University of Georgia
Dr. Roberts-Galbraith was recognized with a 2020 Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award from the National Science Foundation. Her research focuses on understanding animals that can regenerate missing tissues after injury. Her lab studies small flatworms called planarians that can regenerate their entire bodies after nearly any amputation or injury. Read further here.
Bradly G. Phillips of Clinical and Administrative Pharmacy has become the new director of the Biomedical & Translational Sciences Institute (BTSI). To read more on this story, please see here.
“This creates the possibility scientists can someday develop therapeutics to address overeating.” Read more
“In a publication appearing this month in the journal Translational Stroke Research, animal scientists, funded by the National Institutes of Health, present brain-imaging data for a new stroke treatment that supported full recovery in swine, modeled with the same pattern of neurodegeneration as seen in humans with severe stroke.” Read more
Courtney Burton and Sadie Nennig now hold doctorates in Neuroscience after successfully defending their research this fall. They both have already transitioned to the professional sector––Sadie is a postdoc researcher in Dr. Herbert Meltzer’s lab at the Northwestern Feinberg School of Medicine in the Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences Department and Courtney is employed at The CDC. Congratulations!
Meghan Logun, a PhD candidate in Neuroscience and ARCS scholar, presented her ongoing research on approaches to stem and target glioblastoma at the annual ARCS Officers meeting at UGA. Way to go Meghan!
On a campus of over 30,000 students, many are looking for their way to make a difference and leave a positive mark on the world. The Center for Undergraduate Research Opportunities at the University of Georgia is providing just that by allowing students to showcase research at an annual symposium in Athens.
CURO isn’t as much a club or organization as much as it’s a brand for many students. This campus-wide establishment allows students to take part in faculty-mentored research projects of nearly any discipline.
For students like Lauryn Waters, a sophomore student from Athens studying math, the community aspect is what piqued interest.
“Seeing so many perspectives helps with my own research,” Waters said. “I’m generally more math and humanities-centered, but I have cohort members in CURO that are in all different kinds of sciences.”
There are no constraints about what kind of research that students can take part in and present as a part of CURO.
In 2014-15, over 450 students completed 704 CURO courses with 302 faculty members from 83 academic departments, according to UGA’s CURO website.
The benefits the organization has to offer aside from the bullet on a resume includes allowing students to gain access to presentations, funding and publishing opportunities.
Not only does CURO offer scholarships and stipends for students taking part in on-campus research, but there are also CURO scholars who’ve been selected as a part of the admission process to conduct research at UGA.
“We receive a generous scholarship so that we can be successful in our research,” Mary Francis Kitchens, a freshman CURO scholar said. “The connections and opportunities I’ve made through CURO I really could not find anywhere else.”
Kitchens is studying marketing and international business and has conducted self-guided research on music in Athens and the impact it has on the community.
CURO coursework has been associated with students receiving a higher GPA, improved graduation rates and time to completion and major scholarship awards, according to the CURO website.
The CURO Symposium welcomes all undergraduate students to present their work through a poster or oral sessions throughout a two-day period.
Hosted at The Classic Center, this event will take place this year on April 8-9.
“Last year, I visited the Symposium and seeing so many students being proud about having their own thing, it just made me want to be a part of it even more,” Kitchens said.
Not only does CURO provide the opportunity to show the Athens community and beyond the work that students have been conducting throughout the year, but it also allows students to win reputable awards, including a Best Paper Award with cash prizes totaling up to $3,000.
“Having the opportunity to learn how to share what you have been doing at the Symposium is a game changer,” Waters said. “You get used to the world of whatever you’re doing but then explaining it to people who have no context of it really changes everything.”
There’s expected to be a large turnout for this year’s symposium, and with so many students taking part in undergraduate research in so many fields — there is something for everyone to learn about at the CURO Symposium.
–Originally published in the Red and Black
Excerpt from the spring 2019 Georgia Magazine in leaders in innovative instruction:
Written by Aaron Hale MA ’16
In practice, active learning takes many different forms, and an in-class competition is only one tool in the active learning chest. For example, role-playing games have limited utility for Assistant Professor Tarkesh Singh’s 75-seat Biomechanics course in the College of Education’s Department of 
Kinesiology. The class, which explores how the intricate laws of mechanics affect human movement, is intended for future clinicians: doctors, physical therapists, and athletic trainers.
For students to understand the complexity of how Newton’s laws of motion apply to, let’s say, a tightrope walker, Singh has to stand in front of the class and explain concepts of balance and rotational dynamics. But he uses group discussions and mobile technology to keep up the two-way flow of information. Students submit individual answers to in-class math problems from their phones or laptops. From there, Singh can figure out what percentage of his class is getting the right answer. If most are correct, he moves on. Otherwise, he refocuses on helping students understand the concept.
“He explains something, lets us process it with classmates, and asks practice questions. That solidifies it in your brain,” says Sarah Williamson BSEd ’18, an aspiring doctor who took Singh’s course in the fall.
Williamson says what she really took away from the class, beyond just facts and formulas, is how to think through problems and come up with solutions. That’s exactly the skillset that faculty are trying to instill in tomorrow’s doctors, attorneys, and the rest of the future leaders who are shaped at the University of Georgia.
To read further visit: https://ugamagazine.uga.edu
Josephine Bou Dagher, a current Neuroscience PhD student has been selected as a recipient for the 2019 Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award. She has performed within the top ten percent of all teaching assistants at the University of Georgia and will be recognized during Honors Day and Commencement.
She is currently researching under Dr. Jae-Kyung Lee of the Department of Physiology and Pharmacology within the College of Veterinary Medicine. Her research focuses on the role of inflammation in neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s Disease.
Congrats Josephine!
By: Michael Terrazas
Two UGA faculty members have been awarded a prestigious Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship to support their research for the next two years, the Sloan Foundation announced on Feb. 19.
Elizabeth Harvey of marine sciences and Rachel Roberts-Galbraith of cellular biology and neuroscience will each receive $70,000 from their fellowships over the next two years. Two of 126 Sloan Fellows nationwide for 2019, the assistant professors represent just the 12th and 13th Sloan recipients from UGA since the organization began its fellowship program in 1955.
“Sloan Fellowships are one of the most prestigious monetary awards in the country for faculty in the earlier stages of their careers, and I congratulate Elizabeth and Rachel for being recognized in this remarkable way,” said David Lee, vice president for research. “This signifies the quality of young faculty that UGA is recruiting, something we can all take pride in.”
Roberts-Galbraith studies planarians, or flatworms, in hopes of understanding the organism’s ability to regrow missing tissue after a wide range of amputations or injuries. She focuses on how planarians regenerate central nervous system tissue. She earned her Ph.D. from Vanderbilt University in 2010 and is the first UGA Sloan Fellow in neuroscience.
Sloan Scholar Rachel Roberts-Galbraith
“This honor is a huge validation of our research program,” Roberts-Galbraith said. “Our goal is to learn from planarians what successful neural regeneration looks like—how an injured animal remakes neurons and other cells of the brain in the right numbers, with the correct organization and connections. The Sloan Fellowship will allow us to pursue several new and exciting directions in our effort to understand neural repair using our favorite little animals.”
Sloan Fellowships are open to scholars in eight scientific and technical fields: chemistry, computer science, economics, mathematics, computational and evolutionary molecular biology, neuroscience, ocean sciences and physics. Candidates are nominated by fellow scientists, and winning fellows are selected by independent panels of senior scholars based on candidates’ research accomplishments, creativity and potential to become a leader in her or his field.
