Tag: College Newsletter
Faculty Profile — Michael Daniels
Filling in the Blanks Imagine a puzzle that appears, at first glance, to be complete but actually has some missing pieces, and it’s not clear what those missing pieces are. Such is the challenge in understanding human environments — in their complexity, the empty spaces can be hard to fill, and even themselves might be […]
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 […]
Renaissance Man
This geographer does it all. Nick Dowhaniuk PhD’21 has a shaded illustration of the Virunga Mountains, a chain of volcanoes in East Africa, tattooed on his forearm. “Ever since I went to Africa, I fell in love with it,” he says. He once lived at the base of the mountains and got the tattoo to […]
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 […]
In the Moment
Gators join together for mindfulness. On April 4, 2017, two remarkable UF alumni spoke to a packed room about how the practice of mindfulness can promote personal wellness and stoke one’s career. They spoke from experience: Michael “Mickey” Singer BA ’69, MBA’70 is a multi-industry entrepreneur who transformed his career setbacks into success, with two […]
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 […]
Alumni Profile — Mary Hough Fisher
Going for the Gold Anniversary This year, Mary Hough Fisher ’67 celebrates her 50th UF graduation anniversary. In honor of this golden date, her family is creating a $50,000 endowment, the James F. Hough Family Scholarship, primarily named after her father but also for her and her three brothers, Jim, John, and Tom Hough ’75. […]
Student Profile — Phillip Dmitriev
Oxford Bound To study something as complex as the human brain, one certainly needs a well-rounded education, and Phillip Dmitriev ’17, has immersed himself in an interdisciplinary program at UF to do just that. A budding physician-scientist majoring in microbiology and neurobiological sciences in Liberal Arts and Sciences, Dmitriev’s research interests revolve around cognitive disorders, […]
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 […]
Mass Extinction: Are We Next?
Biologist Todd Palmer says the countdown clock has started. In the movie Avatar, so many magnificent animals have gone extinct that scientists can only study them virtually. This environmentally ravaged Earth is set in the near future, in the year 2154, but according to University of Florida biologist Todd Palmer, our Earth in 2016 is […]
Dean Dave Richardson
Your Journey Begins Here When Dave Richardson, Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, addressed the Class of 2019 at Convocation last August, he shared stories about jobs he had in high school and college — flipping burgers, bagging groceries, digging ditches, baling hay, and feeding pigs. From these experiences, he said, he […]
Alumni Profile — Mick Aschoff
The Art of Giving Mick Aschoff ’71 has an undergraduate degree in art from the University of Florida and an MBA in finance, as well as a professional certification in computer applications and information systems, from New York University. He speaks three languages and has worked around the world in various fields, including hospital administration, […]
Student Profile — Van Truong
Intrepid When she was three, Van Truong ’17 often slipped out of her parents’ house in their village of Hue, Vietnam, ambling into the homes of family and friends. Truong has been stepping out of her comfort zone for quite a while. In 2014, after her freshman year at UF, Truong set off for a […]
Faculty Profile — Sidney Homan
Blue-Collar Scholar English Professor Sidney Homan never imagined his blue-collar childhood in South Philadelphia would lead to his career as a Shakespearean scholar. Until fate – in the form of his mother — intervened and secured him an interview at Princeton, Homan expected to follow in his father’s footsteps. “My father worked hard installing phones […]
Tales Teeth Can Tell
Dental enamel reveals surprising migration patterns in ancient Indus civilizations. University of Florida researchers have discovered that ancient peoples in the Indus Valley did not stay put, as was previously thought. Equally surprising is how they found out: by examining 4,000-year-old teeth. As tooth enamel forms, it incorporates elements from the local environment. When the […]
War Stories
UF is a top contributor to Library of Congress’ Veterans History Project. World War II veteran Frank Towers landed on Utah Beach shortly after D-Day, survived the frigid nights of the Battle of the Bulge, and participated in the liberation of thousands of Jews headed to the death camps just before that terrible war ended […]
Mickey and the Turtle
Disney partners with UF to save and protect sea turtles. The world’s seven sea turtle species are classified either as endangered or vulnerable; Walt Disney’s Conservation Fund is partnering with UF to save these creatures. In April, the Disney Conservation Fund announced that UF would be the only university partner in its new initiative, “Reverse […]
What Really Killed the Dinosaurs?
UF researcher looks at ancient temperatures to resolve a scientific debate. University of Florida geochemist Andrea Dutton and colleagues at the University of Michigan have utilized a new technique of analysis to reconstruct Antarctic ocean temperatures that supports the idea that the combined impacts of volcanic eruptions and an asteroid impact brought about one of […]