction of Catholicism — and Christianity as a whole — to […]
Faculty Profile — Maia Martcheva
Mathematical Biologist As the daughter of biologists, Professor Maia Martcheva grew up in an academic environment in Bulgaria. “I spent my childhood in labs, going to conferences, listening to talks,” she says. She also knew what she wanted to study by age 16. She remembers studying models for chemistry and physics and asked her teacher […]
LIGO Gators
David Reitze gives back to UF Physics. David Reitze, executive director of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) at Caltech, is one of three winners of the prestigious National Academy of Sciences Award for Scientific Discovery, a prize comprising $50,000 cash and $50,000 to support the recipients’ research. Now, Reitze has given back part of […]
We’d Like to Thank the Academy
UF scientists awarded NAS membership. Besides a passion for research and a sense of humor, UF physicist Art Hebard and UF plant biologist Doug Soltis share one other thing: membership in the National Academy of Sciences. The Academy recognizes top achievement in and devotion to one’s field in selecting its members, who are scientific consultants […]
A Route to Recovery
UF psychologist Lori Knackstedt studies an antibiotic that may cure cocaine addiction. Lori Knackstedt, professor of psychology, is seven years deep into research that’s yielded some surprising results: in cocaine-addicted rats, an antibiotic reduces their drug-seeking behavior and may prevent relapse. The drug Ceftriaxone appears to increase reuptake of glutamate, a neurotransmitter that regulates dopamine, […]