By Alicia Gregory

In 2009, the Virtual Observatory And Ecological Informatics System (VOEIS) project was launched. Funded by an NSF EPSCoR grant, VOEIS united researchers at five universities in Kentucky and two universities in Montana to develop a cyber infrastructure system to monitor, analyze, model, and forecast the consequences of environmental changes in freshwater ecosystems.

Real-time sensor readings from lakes and streams are sent to laboratories at Flathead Lake Biological Station in Montana and Hancock Biological Station in Kentucky and go into a database management system.

Barbara Kucera, principal

By Victoria Dekle

Professor Bruce O’Hara in the Department of Biology is interested in the overall quality of your sleep. In his research laboratory in the Thomas Hunt Morgan Building, O’Hara investigates sleep patterns and circadian rhythms within the brain.

Not all of his test subjects, however, are human.

Mice are a common organism used in many experimental laboratories, but O’Hara and two University of Kentucky colleagues have developed some new methods to expedite the research process and to provide a more humane data collection process.

O’Hara, Professor Kevin Donohue in the Department of Electrical and

Dr. David Westneat has been awarded a four year grant from the National Science Foundation for $305,000. The grant, which begins August 2013, will fund his project "Parental care and the integration of personality and plasticity at multiple levels of phenotypic variance". The project will examine the constituent components of variance in parental behavior of house sparrows to determine why birds that diligently care for offspring are more flexible.  The project is being conducted in collaboration with Dr. Matthew Schofield in the Statistics Department. More information about Dr. Westneat's research can be found on his lab website.

By Jacob Most

University of Kentucky Wildcats from all eight of UK’s spring sports teams combined to earn a total of 71 spots on the Southeastern Conference Spring Sports Academic Honor Roll, Commissioner Mike Slive announced this week.

UK’s honorees included 16 women’s track and field team members, 14 from baseball, nine from softball, seven women’s tennis players, eight men’s track and field team members, six each from men’s golf and men’s tennis and five women’s golfers.

A total of 1,247 student-athletes from around the league earned spots on the honor roll, which is based on grades from the 2012 summer, 2012 fall and 2013 spring terms.  In order to make the SEC Academic Honor Roll, a student-athlete must have a 3.0 grade-point average for the preceding academic year or his/her entire collegiate career, be at least a sophomore in academic

by Whitney Hale

Fifteen graduates of the University of Kentucky will head back to the classroom this fall as part of a new class of corps members in Teach for America. The UK group is among thousands of new teachers chosen this year for the national program, which is known for selecting outstanding college graduates to commit to teach for two years in disadvantaged urban and rural public schools.

Teach for America places its recruits in the nation's highest-need elementary and secondary schools in many of the country's lowest income communities, both rural and urban, in an effort to close the achievement gap between economically advantaged and disadvantaged children.

Currently, around 10,400 first- and second-year corps members instruct more than 750,000

By Ellyce Loveless

Few students have the kind of passion for world news that recently-graduated International Studies major MeNore Lake has. Two years ago she sought to fulfill a need at the University of Kentucky through this passion. She wanted to create an online news publication that would publish monthly articles written by students about international politics, economies, science, sports, and culture, and thus The World Report was born.

Lake comes from a family that values the knowledge of international affairs, where discussing the culture of other countries is customary dinner conversation, and traveling out of the country is always an exciting yet familiar adventure. When she came to UK, she noticed a void in student interest concerning international issues.

 “

By Sarah Geegan

University of Kentucky student Brooke Stewart has been selected to participate in an inaugural leadership program for GEAR UP alumni in Washington, D.C. in June. The Covington, Kentucky native and Holmes High school graduate is among 30 former GEAR UP students selected from across the nation.

GEAR UP, or Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs, is a federally funded college access and readiness program.

Stewart was actively involved with GEAR UP while she attended Holmes High School. She attended a three-week GEAR UP Summer Academy at Eastern Kentucky University in 2009, was heavily involved in GEAR UP Students Give Back community service projects, and was a recipient of the GEAR UP Drive

By Sarah Geegan

How do young college-age scientists spend their summer?  They do research, of course.  And two University of Kentucky undergraduate students have received prestigious American Physiological Society (APS) Undergraduate Summer Research Fellowships to conduct their work this summer.  Only 24 undergraduates nationwide were selected to work in laboratories of established APS investigators.

Kyeong Ran (Rachel) Jang, a biology major from Louisville who just finished her freshman year, and Audra Stacy, a senior biology major from Elkhorn City, Ky., received $4,000 each to conduct their research over a 10-week period this summer.  Each of them also received $1,300 to travel to the APS annual Experimental Biology meeting, a broad-

By Jake Most

The University of Kentucky's Chelsea Oswald has added to her already impressive collection of awards both on and off the track, as she has been named Southeastern Conference Track and Field Women’s Scholar-Athlete of the Year.



Oswald was named 2013 SEC H. Boyd McWhorter Female Scholar-Athlete of the Year recipient earlier this season. The McWhorter Award goes to the conference’s top scholar-athlete across all sports.



Oswald was also named First Team All-SEC, having won two conference championships – at 5,000 and 10,000 meters – last weekend at the SEC Meet.



She set the SEC 10K record, and was fewer than two

By Jenny Wells

The Kentucky Girls STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) Collaborative, in partnership with the STEM-H Institute at Eastern Kentucky University, will hold its fifth annual conference "Reaching for the Stars!" Friday, June 7, at the Eastern Kentucky University campus.

Educators, counselors, business and community leaders, parents and girls are invited to come meet others with a strong desire to see girls discover opportunities available to them within the STEM fields. Conference attendees will explore up-and-coming career opportunities in the STEM disciplines and learn proactive steps to help girls

By Whitney Hale

Five University of Kentucky students and one recent graduate have been selected to receive government-funded National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowships. The fellowships will present the students with more than $100,000 to use toward research-based master's or doctoral degrees.

The NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program helps ensure the vitality of the human resource base of science and engineering in the United States and reinforces its diversity. The program recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students in NSF-supported science, technology, engineering and mathematics disciplines who are pursuing research-based master's and doctoral degrees in the U.S. and abroad. NSF fellows receive a three-year annual stipend of $30,000 along with a $12,000

By Alicia Gregory.

Schyler Nunziata is a first-year Ph.D. student in biology at the University of Kentucky, and she’s the first success story highlighted in a new video series.

Nunziata is a young scientist who can testify to the impact of Kentucky's Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research, known as Kentucky EPSCoR. Two grants from the National Science Foundation through EPSCoR kept Nunziata in science and in Kentucky. The first $5,000 grant, while she was a masters student at Eastern Kentucky University, funded her entire thesis project, which involved collecting two lined salamanders, developing genetic markers, and genotyping the salamanders. The second grant, as a Ph.D. student at the University of Kentucky, allowed her to prepare a pilot study.

"EPSCoR helps get students into

By Sarah Geegan

English professor Erik Reece and Biology professor James Krupa recently released a book that brings to life the history and ecology of one of Kentucky's most important natural landscapes —the Robinson Forest in eastern Kentucky.

"The Embattled Wilderness" depicts the fourteen thousand acres of diverse forest region-- a haven of biological richness-- as endangered by the ever-expanding desert created by mountaintop removal mining. The authors, alternating chapters that focus on the natural and cultural history of the forest, combine their professional knowledge of the area to persuasively appeal for its protection.

Erik Reece, an environmental writer,

By Jenny Wells. Video by Reveal Research Media.

The UK Office of Undergraduate Research, along with SPUR (the Society for the Promotion of Undergraduate Research), and the UK Student Government Association, will host the eighth annual Showcase for Undergraduate Scholars 3 to 6 p.m. Wednesday, April 24, in the ballrooms of the UK Student Center. 

Each year, the showcase brings together undergraduates from all disciplines, their faculty mentors, and members of the community to learn about the various types of research being done by undergraduate students at UK. This occasion provides these students the opportunity to demonstrate and discuss their specific projects and the professional advancements the projects helped

By Whitney Hale, Breanna Shelton

The University of Kentucky Gaines Center for the Humanities has chosen 12 outstanding undergraduates as new scholars for the university's Gaines Fellowship Program for the 2013-14 and 2014-15 academic years. Gaines Fellowships are given in recognition of outstanding academic performance, demonstrated ability to conduct independent research, an interest in public issues and a desire to enhance understanding of the human condition through the humanities.

Gaines Fellowships are awarded for the tenure of a student's junior and senior years, or for the last two years of a five-year program; students in all disciplines and with any intended profession are given equal consideration.

UK's

By Sarah Geegan

Biology Professor Catherine Linnen recently helped paint a clearer picture of a big evolutionary question, using very small subjects.

Linnen was recently published in the prestigious journal Science for her work with deer mice. These critters provided key insight into understanding how underlying molecular and evolutionary mechanisms function as an organism adapts to new environments.

"In the more than 150 years since the publication of Charles Darwin’s 'Origin of Species,' in which the idea that small, incremental changes can over great distances of time evolve new forms, more modern thought and modern technologies have only reinforced and augmented  Darwin’s grand and dangerous idea,"

UK Biology professor Jeramiah Smith, collaborating with scientists from 35 other institutions worldwide, was recently published in the prestigious journal Nature Genetics for his work with genome sequence of the sea lamprey.

Lampreys are representatives of an ancient vertebrate lineage that diverged from our own, approximately 500 million years ago.  By virtue of this deeply shared ancestry, the sea lamprey (Petromyzon marinus) genome is uniquely poised to provide insight into the ancestry of vertebrate genomes and fundamentals of vertebrate biology.

"The reason that lampreys are interesting is that they are vertebrates, but are more distantly

By Sarah Geegan

A new hybrid course in the College of Arts and Sciences will bridge the gap between to seemingly unrelated areas: art and epidemics.

Using an interdisciplinary approach, the course will focus on five different diseases: alcoholism, tuberculosis, AIDS, cancer and the plague, through both scientific and humanities approaches. Students will explore opposite ways of conceptualizing, expressing and writing about this common theme. This 3-credit course will be available in the fall 2013 semester, and is open to all students majoring in the humanities or the sciences.

The course is titled, "UKC 310: Art and Epidemics."

Instructors Katherine Rogers-Carpenter and Rita Basuray structured the course to cover the science

By Whitney Hale

In celebration of the University of Kentucky's upcoming sesquicentennial in 2015, the 44th of 150 weekly installments remembers early alumnus Thomas Hunt Morgan, a world renowned experimental zoologist and pioneering geneticist.

Thomas Hunt Morgan was born in Lexington, Ky., on Sept. 25, 1866. He attended the Agricultural and Mechanical (A&M) College of Kentucky (now UK) during the 1880s. He earned a bachelor's degree in 1886 and received a master's degree two years later. Morgan briefly taught natural history at A&M before going east. 

Morgan was a nephew of Confederate General John Hunt Morgan. As a student at A&M, Morgan continued to live at his birthplace, Hopemont, the home of his famous family. The

by Jay Blanton

video by UK Public Relations and Marketing.

University of Kentucky President Eli Capilouto Thursday praised the partnership of Gov. Steve Beshear and legislative leaders who are strongly supporting UK's self-financing of a dramatic $275 million transformation of the campus.

"We are here this morning because of your leadership and your willingness to partner with us, as educational institutions, united to provide Kentucky with the best education, research and service," Capilouto said at a Frankfort news conference with the governor and legislative leaders who are supporting UK's proposal. "In offering your support for us to self-finance facilities that will help dramatically improve and transform our campuses, you are voicing your faith in Kentucky's