Lingfeng Tang
Biology Department
Mentor: Dr. Doug Harrison
Undergraduate instructional assistants within one of the university's newest Living Learning Programs, STEMCats, use their past experiences to mentor incoming UK students.
Gismo Therapeutics Inc., a New York-based biotech startup, has recently relocated its company to the University of Kentucky Advanced Science and Technology Commercialization Center, a business incubator housing new and emerging technology-based companies on UK’s campus.
While STEMCats may be one of the newest Living Learning Communities on campus, it is providing incoming students with many unique opportunities. Students are not only able to live on campus and take courses with like-minded peers, but STEMCats also allows incoming freshmen students to participate in research and connect with peers, upperclassmen, and professors. In this podcast, we talk with several Undergraduate Instructional Assistants, or UIA’s, who have been building connections with STEMCats freshmen through sharing their experiences.
The College of Arts and Sciences inducted six new members into its Hall of Fame Oct. 10, 2014, with a ceremony at the Singletary Center for the Arts, bringing the current totals to 38 alumni and 13 emeritus faculty A&S Hall of Fame members.
2014 Alumni Inductees:
Ethelee Davidson Baxter
Robert Straus Lipman
Jill M. Rappis
George H. Scherr
2014 Emeriti Faculty Inductees:
George C. Herring
Keith B. MacAdam
Title:
"Best" in a Biological Context: Optimization across the Biological Hierarchy
Abstract:
Many central concepts in biology involve notions of what is "better" or "best" in the context of evolution, physiology, and behavior. Similarly, in many applied areas of the life sciences, we are concerned with developing a "best" method to carry out drug therapies, resource harvesting, pest management, and epidemic control. I will discuss, with audience participation, what it might mean to be "best" for several problems at different levels of the biological hierarchy. This includes being clear about differences between maximization and optimization, and taking account of constraints, historical and others, on biological systems. Examples will incorporate notions of optimal control, emphasizing
spatial problems.
There will be a reception at 3:30 in POT 745 before the talk.
Brief Biography:
Louis J. Gross is a James R. Cox and Alvin and Sally Beaman Distinguished Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and Mathematics and Director of The Institute for Environmental Modeling at The University of Tennessee, Knoxville. He is also Director Emeritus of the National Institute for Mathematical and Biological Synthesis, a National Science Foundation-funded center to foster research and education at the interface between math and biology. He completed a B.S. degree in Mathematics at Drexel University and a Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics at Cornell University, and has been a faculty member at UTK since 1979. His research focuses on applications of mathematics and computational methods in many areas of ecology, including disease ecology, landscape ecology, spatial control for natural resource management, photosynthetic dynamics, and the development of quantitative curricula for life science undergraduates. Among other activities he has served as Program Chair of the Ecological Society of America, as President of the Society for Mathematical Biology, President of the UTK Faculty Senate and as Chair of the National Research Council Committee on Education in Biocomplexity Research. He is the 2006 Distinguished Scientist awardee of the American Institute of Biological Sciences, is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and is co-editor of the Encyclopedia of Theoretical Ecology, published in 2012 by the University of California Press. Along with Erin Bodine and Suzanne Lenhart, he is co-author of the text Mathematics for the Life Sciences
published by Princeton University Press in 2014.
This event is supported, in part by the College of Arts and Sciences
The Department of Biology is excited to welcome Assistant Professor Jakub Famulski to its faculty!
This podcast is part of a series highlighting the new faculty members who joined the College of Arts and Sciences in the fall 2014 semester.
This podcast was produced by Casey Hibbard.
Flying Saucers in the Gardens of Paradise by. Joe Davis Research Affiliate in the Department of Biology at MIT
September 25th, 2014 College of Arts & Sciences University of Kentucky
Sponsored by. Department of Biology Ribble Endowment
George H. Scherr is a bacteriologist, researcher and inventor, currently residing in Highland Park, Ill. He earned his bachelor’s degree from Queen’s College in 1941 – majoring in Biology with a minor in Chemistry – and studied chemistry at Princeton University before pursuing graduate study at the University of Kentucky. Scherr graduated from UK with a master’s degree in 1949 and a doctorate in 1951 in microbiology, focusing on bacteriology and cytogenetics.
The second in the “Works in Progress Series” features Melissa Adler, Assistant Professor in the School of Library and Information Science. She will be discussing the introduction to her book manuscript, tentatively titled Perverse Subjects: Becoming Bodies of Literature in the Library. The book provides an account of the ways in which the Library Congress classification standards that organize research libraries in the U.S. and abroad have reproduced normative ideas about sexuality since the beginning of the 20th century. The project challenges these classifications through the lens of perversion, echoing Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s call to become “perverse readers.”
Carol Mason (GWS) and Rusty Barrett (Linguistics) will serve as respondents. Attendees should email CST Director Dr. Marion Rust (marion.rust@uky.edu) for a copy of Dr. Adler’s paper.
