Ytori, University of Florida College of Liberal Arts and Sciences 2014 Turlington Hall PO Box 117300 Gainesville, FL 32611
EMAIL clas-news@ufl.edu
WEBSITE news.clas.ufl.edu
@UF.CLAS @UF_CLAS @UF_CLAS
ON THE COVER
As we look to the stars, human curiosity and imagination spark a desire to explore worlds beyond our own. Design by Kathleen Martin. Cosmos with stars. @ HY/Adobe Stock. Travel to fantasy world. @ Lazy_Bear/ Adobe Stock.
NASA Distinguished Service Medal. By NASA/GSFC/Bill Hrybyk. Brent Sumerlin
photo by Michel Thomas.
From the Dean
In the closing moments of Dante’s “Inferno,” as the pilgrim protagonist and his guide, the Roman poet Virgil, finally emerge from the dark depths of hell, their hope of reaching paradise is rekindled as they look up, “to see — once more — the stars.” As he makes his way through purgatory and eventually finds his way to heaven, it becomes clear that Dante’s solution for a troubled world lies in our common search for something greater than ourselves — a higher power, what Dante calls the “love that moves the sun and the other stars.” Perhaps one of the greatest lessons of Dante’s pilgrimage is that his success was not possible without the assistance of others. In the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, we rank collaboration and interdisciplinarity among our greatest strengths.
In this issue of Ytori, we explore the power of aspiration, embodied in the search for worlds beyond our own, beyond ourselves, be they imaginary or real. But we also celebrate the joy and power of collaboration; hence our cover art invites the reader to take this journey with us, becoming a companion on the endless expedition to greater knowledge.
Join us then as we meet the pioneers of the Astraeus Institute: humanities scholars, scientists, and astronauts exploring new perspectives on our engagement with the stars and outer space (page 12). We will also meet some of the shining stars of CLAS: researchers unlocking the mysteries of human aging (page 24), students using AI to develop the next generation of interstellar communication (page 10), and a disabled veteran whose personal quest for a new life through higher education exemplifies the boundless strength of the human spirit (page 28). We also examine the work of the Gulf scholars who consider the role of resilience in finding solutions to complex challenges of our Gulf communities (page 8).
Through each of these stories, we are challenged to do more, to go further, and to see beyond the present. As we welcome this new year, I am hopeful that this issue will inspire you and finds you, in the words of Dante, “renewed and prepared to climb unto the stars.”
Sincerely,
Mary Watt
Interim Dean, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
Photo by Michel Thomas.
A RADIANT FUTURE
Before KERI HOADLEY emerged as a world-class leader in ultraviolet (UV) space instrumentation, she was a curious child captivated by the night sky. She peppered her parents with questions they couldn’t answer. Undeterred, she’d rush to the local library to seek the answers herself.
Hoadley’s early fascination kindled a lifelong quest to understand how celestial bodies form and evolve. She’s still asking big questions today, inspiring the next generation of scientists to do the same.
“It’s amazing to witness that moment when a student realizes they can actually push science forward into the unknown,” Hoadley said.
Hoadley’s recent appointment to the astronomy department faculty is a testament to the transformative power of private philanthropy. Thanks to a generous gift from the Dharma Endowment Foundation, her dreams of leading and building large UV telescopes are now within reach.
The funds will establish the Hoadley UV Space Lab, outfitted with state-of-the-art equipment needed to design and
build instruments for space missions. By merging the resources of the Hoadley Lab with UF’s interdisciplinary Astraeus Space Institute, UF will become a premier launching pad for students pursuing space-oriented careers.
“The funding allows us to have the research capacity and infrastructure to build space telescopes right here on UF’s campus,” Hoadley said. “Rather than just addressing immediate needs, we’re able to think further down the line.”
Hoadley’s expertise positions her to significantly contribute to the technology development and preliminary science needed for NASA’s Habitable Worlds Observatory, the first to search for signs of life on exoplanets.
Private support not only fuels Hoadley’s pioneering work but also elevates UF’s stature in future NASA flagship missions.
It’s proof that private funding is not just about dollars and cents; it is about seeding a future at the frontier of science.
UNIVERSITY of FLORIDA
Photo by Michel Thomas.
DISCOVER MORE OF THE COLLEGE’S EXCITING NEW RESEARCH DEVELOPMENTS clas.ufl.edu/researchroundup
A CHEMIST’S BEST FRIEND
Discovered in 1985, fullerenes, ball- or cylinderlike carbon-based cages, have joined diamond and graphite as the only three well-defined allotropes of carbon. Coming in all shapes and sizes, fullerenes are known for exceptional stability and resilience, and have a great ability to accept and donate electrons providing numerous application opportunities.
A new study, led by Assistant Professor of Chemistry MINGJIE LIU, provides the most
comprehensive dataset of C20 to C60 fullerenes to date. For chemists developing new materials for medicine delivery systems, nano-sensors, and energy storage, this is a match made in heaven. Incorporating a total of 5,770 structures, the study unlocked the keys to understanding the multiple combinations of structures and how they directly affect the properties of stability, solubility, and electronic behavior.
CULTURAL TIES
Associate Professor of Psychology and Director of the ¡Chévere! Lab ROBERTO L. ABREU has studied mental health within the LGBTQ+ community for years and has received numerous grants and awards for his efforts to improve mental wellness in teenagers and adolescents. This year, he received his second R01 grant from the National Institutes of Health, the largest grant they distribute, to fund a new study to address issues faced by the Latinx LGBTQ+ community.
Fullerene diagrams courtesy of Mingjie Liu.
LGBTQ+ pride flag colors. @ pelikanz/Adobe Stock.
Roberto L. Abreu photo by Michel Thomas.
THESUNDOESATITSCURRENT
LAUNCHING A STAR
One of the most reliable ways to determine a star’s age is to measure its elemental composition, as stars gain and lose certain elements throughout their lifecycle. Lithium is one of those indicator elements, with a higher density in older versus younger stars. A recent discovery by Assistant Professor of Astronomy RANA EZZEDDINE and alumnus JEREMY KOWKABANY may have challenged this measurement system. During a survey in 2023, the pair discovered a star, named J0524-0336, that was not only incredibly lithium-dense for its age, but had a higher amount of lithium than any star, at any age. Why J0524-0336 is so inundated with lithium, no one knows for sure. According to Ezzeddine, the two theories are that the star is undergoing a so-far-unobserved phase of the stellar life cycle, or the excess lithium was the result of a celestial collision. Either way, the pair plans to conduct further research to get to the bottom of this astronomical mystery.
In this novel study, Abreu aims to identify the contributing factors that are unique to the Latinx community to create a guide to help mental health professionals provide more targeted assistance. These factors include familial and communal connections, traditional gender norms, religion and spirituality, and hostility from those outside both communities. “Our findings will reveal unique strengths and barriers in Latinx families with LGBTQ youth that will help us design future interventions for community and clinical providers,” Abreu explained.
The Lambholt NASA Space Mission is a massive collaboration between UF and nine other U.S. universities to launch an artificial star into Earth’s orbit by 2029. This effort has brought together some of the brightest minds in astronomy, including Assistant Professor of Astronomy JAMIE TAYAR. Tayar researches stars; she focuses on learning about their growth cycles, the physics inside them, and creating accurate models for use in the lab or classroom, making her a perfect fit for the mission.
Creating and launching an artificial star will help provide a breadth of new knowledge, not just on stars but also on the universe itself. The big question Tayar hopes to answer is whether other planets could be in the same sweet spot as Earth in regard to their distance from the sun to support oceans and even life. This could lead to answers for questions like, “How did we get here? Is there life elsewhere in the universe?”
Scale. @ injenerker/Adobe Stock.
Rocket launch.
@ Tryfonov/Adobe Stock.
Resilience? What is
By Kathryn Pizzurro
UF Gulf Scholars offers an interdisciplinary approach to defining resilience
The Gulf of Mexico and its coastal communities are complex and dynamic entities. With rich and diverse histories that are both inspiring and filled with contradictions, the Gulf and its surroundings must address difficult challenges such as pollution, rising sea levels, eroding shorelines, and rapid landscape development, if they are to thrive.
As varied as the challenges are, so too must be the solutions, and the UF Gulf Scholars Program is poised to help students develop the skills and mindset necessary for effective civic engagement, public leadership, and public service to begin to address these challenges.
With the official launch of the Gulf Scholars Program in the fall of 2024, the Bob Graham Center for Public Service hosted a panel symposium, Our Gulf, Our Future: Navigating the Tides Together. The diversity
of the panelists clearly represented the interdisciplinary nature of the program.
Pulitzer Prize-winning author JACK DAVIS, Distinguished Professor of History and the Rothman Family Endowed Chair at UF, first posed the question, “What is resilience?”
Davis challenged the panelists and attendees to think differently about resilience. “I think we need to understand that sea level rise is not going to go away,” he said. “The coast is ephemeral, and that resilience sadly is forestalling the inevitable — relocation.”
When we think about resilience, he suggested, we should think about ecology and solutions beyond the building of concrete seawalls.
“Our most effective defense against what is happening around the American coast is the living shoreline. Mangroves, marshes, and grassy
Viera wetlands. @ Jo/Adobe Stock.
beaches absorb the energy of waves. With a living shoreline we have a win-win-win. Estuaries are birthplaces and habitats, buffers against intense weather and they are fantastic carbon sinks,” he said.
MARLOWE STARLING, a UF graduate and environmental journalist who has reported on living shorelines in both Florida and New York, gave yet another perspective on resilience. “My role [as a journalist] is not allowing misinformation to hinder our progress, to provide information to people that helps them make the decisions that are the most productive.”
Starling said sometimes stories about wildlife help illustrate what a lack of resilience can do as well, relaying the story of the Florida Reef gecko, currently suffering the effects of coastal squeeze, or the loss of habitat as a result of rising sea levels and increased urban development.
JEFF CARNEY, an associate professor in the UF School of Architecture, certified city planner, and director of the Florida Institute for Built Environment Resilience, described a resilient system as one that can manage change in some way. It can reject it, it can get out of the way, or it can adapt, he said.
“I like to think of resilience, or the challenges that we face, as presenting us with an opportunity to transform what we do,” Carney added, suggesting that living on the coast is not bad or wrong, but, “we do it in a terrible way.”
Carney urged the group to think about what technology offers and the various capabilities we now have and how we should start to think about a society that is adaptive and can occupy the coast safely.
CHRISTINE ANGELINI, Ph.D., the director of the Center for Coastal Solutions and a professor of environmental engineering sciences at UF, said the problems need more than one solution, adding, “It’s not just an ecology problem, it’s a water problem, it’s an infrastructure problem, it’s a community problem that requires the interdisciplinary expertise represented by this panel.” Angelini also commented on the positive effect that the shared experiences facing these challenges have made on coastal communities. Relationships have grown stronger, and communities have become nimbler, she said.
“All of us are adapting to climate change all the time in our individual behaviors and in the interactions that we are having, so there is a resilience that is just occurring as a result of how we individually respond to events.”
“There are opportunities for transition and translation and evolution that are really positive,” Angelini added.
Carney encouraged the attendees to be creative and not to stay within their own disciplinary tracks. “We have to solve the problems, but we have to dream about something we don’t have the answer to. We have to communicate with all the different fields.”
The UF Gulf Scholars is now a Medallion program at UF. By completing the required coursework, experiential learning opportunities, and a Gulf Impact Project, students will be well-prepared to tackle some of the Gulf’s most pressing challenges, whether in graduate school or the workforce.
Panelists from the Sept. 10 symposium included, from top, Marlowe Starling, Jeff Carney, Jack Davis, and Christine Angelini. The event hosted over 120 attendees at the Bob Graham Center for Public Service. Photos by Elena Ashburn.
clas.ufl.edu/ gulfpanel
Talking to the Stars
By Morgan Vanderlaan
“While what it means to be human is at the heart of our work, AI is helping us explore it.”
— ZEA MILLER
Over 50 years after the idea of interstellar communication was first theorized, students at the University of Florida continue the mission of communicating with the stars, with the addition of a 21st-century technological marvel: artificial intelligence.
Through the new honors (Un) Common Writes course, Interstellar AI, students are challenged to re-create the original Pioneer 10 plaque and Voyager records, and imagine how an AI chatbot might help a user be informed about Earth if another craft were sent to the stars.
Assistant Instructional Professor ZEA MILLER said his course is paving the way for interdisciplinary AI studies by combining writing, rhetoric, semantics, semiotics, anthropology, philosophy, and so much more.
Interstellar AI is part of a rollout of six new honors courses created by the University Writing Program in collaboration with the UF Honors Program. The courses allow students the opportunity to work directly with instructors while expanding their writing skills, tapping into their creativity, and finding their voice. Fall 2024 was the first semester that (Un) Common Writing classes were offered.
With small class sizes, Miller said a learning environment is fostered where students encourage and support one another.
“We are able to share and collaborate on our work faster and more meaningfully,” he said. “Our conversations are natural. We can pivot quickly and easily. We can work both around one table and across all whiteboards together. In short, we are able to realize the academic dream.”
Miller said he hopes students take away how conceptualization has downstream effects on understanding and thinking. By recasting AI as a mode and not a tool, we create new conditions for collaborative work, he said.
“In the same way that UF is the leader for AI education, our writing program, with pioneering coursework in professional writing for AI, is a leader for AI and writing,” he said. “In this course, students create content with an AI, then create content to train an AI. We have not yet sent an AI into space, so the experience of doing something new, even as an exercise, prepares my students to thrive in new, AI-fueled spaces.”
Through using UF NaviGator AI, the university’s personal large language model processing site, Miller said students are not only prompting AI for content but also creating content for an AI to process.
“While what it means to be human is at the heart of our work, AI is helping us explore it,” he said.
WESLEY WOLFE, a secondyear finance major, said taking Interstellar AI has encouraged the use of combining AI and ideation, two fields not typically intertwined.
“I’ve taken (Un)Common Reads courses through the UF Honors Program in my past 2 semesters as well, but none have promoted this sort of abstract thinking and creativity,” he said.
Wolfe added there is an emphasis on not only “thinking outside the box” but also “burning the box entirely,” which shows how AI fits within the current zeitgeist.
“I’ve been able to challenge the way I typically go about tackling thought experiments and gain a new perspective on what makes people, people,” he said.
“I love this class so much that I look forward to every Monday,” said ZISHU (CATHERINE) ZHAO, a first-year student majoring in psychology and data science.
The main task of this class is to dive into deep history and every aspect of our human civilization and summarize it into different forms of representation to be sent into interstellar space, Zhao said.
“I would say this class is the most creative, imaginative, groundbreaking, and unconstrained course I have ever taken,” she said.
A Brief History of Interstellar Communication
In 1960, in a laboratory at Stanford University, Ronald N. Bracewall theorized that the next step of human evolution would be sending messages into outer space. Interstellar communication would not be accomplished until more than a decade later, when a message on a plaque was affixed to NASA’s Pioneer 10 spacecraft.
Still barreling toward the star Aldebaran in the Taurus constellation, the spacecraft is not meant to reach its intended destination for more than 2 million years. The small, golden plaque depicts both male and female forms in relative size to the spacecraft. It also visualizes Earth’s location by detailing our solar system, with hopes of reaching other worlds.
In 1974, a deliberate radio message was broadcast into space from the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, with
the purpose of calling on extraterrestrial life forms. Earth’s first attempt to “phone E.T.” was an elementary message, containing the formula for DNA, representations of the fundamental chemicals for life, a simplified drawing of our solar system, photographs of human beings and the Arecibo telescope.
Since then, other messages, plaques, and even songs on The Voyager’s Golden Record have been transmitted beyond Earth’s boundaries.
To this day, no aliens have taken up the offer to respond to any of the messages. Yet the purpose was not solely for communication, it was to show that the theoretical could be possible. In other words, the only limitation is the human imagination.
Imagination and innovation are inextricably laced in many human endeavors, perhaps none more so than when we look to the stars.
The ability to imagine has given the human species the power to create, problem solve, empathize, and theorize. In fact, creative imagination can be found at the origin of every modern development throughout time. From medical advancements and the formation of governments to the establishment of the internet and the creation of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3 — all at first were simply imagined.
So, it is not a leap to think that in establishing a space institute at the University of Florida, collaborators would continue to anchor the institution in the human element of imagination. That’s where space exploration began.
Ancient Greek philosopher Thales, later known as the father of Greek science and mathematics, questioned the true origins of the universe. Introducing deductive reasoning, Thales sought answers beyond the stories of gods and heroes. Three hundred years later, Aristotle theorized the geocentric layout of the universe with Earth at its stationery core and celestial bodies revolving around it.
In the early 14th century, the Italian poet Dante told the story of a vertical journey through the universe, reaching the stars in what he described as paradise. And in the fall of 1609, Galileo began observing the heavens with instruments he created to magnify his view up to 20 times beyond what the natural eye could see. Through his telescope, Galileo observed mountains on the moon, rings around Saturn, and the moons of Jupiter, all evidence that the universe did not revolve around the Earth, but the sun.
Inspired by words written in 1865 by Jules Verne in his novel, “De la Terre à la Lune” (From the Earth to the Moon), a 10-year-old Russian boy questioned, could travel be possible beyond the Earth’s atmosphere? Could Verne’s 900-foot-long space gun propel
humans — or anything for that matter — through the bonds of gravity and into outer space?
Maybe not, but it was that thought, that very human characteristic of curiosity that drove that boy — eventually a high school math teacher, to create what is argued as the basic mathematical equation for space flight. Today, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky is known as the grandfather of modern rocketry.
Some 30 years later, this time in Worcester, Massachusetts, another young boy read H.G. Wells’ science fiction classic, “The War of the Worlds.” The next year, at the age of 17, after climbing a cherry tree to cut off its dead limbs, he became fascinated with the sky.
“I imagined how wonderful it would be to make some device which had even the possibility of ascending to Mars, and how it would look on a small scale, if sent up from the meadow at my feet,” he later wrote. “It seemed to me then that a weight whirling around a horizontal shaft, moving more rapidly above than below, could furnish lift by virtue of the greater centrifugal force at the top of the path. I was a different boy when I descended the tree from when I ascended. Existence at last seemed very purposive.”
These imaginings led engineer, professor, physicist, and inventor Robert Hutchings Goddard to create and build the world’s first liquid-fueled rocket. And upon his work, modern rocket innovation was born.
First formed in the minds of ancient philosophers, poets, writers, astronomers, and mathematicians, the idea of a world beyond our own and its potential exploration came to be. With the imagination ignited by the human element of curiosity and the advancement of science, humankind has made yesterday’s fiction into today’s reality and, potentially, tomorrow’s quest.
“If we are to believe certain narrow-minded people — and what else shall we call them? — humanity is confined within a circle … from which there is no escape, condemned to vegetate on this globe, never able to venture into interplanetary space! That’s not so! We are going to the Moon, we shall go to the planets, we shall travel to the stars just as today we go from Liverpool to New York!”
— The Annotated Jules Verne: From the Earth to the Moon. Edited and translated by Walter James Miller, Gramercy Books, 1978
forming astraeus
In January 2024, UF announced that $2.5 million of funding received from the Florida Legislature for the advancement of interdisciplinary scholarship and enhancement of the student experience would be earmarked for the development of a space-related institute.
Managed by UF Research, the UF Astraeus Space Institute was formed with ROB FERL, distinguished professor who studies biology in space, named as its inaugural director. When first developing the idea of a space institute at the University of Florida, Ferl seized the opportunity to make humanities an integral part of the conversation.
“In starting a space institute here now, we have the benefit of being able to look back and say in this new era, the commercial space era, the space station era, the era when more and more people are going into space, if we were to re-imagine what a space institute could look like, what would we want to do now?”
“One of the things that we bring to the table at the University of Florida is that we have the breadth of expertise here — the human element, what the very idea of space means to us as a people, what does it mean to our various cultures, is the moon different for different people, what about how we consider space overall,” Ferl said.
As director of Astraeus, Ferl brought a humanist on board as one of his first tasks.
TERRY HARPOLD, associate professor of English, is a scholar of science fiction literature and film and is one of five assistant directors with Astraeus. Harpold is charged with advancing the conversation and collaboration across the disciplines of science, the humanities, and the arts.
“To his credit, Rob Ferl’s vision of the space institute goes beyond a massive bureaucratic effort to coordinate projects and seek large grants. It is about understanding not just the how of space exploration, but also the why of it, in all the forms that question takes. This is not merely a technical enterprise or a commercial enterprise, but it is also a cultural enterprise, an imaginative enterprise,” Harpold said.
enabling the conversation
“My role is to create opportunities for others to have the conversations that move us forward intentionally, collaboratively, in a way that cross-pollinates our disciplines,” Harpold said.
“The vision of Astraeus that is beginning to emerge is, for example, one in which a poet and an aerospace engineer can develop a more nuanced understanding of what a satellite represents in the imagination as it moves through its orbit. Or a human performance researcher studying the effects of weightlessness on the body might work with a dance choreographer to catalogue the strangely aesthetic qualities of astronauts’ everyday movements in a microgravity environment. You don’t know what’s going to happen to your perception of something when you start dialoguing about it from multiple, even inconsistent, perspectives. And that creates new forms of knowledge.”
A series of public-facing speaker events co-organized by Harpold and JORDAN CALLAHAM, Astraeus’s assistant director for administration, kicked off in the fall 2024 to do just that. Speakers included Christian Davenport, a reporter with The Washington Post who covers space and author of “The Space Barons: Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and the Quest to Colonize the Cosmos” (2018); a seminar on the search for extraterrestrial life with astronomer and
former NASA Chief Scientist John Grunsfeld, a veteran of five space shuttle flights, including three to repair the Hubble Space Telescope; a presentation on geospatial intelligence by BYRON KNIGHT, a distinguished UF alumnus and chief scientist in the Advanced Systems and Technology Directorate at the National Reconnaissance Office; and a lecture on “Our Moon, Ourselves” by science journalist Rebecca Boyle, author of “Our Moon: How Earth’s Celestial Companion Transformed the Planet, Guided Evolution, and Made Us Who We Are” (2024).
In creating these opportunities for varied, interdisciplinary conversations, Ferl hopes the Astraeus community can help overcome the perceived divide between the humanities and the disciplines of science. Creating an environment of understanding and appreciation for both approaches is crucial for a successful discussion, he said.
“I can never master my colleagues’ fields. Everyone in this community is specialized in what they do and it might seem at first that they don’t have many interests in common,” Harpold said. “But I can be their ally in every sense of the word, and they can be mine, and we can do stuff together that is innovative and beautiful.”
creating pathways for students
AMY WILLIAMS, associate professor of geology and an astrobiologist and geo-biologist within the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, also serves as an assistant director for Astraeus. Williams sees Astraeus as a vehicle to bring together people who did not have that common space, that common umbrella to unite them previously.
“I see it from the scientific perspective, but I have been so encouraged that from its inception, the space institute is meant to be a place for everyone by everyone, and what excites me is thinking about how the humanities do play a role in our exploration, perception of and respect for space,” Williams said. “The human component does sometimes get ignored. But CLAS has gone above and beyond to bring that human perspective to both the challenges and the things that we celebrate as a group.”
Within Astraeus, Williams focuses on student experience, engagement, and perception of the space program. “The number of students who reach out to me on a daily basis wanting to do astrobiology research or planetary science — which is just one corner of what we do just even at UF, is tremendous,” Williams said.
Her goal is to expand the community to answer the enormous demand and serve the students who are interested in working in the space industry, in whatever capacity that may be. By potentially expanding the course offerings, providing students help with navigating internships and developing relationships with industry partners, we can, in turn, feed the growing space workforce and the Florida economy.
research connection
ARE WE ALONE IN THE UNIVERSE?
Amy Williams takes her study of the Earth and expands it to the study of other worlds. Williams has spent most of her career performing analogous research on Earth as it applies to Mars. By using examples from Earth, where we know life exists, researchers can compare what evidence of life we may or may not find on other worlds.
“Analyses performed in my lab are meant to mimic the flight instruments on planetary missions to refine how you perform the experiments in situ, like on Mars,” Williams said. This summer, Williams visited Iceland to collect samples from the bottoms of hydrothermal lakes. Analyzing the sediment samples, measuring 100 degrees centigrade when taken, could tell researchers much about what happened on Mars in its early development. But lately, Williams’ work has taken her from the dry, cold world of Mars to the icy, ocean worlds of Europa and Enceladus. Moons of Jupiter and Saturn, both are optimistically considered as potential habitats for life.
“Looking at how life might have evolved on other worlds really informs me how much the evolution of life intertwines with how the Earth has evolved,” Williams said. “It makes me appreciate the natural world all the more and recognize how unique and special it is.”
Photo courtesy of Amy Williams.
preparing for deeper impact
With a global space economy estimated at $630 million in 2023 and projected to reach $1.8 billion by 2035, the opportunity for growth is near limitless.
Erika Wagner, senior director of emerging market development with American aerospace manufacturer and space technologies company Blue Origin, said the integral incorporation of the humanities into the UF Institute is what distinguishes it among its peers.
“While we often think of space through a lens of science and technology, it has always been a field deeply intertwined with people, history, policy, culture, design, and storytelling,” Wagner said.
“A program that gives students the tools to think about this holistically will position them for deeper
impact. And a research portfolio that grapples with this in a transdisciplinary way will understand the motivations, possibilities, and challenges of our future in space far better than any narrow lens can.
“Space exploration has always taken all of us — not just engineers and scientists and technicians, but policymakers, designers, accountants, lawyers, writers, human resources, and on and on. Professionals who couple a liberal arts education with a robust understanding of the field will unlock enormous possibilities,” Wagner added.
research connection IS THERE LIFE ON OTHER PLANETS?
By adapting a procedure commonly used in the pharmaceutical industry, CHARLES TELESCO, professor of astronomy, is moving closer to harnessing the use of circularly polarized light to determine whether life exists beyond our world.
Telesco and his team have developed a remote-sensing technique that measures the chiral (mirror-image) properties of a sample’s molecules. Their first-generation prototype can distinguish between biological and non-biological targets even if the composition of the target is unknown. Non-biological matter incorporates both molecular versions (a molecule and its mirror image), whereas life uses only one version of many molecules, a property called homochirality.
“If you were looking for life and you found a substance that may or may not be life, one way to determine very quickly is to determine if the molecules that make it up have the property of homochirality,” Telesco said.
A robust biosignature, molecular homochirality, or having only one of the two versions, is a characteristic of organisms on Earth, with very few exceptions. When analyzed with circularly polarized light, the chirality of molecules can be determined, and within fair certainty, life can be identified.
Telesco and his team are working toward creating a “shoebox-sized” polarimeter suitable for space deployment and detection of extraterrestrial life.
3D rendering of the UF Astraeus Space Institute. Courtesy of TTV Architects, Inc.
the mission at hand
In 1962, President John F. Kennedy said at Rice University, “We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.” Less than seven years later, that goal was met. But is the Astraeus goal quite as finite?
“We want to have an organically developed and eventually defined community of people that looks at the broad aspects of space exploration in ways that are curiosity driven, that are informed by the breadth of the university and that catapult any of the university efforts beyond what any individual might be able to do,” Ferl said.
Astraeus, Ferl said, will strive “to create a culture of broad-ranging input where if somebody raises their hand and asks the question, what happens to music in space? We ought to be able to talk about that, wonder about it and see if there is a question that we can start to answer.”
In five years, Ferl imagines a “community of a few hundred students, and a couple hundred faculty, where engineers are sitting down with biologists across the table from lawyers and philosophers. Where an idea is explored and analyzed from not just the scientific perspective but economic, social, philosophical and environmental.”
UF’s Astraeus Space Institute stands poised to blend the human elements of imagination and curiosity with critical analysis and scientific reasoning as we step into the new era of space exploration and inspire generations beyond our own.
research connection
HOW DO ROCKY PLANETS EVOLVE?
“Everything space-related was cool as a kid. Space was cool, planets were cool,” said STEPHEN ELARDO, assistant professor of geology. When he discovered he could learn more about space through geology, he was hooked.
Elardo studies the evolution of planets, in particular rocky objects like the moon. By studying how the moon and rocky planets such as Mars, Venus and Mercury have cooled through time, researchers can learn much about how they evolved.
With his research, Elardo hopes to answer, “How do we go from the nebula-making planets through making all the individual other planets with cores, mantles, and crusts, and how do they evolve geologically through time to end up so very different?”
The best sampled celestial body we have is the moon — and there is no better way to study these than having actual rocks in the laboratory, Elardo said.
Elardo’s current focus is on getting the scientific community ready for samples returning on Artemis 3, currently slated for late 2026. He is preparing a $7.5 million NASA proposal involving field work, lab work and plant-growth work in collaboration with his colleagues in IFAS.
by
Photo
John Jernigan.
Mapping the Data
By Morgan Vanderlaan
UF political scientist places election data center stage
In 2020, 24 states offered citizens the option to cast their votes before Election Day. In 2024, 47 states offered early voting, either in-person or through mail-in ballots. With an estimated 57% of votes cast before Nov. 5, early voting is on the rise.
From the opening of polling locations in September through Election Day, MICHAEL MCDONALD, professor of political science, maps, tracks, and predicts early voter turnout data. This continually updated information has become an in-demand resource for media outlets, polling organizations and researchers throughout the nation.
A popular podcast guest, interview subject for NBC, Fox News, and C-SPAN Washington Journal, and an oftenquoted source for publications like The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the Associated Press, McDonald is a star when it comes to voter turnout data collection.
“One of the things that I do is I calculate the turnout rates for the country, and many people view those turnout rates as the most accurate of those who are eligible to vote,” McDonald said. “So, they get used pretty widely. They’re in lots of textbooks. The Minnesota Secretary of State uses it as their official turnout rate. And many other places use the turnout rates for their own internal purposes.”
McDonald regularly updates his findings on the UF Election Lab website, which draws students, community members, and alumni far and wide. The site’s popularity predictably grows as early November draws near, and typically crashes with over 1 million unique hits on Election Day alone. In 2024, the election lab site had 554,000 visitors, with 17 million page views.
“… there’s also lots of individual data, so I teach students how to use that data, how to analyze it, how to understand its properties, so that they can do their own research on it.”
by
Michael McDonald.
Photo
Michel Thomas.
The UF Election Lab has tracked early voter turnouts since 2008. McDonald’s research team, The Voting and Election Science Team (VEST), produces the only source of nationwide precinct boundary data enhanced with precinct election results for recent U.S. elections.
During the 2024 election cycle, multiple media clients, such as The Wall Street Journal and Politico, purchased data from the lab for use in the election coverage. Leading up to the election, this early voting data was mirrored by The New York Times, The Washington Post, and CBS. As one of the only people doing early voting analysis, McDonald is often referenced on numerous platforms leading up to each election.
“This data is another indicator of the status of the horse race,” he said. “It’s a story where a lot of Americans are doing something together, they are casting ballots, and so it’s an activity worthy of following along for that purpose as well.”
Studying polling numbers has historically been used as a determining factor by major news networks to call races before official polling numbers are released. From the birth of the first national exit poll conducted in 1972 by CBS, a new art form began in the political science community:
analyzing turnout and determining how numbers can sway races.
Especially in a state like Florida, which was long considered a “swing state,” people coming out to the polls can truly be the deciding factor of even top ticket races. In 2000, Florida was won by George W. Bush by a margin of only 537 votes and became the deciding race for the entire country.
Despite not being considered a
“These numbers are of interest to the media, but they’re also of interest to the campaigns.”
battleground state in the 2024 election, Florida’s diverse and constantly growing population has its own unique outlooks ahead of the election cycle. Yet McDonald does not limit himself to one state’s early polling numbers, but rather does a cross-comparison of data throughout the country, meaning with 50 equally distinct states, his job during election season is truly never-ending. By analyzing early voting polling rather than exit polling, McDonald
can get ahead of the curve and report on election predictors while there is still time for individuals to vote. The election patterns captured while polling is still open shows how elections can change over time and fluctuate leading up to Election Day.
“The number of early voters has been steadily increasing,” McDonald said. “There’s a chart on the UF Election Lab site that has long-term trends. 2020 was an aberration because of the pandemic. About half the ballots that were cast in 2020, were cast by mail. In 2022, though, we reverted to the long-term upward trend in early voting. I expect that trend to continue as we project out what that trend would look like.”
Leading up to Election Day, the UF Election Lab website features an interactive map providing the user access to data showing how many ballots have already been cast in each state and in all precincts. The site then breaks down the data by the demographic markers of party affiliation, age, gender, and race/ ethnicity of all those who have cast an early ballot throughout the country.
The site currently has data for the 2024, 2020, and 2016 presidential cycles and the 2022 midterm elections. McDonald hopes the data can continue to be a resource utilized
by the political science community far and wide for years to come. As of the end of October, McDonald predicted 48% to 50% of 2024’s votes would be cast prior to Election Day. Initial reports in mid-November had that number closer to 57%.
“As another part of the work that we do at this point with the early voting data, because there’s so much early voting going on the weekend before the election, I will be forecasting what the turnout will be, and then all the major media organizations will be using that forecast to project out what they think will be the outstanding vote now updated after election, of course, with the actual numbers as we start getting them in,” McDonald said.
In 2020, McDonald published “Pandemic to Insurrection: Voting in the 2020 Presidential Election,” which explained early voting, how it works, and the political battles that surrounded voting in the 2020 election.
“Not surprisingly, since 2020 there’s been a decrease in the number of people who are using mail ballots,” he said. “In 2020, it was primarily Democrats casting mail-in ballots and now we’re seeing considerably fewer Democrats voting by mail this cycle than we did just four years ago. At the same time, we’re also seeing Republicans who in 2020 if they did
vote early, they were voting later in the early voting period or they were just voting on Election Day.”
This time around, McDonald said due to Republican politicians promoting in-person early voting, there has been an uptick in the demographic voting early that has previously not been seen.
“We can clearly see that Republicans are voting much earlier in the in-person early voting period than they did in 2020, and that’s tending to change how we might analyze what’s going on in this election,” he added. “What does it mean for the election? It’s important. I mean, for example, in Nevada, the Republican National Committee has decided to invest in Nevada kind of late in the game, but they see what they think are going to be favorable, in person early voting numbers, and they want to capitalize on that to try to win Nevada and win the Senate election. So, it changes how this data is used. These numbers are of interest to the media, but they’re also of interest to the campaigns.”
But the results of the election lab are also used to reach beyond peerreviewed journals, political groups, and national news organizations.
Wednesday mornings in the fall, a small classroom across from the Marston Library comes alive with students of data science to journalism, eager to
hear more about McDonald’s findings. McDonald encourages questions and makes meaningful connections between the data he is analyzing and current events transpiring in the media. By including students in the conversation, he has inspired many to take on the mantle of their own research projects, continuing his work outside the barriers of a typical classroom.
“I teach this election data science course which analyzes election data, specifically the individual level data that some states make available, that I use for the early voting to track the early voting activity,” he said.
“But there’s also lots of individual data, so I teach students how to use that data, how to analyze it, how to understand its properties, so that they can do their own research on it. This is all being informed by the data that I’m analyzing and collecting, and then I can share that with students for their various projects that they’re working on.”
EXPLORE THE UF ELECTION LAB clas.ufl.edu/electionlab
Phishing for Answers
By Brian Smith
Psychologist
Natalie Ebner works to unlock the secrets of the aging human brain
The human brain may be one of the most complex and enigmatic objects in the universe, and researchers around the world have spent centuries trying to understand exactly how it functions.
At the University of Florida, Trish Calvert Ring Endowed Professor of Psychology NATALIE EBNER is leading the way in brain aging research, trying to understand how our brain develops and changes as we get older. As the head of the Social Cognitive and Affective Development Lab, she has been involved in dozens of research projects with the goal of understanding healthy aging, a pursuit that has led her to work with researchers from many different professional backgrounds across campus, as well as outside of the university and around the world.
“Given the complexity and multifacetedness of the phenomena we
study, we work highly collaboratively in my lab,” she said, “and over the years I’ve worked here at UF, I have collaborated with computer science and security experts, epidemiologists, neuroscientists, engineers, medical scientists, and even elder law experts.”
Ebner has contributed significantly to the UF research community, as shown by the number of publications she and her trainees have authored and the media attention her lab has received in just the past few years. In February 2024, for example, she and her team from UF, along with collaborators from the University of Central Florida and the University of Arizona, published their latest report in a long line of studies looking into decision making in the context of online scam vulnerability among elderly people.
Using a highly innovative, ecologically valid approach that allows for capturing scam vulnerability in real life among older adults, she and her team measured susceptibility to email phishing. Phishing is one of the most common types of scams online and can involve links embedded in emails designed to steal user data or compromise a computer when clicked. These are extremely effective, as their sophistication can make them easy to fall for. With just one click, someone can steal login info for email and even bank accounts, or place malicious software on a computer and an entire network.
To test this, Ebner’s study had participants sign up via email, and then using that information, her team sent out phishing emails and measured click rates. Of course, these links were completely harmless, as the study was approved by the university ethics board, and the participants were fully debriefed afterwards.
Ebner’s study importantly found that across all age groups, people were more likely to fall for these scams than not, but even more so for the older demographic and especially those older adults with neurocognitive impairments and heightened genetic risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease. These results suggest that as we age and our thinking, decision-making, and brain capacities decline, we are more likely to fall for deception and scams.
“We also found that mood can affect phishing susceptibility as well,” Ebner explained. “So, if you are in a good or a bad mood can impact how you process the information in front of you and affect your decision making.”
THE ART OF DECEPTION
The next step in Ebner’s deception work is to look at deep fake detection, a successor to her projects on fake
news and online scams. Deep fakes are a relatively new technology where a person’s face can be digitally replaced with another, and if done correctly it can look completely seamless. Like fake news, this technology already leads to a deluge of misinformation and influences social engineering.
To fight this threat, it is important that we learn to distinguish between real and doctored digital content and understand processes in the brain that facilitate this differentiation. Ebner’s research so far has shown that everyone struggles to identify deep fakes to some degree, which isn’t too surprising considering they’re designed to be hard to detect, but here again, older adults tend to struggle more. This could be for several reasons, like an unfamiliarity with the technology or age-related changes in information processing, and Ebner hopes that her research can find the root cause, help raise awareness of the issue, and most importantly train the brain to overcome difficulties and optimize decision making.
“One of the biggest problems with this kind of work is how quickly deception techniques move online,” Ebner said. “By the time we figure one out, there’s already a new one out there.”
Ebner’s research on deceptionrelated decision making also reaches out into marginalized communities and their specific vulnerability. To this end, together with her long-term colleague Nichole Lighthall, associate professor of psychology at UCF, she has been bringing members of the Black and Hispanic communities in Orlando to Gainesville to undergo brain imaging to shine light on brain aging and potential intervention targets to reduce victimization among these underrepresented groups.
“Across all age groups, people were more likely to fall for these scams than not, but even more so for the older demographic.”
Natalie Ebner’s (pictured) research has been documented in over 100 publications and funded by agencies including the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation. Photos by Michel Thomas.
“ Like any other muscle, it is possible to give our brains a workout in order to help maintain or improve our cognition.”
— Natalie Ebner
THE LOVE HORMONE
While the deception studies are a big part of her work, it is just one of three main pillars in Ebner’s research agenda. The second main pillar of Ebner’s research is oxytocin, a neuropeptide often called the “love hormone.” It plays various roles in the body, most prominently in social bonding, attachment, and childbirth. More recently, however, oxytocin has been implicated in social cognition — the capacity to process socially relevant information around us — and in this context, is particularly relevant in aging given declines, for example, in remembering faces and picking up on subtle social cues in other people.
Over the course of several weeks, participants in her studies would be administered the oxytocin compound intranasally, which has good tolerability and was shown safe when used in prescribed frequency and dosage. Participants are then asked to perform a series of tasks to test effects of the oxytocin intervention on their mental acuity, social function, and feeling states. Researchers found that oxytocin improved the ability to process faces and understand one’s own feelings; it also facilitated communication in regions of the brain known to be crucial for social cognition. These benefits were especially observed in older men,
which may be a result of their already lower levels of the neuropeptide and their greater challenges with such abilities at baseline, which would give them more room for improvement from the oxytocin treatment. Currently, together with two colleagues at UF, MEREDITH BERRY, assistant professor with the Department of Health Education and Behavior, and YENISEL CRUZ-ALMEIDA, associate professor and associate director with the Pain Research & Intervention Center of Excellence, Ebner also tests oxytocin’s effect among older adults with chronic pain and in the context of drug addiction, with promising initial findings supporting the neuropeptide’s therapeutic potential.
TRAINING THE BRAIN
The third pillar of Ebner’s work revolves around real-time functional magnetic resonance imaging neurofeedback to train willful brain activation, which fights cognitive decline in aging. Her lab is one of few to have established this brain-based learning technique among older adults, including those at particular risk for neurodegenerative disease. This technique constitutes a non-invasive approach to train the brain to use its full potential when performing a task. In this research, participants are connected to a brain imaging machine
that, for example, shows a visual thermometer reflecting their real time brain activation in a particular region. Over the course of the neurofeedback training, particpants are then asked to try to increase their brain activity in this region on their own. If they are successful, the thermometer rises, providing the “online” feedback of their brain training success. Initial results recently published by Ebner’s group show that older adults can learn this skill and by using it can enhance performance in cognitive tasks.
“Some people have a harder time training than others, and some can’t be trained at all,” Ebner explained, but these studies show that, like any other muscle, it is possible to give our brains a workout in order to help maintain or improve our cognition. These findings, published together with TIAN LIN, a research scientist and co-director in her lab, provide crucial documentation of the aging brain’s potential for functional plasticity, offering a promising future direction into brain training and intervention to advancing cognitive aging and brain health.
Left and above: Using real-time functional magnetic resonance imaging neurofeedback, Ebner’s work shows promising results for the future of brain training. Photos by Michel Thomas.
Cleared f or Launch
By Douglas Ray
Beginning Summer
2025, Going Gator is a DirectConnect program setting new UF transfer students on a trajectory of success
CARMELOS BROWN was transitioning out of military service in 2022, setting a goal to pursue higher education but without a clear path.
At Santa Fe College in Gainesville, Brown discovered a passion for history and social justice. He joined the student group My Brother’s Keeper, where he also discovered a path to the University of Florida. Brown is on track to receive his bachelor’s degree from UF in African American studies next spring.
More students will soon be making that leap from Santa Fe College to UF through Going Gator, an initiative envisioned by ADRIENNE PROVOST, who was hired in 2023 into a new role as director of student strategic initiatives in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at UF. Santa Fe was the first partner to join Going Gator, which guarantees admission to a choice
of 18 academic majors in CLAS for students who meet basic requirements.
For Brown, a disabled veteran, easing into academics at Santa Fe was the right start, but it could only take him so far. “I knew I wanted to pursue education but was still figuring out what path to take. Santa Fe provided the right environment to ease back into academics and explore different interests,” Brown said.
“I first learned about the Going Gator initiative through my advisors at Santa Fe College,” Brown said. “I had the opportunity to sit in on a class with Dr. Drew Brown, which became a transformative experience for me.”
DREW BROWN, assistant professor of African American studies, is one of several UF faculty Provost has brought to the Santa Fe College campus to talk with students about opportunities in CLAS.
Now an assistant dean in CLAS, Provost points to statistics gathered by the Aspen Institute that document the challenges facing the 80% of community college graduates who aspire to earn a bachelor’s degree, required for most jobs that pay a sustaining wage. Only 14% achieve that goal of graduating within six years.
Provost said, historically, the inability to transfer credits, a confusing higher education bureaucracy, and feelings of alienation from campus life are just a few of the daunting hurdles facing transferring students. That resonates with Brown, the transfer student.
“As a veteran, one challenge was feeling a bit disconnected from traditional academic life after years of being in such a structured military environment,” he said. “There’s also the challenge of balancing education with life responsibilities. Going Gator connected me with student veteran services and organizations on
Carmelos Brown. Photo by Tricia Marie Lopez.
campus that made the transition much smoother. It provided a community that understands both the academic and personal challenges of being a non-traditional student, and that sense of belonging was crucial.”
“Arriving at UF was definitely overwhelming at first, but several programs and communities quickly made a difference,” said Brown, who joined the Sankofa student group in the African American Studies Program.
Brown said DAVID CANTON, director of the African American Studies Program, has been a mentor from his first day on campus. He also credits Associate Professor RICHÉ BARNES for assisting him with navigating class scheduling, “even staying after hours during the CLAS Preview to ensure everything was in place.”
“Without their guidance and encouragement, I may not have had the same confidence to pursue African American studies and certainly not with the same sense of purpose and direction,” Brown said.
The Going Gator program focuses on academic majors that traditionally haven’t seen as much competition for transfer
enrollment, such as astronomy, geology, history, philosophy, physics and women’s studies.
“Some of these are majors that folks don’t necessarily think about, so this gives them some exposure to creatively think about how to make the best use of those majors from a career perspective,” said Andrea Evangelist, Ph.D., director of collegewide advising and career exploration at Santa Fe College.
“The faculty who Adrienne brings over will talk about, for instance, what you can do with geography or artificial intelligence with linguistics. It gives students options they may not have considered, along with a ticket to UF,” she said.
Evangelist said she has been working with Provost to help Santa Fe students who are in the Going Gator pipeline become more familiar with UF early on “to make the transfer as seamless as possible.”
“Mentoring is a good opportunity. Beyond120 offers experiential learning opportunities that also can be valuable. We need to ensure that students aren’t blocked off just because they arrive as a transfer,” Evangelist
said. She also would like to see some scholarships created specifically for Going Gator transfer students.
“With Going Gator, transfer students aren’t just finding their way — they are joining a vibrant Gator Nation dedicated to excellence and innovation. By blazing their own trails and illuminating paths for others, they help shape a brighter future for Florida, the nation, and the world,” Provost said.
She credits DAVID RICHARDSON, former CLAS dean; GILLIAN LORD, associate dean; and SARA MOCK, director of transfer student admissions for CLAS; in providing critical support for Going Gator. Brown intends to continue his studies following his graduation in the spring.
“My goal is to work in higher education, particularly in roles focused on student success, diversity, and veteran support services. I want to help nontraditional students, especially veterans and students of color, navigate the challenges of higher education and find their own path to success,” he said.
Left: Adrienne Provost and Santa Fe College President Paul Broadie take part in the League for Innovation in the Community College Conference. Photo courtesy of Adrienne Provost. Right: David Richardson celebrates the signing of the Going Gator transfer program. Photo by Matt Stamey.
Magnifying the View
By Douglas Ray
UF alum and former NASA director leaves lasting legacy
As a child growing up in Daytona Beach, Florida, in the 1950s — well before manned rockets began lifting off in Cape Canaveral nearby to the south — BILL OEGERLE (Physics and Astronomy '72) looked up at the moons of Jupiter through his little telescope and wondered if there might be a future in stargazing.
Indeed, Oegerle later observed the sky through the 0.76-meter telescope at the Rosemary Hill Observatory as an undergraduate in what was then, the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Florida. After earning his Ph.D. in astrophysics at the University of Massachusetts, he joined Princeton University, where he helped operate the Copernicus space telescope, gathering high-resolution ultraviolet spectra of bright stars. He went on to work at NASA on the Hubble Space Telescope and the James Webb Space Telescope, and played key roles in the early development of the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite and the Roman Space Telescope as director of astrophysics at the Goddard Space Flight Center. In 2016, he was
awarded the NASA Distinguished Service Medal, the highest honor NASA can bestow on a civilian.
He was back on the UF campus for homecoming weekend in October, enjoying the brisk weather and a break from the disheartening cleanup of his Sarasota home, which was flooded by Hurricane Helene. With Oegerle was his wife, ROBIN OLIN OEGERLE (Music Education '73), a member of the UF Foundation National Board.
“I was always interested in astronomy — how the stars and galaxies formed — and I was fascinated by the sheer vastness of the universe,” he said. “As a freshman here at the University of Florida in 1968, I was lucky to be in the honors program where you had the freedom to explore different courses in math and physics. I even took several of the graduate-level astronomy courses.”
The Department of Astronomy wasn’t established as a separate academic unit until 1979, but as expected, there are still strong ties and collaboration between the physics and astronomy departments.
“As I moved into leadership positions, I became more interested in professional development of younger scientists.”
“My connection to UF reignited after I retired,” Oegerle said. “I knew astronomers here, and I knew of various instruments that they were building. So, I watched the department grow and change, but I had no real professional connection to the University of Florida. Then, after I retired, my wife and I would visit the campus a lot. My wife is active in the School of Music. She has a scholarship program for Gator Band musicians, and every year we enjoy meeting with her scholarship students to talk with them about what they’ve done in the past year and what their plans are for the future. I started to think, why don’t I do something like that for physics and astronomy students?”
Robin, Bill’s wife, has established the Robin Olin Oegerle Education Fund, which supports outreach efforts by the university band program. “I noticed that there were very few scholarship programs that were specific to physics and astronomy students, so I thought I would create a scholarship that would fund students to carry out their own research projects,” Oegerle said.
THE WILLIAM OEGERLE SCHOLARSHIP IN PHYSICS AND ASTRONOMY
Now in its second year, the William Oegerle Scholarship in Physics and Astronomy supports undergraduates who show exceptional promise in conducting research in physics, astrophysics, or astronomy. The recipients are mentored on a research project by faculty in physics or astronomy.
The 2024-25 recipients of the William Oegerle Scholarship are CHRISTOPHER MCKINNEY, who is working with Professor CHRIS STANTON in the Department of Physics, and SAVANNAH STILL, who is working with Professor ANTHONY GONZALEZ in the Department of Astronomy. McKinney’s project is titled “Time resolved carrier dynamics in Ge-based heterostructures grown on GaAs.” Savannah’s project is titled “Searching for Lens Structure with JWST Imaging.”
The 2023-24 recipients were DANA YAPTANGCO, who worked with Assistant Professor SARAH BALLARD in the Department of Astronomy, and NHAT HUY TRAN, who worked with Assistant Professor CHUNJING JIA in the Department of Physics. Oegerle remarked that he was really impressed with the level of research that these students are doing.
“I spent the first part of my career mostly in doing research. As I moved into leadership positions, I became more interested in professional development of younger scientists,” Oegerle said.
“This scholarship is intended to promote the advancement of students who intend to become professional physicists or astronomers. It’s my way of giving something back to the next generation of scientists,” he said.
Photo of Bill Oegerle by Tricia Marie Lopez.
LUMINARY Thinkers
By Douglas Ray
“The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of star stuff.” — Carl Sagan
From arts and humanities, to social sciences, mathematics and natural sciences, faculty members of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences offer the foundation for an education based in creative thinking, exploration, and the pursuit of knowledge. Here we meet a sociologist, a medical geographer, and a chemist whose collaborative research, passion for teaching, and contributions to civic welfare are emblematic of the star stuff within and across our luminous faculty.
LESSONS FROM THE AMAZON
STEPHEN PERZ learned in the Amazon that his training in sociology wasn’t broad enough to evaluate all the impacts of building a transnational highway through the rainforest. The insights he gained are now serving him well as chair of the Department of Sociology, Criminology & Law.
In 2002, Perz was among a group of faculty and graduate students invited to attend a conference in Brazil concerning construction of a highway that would connect several South American nations and pass through the Amazon. It drew demographers like Perz, but also economists, political scientists, engineers, ecologists, and anthropologists.
Under the rainforest canopy, Perz learned that sometimes even a multidisciplinary or interdisciplinary approach to complex issues is still not enough. Creating transdisciplinary solutions were necessary. “We couldn’t just have the academics talking to each other in a seminar room. We had to reach out to the stakeholders, those who had direct experience of what unfolded and how it unfolded,” he said.
Perz observed that with other large infrastructure projects around the world, theories and models were not sufficient.
“Our approach was to have dialogue between our theoretical frameworks and the lived experience, so you have scientific knowledge in dialogue with local and indigenous knowledge,” Perz said. As that dialogue has developed,
academics in those regions are now well-equipped to carry on the research, a process Perz has encouraged.
Perz’s focus on social and ecological impacts of big infrastructure projects, particularly in the southwestern Amazon where Brazil, Bolivia and Peru meet, has received over $17 million in research grants. In 2014, he was named a UF Foundation Preeminence Term Professor. In 2015, he was selected the UF International Educator of the Year for Senior Faculty. He was named the CLAS Teacher of the Year for 2018-19. In 2022, he took over as department chair.
“I place a big priority on increasing our research productivity,” Perz said.
“Running a large department is more complicated than running a large grant just because of the number of people involved. Between faculty, staff, and grad students, I have roughly 100 direct reports. That’s many more than I ever had, even on a big research project where I might have had 10 or 15,” he said.
“It becomes exciting when you see things you did to help somebody else go be successful. I’ve gotten the religion on nominating people for awards because I know what they’ve been up to. That’s especially true for the more junior people. They may be less sure of themselves, but then when they see how well they stack up against others in a competitive field, it’s gratifying because you can see the professional growth almost before your eyes.”
Photo by Michel Thomas. Gold Star. @ MrHamster/Adobe Stock.
SHIFTING THE MINDSET
What does the Department of Geography at the University of Florida have in common with the university’s Emerging Pathogens Institute, the Center for African Studies, the Center for Latin American Studies, the Interdisciplinary Ecology Program, and Florida Climate Institute? SADIE RYAN.
With appointments in each of these disparate programs, Ryan keeps actual office space in the Department of Geography, where she is a professor of medical geography, and the Emerging Pathogens Institute. Honored in 2024 with a UF Foundation Preeminence Professorship and a UF Research Foundation Professorship, she has been co-director of the Florida Climate Institute since 2019.
“I’m not trained as a geographer, per se,” she said from her lab at EPI. “I found geography later in my career. Geography provides context for everything and offers insight into the lived experience of the environment you’re in, and that includes the history of what led up to what there is today.”
While her Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley was earned in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management, and her bachelor’s degree from Princeton was in ecology and evolutionary biology, she finds tools like satellite imagery equip her to manage the disease modeling that puts her at the forefront of medical geography.
“We can get satellite imagery that will tell you things like land surface temperature. We can talk about things like changing seasons by looking at greenness indices changing on landscapes,” Ryan said. “But in addition to that, we can start to do things like describing the fragmentation of the landscape and the built environment.”
“In Florida, we can witness the effects of all kinds of global processes happening simultaneously. Hot seasons lead to climate disasters.
Climate disasters can create new mosquito habitats,” she said.
Add in population growth and global travel, and you get the introduction of new vectorborne diseases like Zika, M-pox and malaria. In 2023, there was an outbreak of locally acquired malaria in Florida that was halted at seven cases.
“The public health messaging was good. It was strong, and people paid attention to it. They brought in spray planes and helicopters that covered 10,000 acres. We have a setup other states don’t have,” Ryan said.
She said other states would be wise to adopt surveillance and response measures along those lines, because longer and warmer summers are pushing northward.
“People are getting into the mindset that we need to control outbreak even if we can’t prevent them. What is the shape of your outbreak? What is the shape of your response? How can our models inform that?” Ryan asked.
EXPONENTIAL IMPACT
New materials and methods to sustainably deal with old materials are being developed in BRENT SUMERLIN’s laboratory in the Department of Chemistry, but the products that excite him the most are the graduate students who will go on to fill roles in higher education, industry, and government.
“I lead a research group with roughly 30 to 40 people, the overwhelming majority of whom are Ph.D. students conducting research broadly in the area of polymer chemistry,” said Sumerlin, the George B. Butler Professor of Chemistry. “You have this exponential impact when your product is people.”
“I try to create an environment in the lab that is conducive to student enthusiasm and creativity. We want to give them freedom to work on the things that they’re interested in,” Sumerlin said.
Sumerlin’s appointment as director of the George and Josephine Butler Polymer Research Laboratory, a collection of nine independent research groups within the Department of Chemistry, has its own symmetry. GEORGE BUTLER, who with his wife, established the lab with a generous gift, was the Ph.D. advisor of the person who was later Sumerlin’s Ph.D. advisor. And Sumerlin’s post-doc advisor did his own post-doc work with Butler at UF.
“It’s very poetic, almost like fate,” Sumerlin said with a laugh. Sumerlin is the 2024 recipient of the Mark Scholar Award from the American Chemical Society,
recognizing excellence in research and leadership in polymer science.
Polymers are materials, including plastics, composed of large molecules that are made up of many repeating smaller molecule units called monomers. Some polymers, like DNA, occur naturally but others are synthesized for many uses in medicine and industry.
Along with Assistant Professor AUSTIN EVANS, Sumerlin is part of a team that includes researchers at Carnegie Mellon, the University of Michigan, and the University of Delaware who recently received a grant from the Department of Defense to develop polymers that, rather than insulate, are thermally conductive.
The scale and scope of polymer research at UF is unusual. Many top-tier research universities may have one or two polymer chemists, but the Department of Chemistry has nine. Across the university there are 35 polymer researchers in five units, organized as the Center for Macromolecular Science & Engineering. Sumerlin co-leads that along with Butler Professor Emeritus KEN WAGENER, who led the Butler Laboratory for more than 35 years.
“I would still say that we’re one of the first places one would think of when you think of polymer chemistry in the U.S.,” Sumerlin said. “It also raises awareness that UF is a place where polymer chemistry is a strength. Employers come here looking for our students.”
Spheres of INFLUENCE
Alumnae follow their passion at the forefront of earth-bound space exploration
Connecting Community
Experiences outside the classroom jibed with lessons learned from professors in the Department of Political Science at the University of Florida, putting (Political Science and Spanish '17) on a path that led her to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration where she enriches historically disadvantaged communities through information and connections.
“I started at UF in the summer of 2013. Almost immediately, I got a federal work study job at the Institute of Hispanic and Latino Cultures,” Ortega said from her office in Washington, D.C.
By her second year, Ortega obtained a fellowship through the Bob Graham Center for Public Service as an aide to state Sen. Dwight Bullard. She soon realized a life in public service was her path.
As a fourth year student, Ortega interned in Washington, D.C., with the Congressional Hispanic Leadership Institute and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute, created to advance the Hispanic community’s economic progress and form a pipeline of Latino talent, respectively. She also interned with U.S. Rep. Darren Soto, U.S. Rep. Frederica Wilson, and later worked for U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer.
“That’s where I started learning how to work with community organizations to influence policy,”
is available to researchers seeking to mitigate the impacts of climate change on vulnerable communities.
Ortega said her undergraduate work at UF taught her to think critically about issues facing society in general, and under-represented communities in particular. “It helped me understand the importance of diversity of thought. The University of Florida taught me the value of productive conversations with people of different beliefs,” she said.
It also connected her with other Gator alumni in Washington. “That UF network is really strong in D.C. Folks really want to help each other out,” Ortega said.
of Political Science for giving her a strong foundation in traditional political science and the freedom to explore what was then an emerging field of space policy concerns.
“When I started at UF in 2008, space wasn’t as big a deal as it is now, especially in policy circles. SpaceX had barely done anything. Nobody really thought commercial companies were going to succeed. Space Force wasn’t a thing. But I really wanted to focus on space policy. The challenge was that nobody really had a degree program specializing in space policy,” Whitman Cobb said.
“The reason I went to UF instead of other schools was the focus on qualitative methodology that they had there. I’m grateful because I was broadly trained across a lot of subfields. I don’t think I would have the career that I have today without that,” she said.
After six years as a tenured faculty member at Cameron University in Oklahoma, Whitman Cobb accepted a position with SAASS. “I got here just before the Space Force was established. So, I’ve sort of seen the evolution of military thinking on space,” she said.
Along with teaching, Whitman Cobb is exploring new frontiers in space over such questions as how reliant the U.S. military should become on technologies and equipment developed by private companies, such as Starlink and other mega constellations of satellites.
“What if one of these commercial actors breaks bad and decides to sell to our adversaries? Do corporate interests necessarily serve U.S. interests? We have very few rules about what we do in space,” Whitman Cobb said.
Whitman Cobb realizes the tools she learned at UF have been essential as she builds an intellectual framework for considering these important challenges.
Sol Ortega, photo courtesy of NASA. Wendy Whitman Cobb, courtesy photo. Silver star. @ Miva/Adobe Stock.
STARS Shining
By Lauren Barnett
The Gator100, celebrating its 10th anniversary in 2024, honors the fastest-growing businesses led by University of Florida alumni. Presented by the UF Alumni Association, the Gator100 recognizes our elite entrepreneurs and fuels fellow Gators to embark on their own entrepreneurial journeys and strive to join this distinguished group.
In this milestone year, 20 businesses led by College of Liberal Arts and Sciences alumni were honored, making up one-fifth of the entire list. To be considered, a company must have operated continuously for at least five years, be owned or led by
a UF graduate or former student, and uphold goals and values that align with the university’s mission.
Earning a spot on this prestigious list is more than just an accolade; it symbolizes the countless hours of hard work and dedication invested by alumni in building successful enterprises. The liberal arts and entrepreneurial mindsets complement each other well, teaching students to engage critically, challenge norms, and communicate effectively. Interim Dean MARY WATT remarked, “The Gator100 is where our CLAS alumni’s relentless drive and entrepreneurial spirit shine brightly.”
All photos by Matt Pendleton Photography for UF Alumni Association. Sparkle star. @ Derter/Adobe Stock.
Honoring the World’s Fastest-Growing CLAS
Gator Businesses of 2024
#2 TRANSFER – Ashley Bittner (History and Political Science '07)
#4 OTTER PR – Jay Feldman (Biology '14)
#6 THINKSPARK – Richard Davis (English '93)
#14 TOTALBROKERAGE – Ben Schachter (Political Science '00)
#16 STRETCH ZONE – Tony Zaccario (Psychology '14)
#22 SEMPER PLUGINS – Syed Balkhi (Anthropology and Religion '11)
#35 ELITE JETS – Stephen Myers (Interdisciplinary Studies '87)
#36 ORIGIN CONSTRUCTION – John Wood (Economics '98)
#39 LEWIS OIL CO., INC. – Wenda Lewis (Psychology '84)
#41 NOVI AMS – Pete Zimek (Political Science '01, MS Management '02)
#42 ATLANTIC LOGISTICS – Robert Hooper Jr. (Economics and History '91)
#51 HEITNER LEGAL – Darren Heitner (Geography and Political Science '07, JD '10)
#62 ABSOLUTE NUMBERS INC. –(Anthropology '94)
#66 PALM BEACH AUTOGRAPHS –Jim Dodson (Economics '00) and Steve Dodson (Economics and Sociology '03)
#67 RIVERSIDE RECOVERY OF TAMPA –Kirk Kirkpatrick (Comm Processes & Disorders '90)
#68 WPFORMS – Syed Balkhi (Anthropology and Religion '11)
#69 ANAC GLOBAL REALTY – Sarkis Anac (Interdisciplinary Studies '08)
#72 FEATHR – Aleksander Levental (Physics and Mathematics '13)
#97 THOMPSON PUMP AND MANUFACTURING –Bobby Zitzka (Psychology and Business Administration '00)
SINCE 2015
Creative LICENSE
By Brian Smith
IN VISIBLE ARCHIVES: QUEER AND FEMINIST VISUAL CULTURE IN THE 1980S
By Margaret Galvan | University of Minnesota Press
In the 1980s, feminist movements in America struggled with growing disagreements within the group. Disagreements over issues such as sexuality, sexual activity, erotica, and transgender roles caused major divisions, eventually leading to a schism. This debate led to the censorship of the “Diary of a Conference on Sexuality,” an image-text volume that would go on to become a symbol in the feminist sex wars.
This book, the controversy surrounding it, and its impact on other pieces of visual media during the 1980s is the crux of “In Visible Archives: Queer and Feminist Visual Culture in the 1980s” by Assistant Professor of English MARGARET GALVAN . In it, she describes visual media as a vital space for women during the time period to express and visualize themselves, their bodies, and their sexualities. She also
explores the impacts of many other major cultural events of the time on visual media and the feminist movements in general, such as the HIV/AIDS crisis and the women in print movement. The art highlighted in this book shows how women took control of their bodies during this time, laying the groundwork for future queer and feminist activism and advocacy, both of which are more important than ever with recent attacks on LGBTQ+ and women’s rights in the modern age.
“In Visible Archives” was a hit not just with comic fans but with critics as well, and its very positive reception led it to be nominated for an Eisner Award, an honor equivalent to an Oscar in the world of comics. Galvan was also nominated for the Comics Studies Society’s Charles Hatfield Book Prize, an award she would go on to win in September 2024.
1 | KAIROS
By Jenny Erpenbeck, translated by Michael Hofmann New Directions
Written by Jenny Erpenbeck, one of Germany’s most lauded and influential contemporary authors, and translated by Professor of English MICHAEL HOFMANN, “Kairos” tells the story of a turbulent love affair between a young woman and an older, married man. Set against the backdrop of the fall of the Soviet Union, the novel juxtaposes this intense personal relationship with the politics of the time, when two very different sides of Germany were just on the verge of reunification and the challenges that brought. It was lauded by judges for the Booker Prize, and went on to become the first translated German novel to win the prestigious award.
2 | ISLANDS AND SNAKES VOLUME II
Edited by Harvey B. Lillywhite and Marcio Martins
Oxford University Press
In 2019, UF Professor Emeritus of Biology HARVEY B. LILLYWHITE and Marcio Martins, a professor of ecology at the University of São Paulo in Brazil, published “Islands and Snakes” with the goal of creating the ultimate field guide on island-dwelling snakes. This 2024 follow-up continues that goal, bringing together many of the world’s foremost herpetologists and snake experts to explore how isolated and remote ecosystems affect the behaviors of the snakes that live there. This volume contains information on a few locations not covered in the first book, like Borneo and New Guinea, while also shining light on topics like invasive species, taxonomy, reproduction, and how differing diets affect growth patterns.
3 | ENTANGLEMENTS
OF WAR: SOCIAL NETWORKS DURING THE HOLOCAUST
Edited by Eliyana R. Adler and Natalia Aleksiun Yad Vashem
Co-edited by Harry Rich Professor of Holocaust Studies NATALIA ALEKSIUN, “Entanglements of War” explores how the holocaust affected Jewish communities and social networks in World War II. Even as families and communities were ripped apart, isolated, and imprisoned, Aleksiun explains, Jewish victims did their best to maintain their social networks, relying on familiar neighbors, peers, and colleagues for support and assistance despite the atrocities they faced. This book further examines those relationships under a multidisciplinary lens to evaluate their impacts on Jewish lives during the war and in the aftermath.
4 | COVENANTAL
THINKING: ESSAYS ON THE PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY OF DAVID NOVAK
Edited by Paul E. Nahme and Yaniv Feller University of Toronto Press
David Novak is widely considered by Jewish scholars to be one of the most influential contemporary Jewish thinkers. His explorations of Jewish and Christian theology, natural law, and the Western philosophical canon have helped shape modern Jewish thought and have influenced contemporary Christian and Muslim thought as well. Co-edited by Assistant Professor of Religion YANIV FELLER , “Covenantal Thinking” is a collection of essays written by prominent Jewish scholars that delves into his thinking, covering topics like election, natural law, Jewish political thought, and Zionism.
5 | DOING BLACK DIGITAL HUMANITIES WITH RADICAL INTENTIONALITY: A PRACTICAL GUIDE
By Catherine Knight Steele, Jessica H. Lu, and Kevin C. Winstead Routledge
Written by renowned pioneers in the field of Black humanities, including Assistant Professor of Critical Media and AI Studies
KEVIN C. WINSTEAD, this book is a complete guide to Black Digital Humanities. It covers topics including how to center Black feminist praxes of care, ethics, and Black studies in the digital humanities, how to acquire funding for research, developing curricula, establishing connections in the field, and establishing an ethical future for Black digital humanities. For those interested in creating change in academia, this is essential reading.
6 | MEANINGS OF ANTIQUITY: MYTH INTERPRETATION IN PREMODERN JAPAN
By Matthieu Felt
Harvard University Asia Center
Assistant Professor of Japanese MATTHIEU FELT provides an exploration of the origins of two of the oldest Japanese myths, and how those meanings have changed over time. Kojiki and Nihon Shoki are Japan’s creation myths, explaining how and where Japan fits in the world. They have evolved over time, once depicting Japan as the center of an empire, then the edge of a Buddhist world, then finally as a small archipelago on a globe. Through this book, Felt explains how these myths changed so drastically, tackling the liquidity and adaptability of mythology and how our relationship with it changes with the culture.
7 | FROM DEEP LEARNING TO RATIONAL MACHINES: WHAT THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY CAN TEACH US ABOUT THE FUTURE OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
By Cameron J. Buckner
Oxford University Press
As tech companies race to perfect AI, many questions are left behind in the scramble. Professor of Philosophy and Donald F. Cronin Chair in the Humanities CAMERON J. BUCKNER encourages readers to slow down and ponder the philosophy behind AI. How can computer scientists learn from the works of thinkers like Aristotle, Locke, Hume, and de Grouchy? How are debates over deep learning similar to debates between empiricism and rationalism, and how can we use these methods to assess the technology’s contributions and pitfalls?
8 | EPICUREAN JUSTICE: NATURE, AGREEMENT, AND VIRTUE
By Max Robitzsch Cambridge University Press
In his latest book, Assistant Professor of Philosophy MAX ROBITZSCH explores the thinking of the ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus, the founder of the school of thoughts known as Epicureanism. This book is the first English-language monograph on Epicurus’ theory of justice, which held that it is neither fully natural nor fully conventional, and that it is always better to be just than unjust. Pulling from a range of sources and examining multiple contrasting positions, Robitzsch applies this way of thinking to modern concepts of justice, discussing its influence on positions such as contractarianism and legal positivism.
9 | SAMURAI WITH TELEPHONES: ANACHRONISM IN JAPANESE LITERATURE
By Christopher Smith University of Michigan Press
In American pop culture, anachronisms are often seen as a negative, with many complaining that seeing a cellphone in a Western can take you out of the moment. In his recent book, however, Assistant Professor of Japanese CHRISTOPHER SMITH makes an argument for their merit, using examples of anachronisms in Japanese literary and cultural work to explain how they can enhance media. According to Smith, anachronisms let creators “open up” history, rewriting it and playing with it to create moments of introspection, reflection, or even comedy.
10 | SPACE POLICY FOR THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY
By Wendy N. Whitman Cobb and Derrick V. Frazier University Press of Florida
The past few years have been a whirlwind of development and discovery in the field of astronomy. As humanity increasingly sets its sights on the stars, it is more important than ever to understand governmental oversight. This book, written by UF alumna WENDY N. WHITMAN COBB (Ph.D. Political Science, '12), aims to answer every question a reader could have about space policy in the U.S., covering topics like the history of space exploration, the major players in both the public and private sectors, and how policymakers and business leaders are adapting to technologies reliant on outer space.
11 | LOSING GROUND: THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF WADE IN NEW ORLEANS
By Robert W. Lloyd Published Independently
In the mid-19th century, one of the most prominent families in New Orleans was the Wade family. In his latest book, CLAS alum ROBERT W. LLOYD (Political Science '87, JD '90), shares their story, a tale of wealth, power, and demise during the Civil War and Reconstruction. By combing through primary sources like letters and legal documents, Lloyd tells the most complete version of their story to-date, exploring the tragedy that befell four generations of the Wade family and the ruin left in their wake. It is deeply personal, occasionally brutal, and doesn’t shy away from the politics of the time, but it is also a story of tenacity in the face of adversity. clas.ufl.edu/
Assistant Professor of Biology JUANNAN ZHOU received the R35 Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award (MIRA) from the National Institutes of Health.
Assistant Professor of Biology HANNAH VANDER ZANDEN and Assistant Professors of Chemistry BOONE PRENTICE and MATTHEW EDDY all received CAREER awards from the National Science Foundation.
Associate Professor of Biology GARETH FRASER and Professors of Physics YUXUAN WANG and LAURA BLECHA each received a three-year Colonel Allen R. and Margaret G. Crow Term Professorship.
Assistant Professor of Biology ZEPENG YAO was awarded an R01 Grant from the National Institutes of Health.
ELENI PAPADOPOULOU, a Ph.D. student and graduate assistant in the Department of Classics, has won a Gerondelis Foundation Graduate Student Grant.
Professor Emeritus of Biology HARVEY B. LILLYWHITE received the Henry S. Fitch Award for Excellence in Herpetology.
Professor of Biology JAMES LIAO received an Ig Nobel prize, a humorous award for work that makes people laugh then think, for his study on the swimming abilities of dead trout.
Associate Professor of Psychology ROBERTO L. ABREU received an NIH Grant to fund his research on mental health issues within the Latinx LGBTQ+ community (see page 6).
EDUARDO LINARDI, a third-year international studies student, received the ObamaChesky Voyager Scholarship for Public Service.
Professor Emeritus of Geography STEPHEN GOLANT earned the M. Powell Layton Award for his contributions to the field of gerontology.
Jon L. and Beverly A. Thompson Endowed Chair of Geological Sciences THOMAS BIANCHI and Professor of Physics NEIL SULLIVAN received Distinguished Professor awards.
CATELYN BOZE (BA Geography and Interdisciplinary Studies '14, MED ‘15) has earned the Durling Prize from the Dante Society of America.
RECOGNIZING THE ACHIEVEMENTS OF STUDENTS, STAFF, FACULTY AND ALUMNI OF THE COLLEGE OF LIBERAL ARTS AND SCIENCES
Boone Prentice Eleonora Rossi Stephen Golant
Gareth Fraser Juannan Zhou
Hannah Vander Zanden
Eduardo Linardi
Assistant Professor of English MARGARET GALVAN’s latest book won her the Charles Hatfield Book Prize from the Comics Studies Society (see page 40).
Assistant Professor of Astronomy JAMIE TAYAR was selected for a Scialog Fellowship by the Research Corporation for Science Advancement (see page 7).
ANDRÉS IZQUIERDO, a postdoctoral researcher with the Department of Astronomy, was named a Sagan Fellow by the Space Telescope Science Institute.
Distinguished Professor of Biology KAREN BJORNDAL received the Influential Woman in Wildlife Award from the Florida Chapter of the Wildlife Society.
Assistant Professor of Geology EMMA “MICKEY” MACKIE was given the AI Rising Star award at UF’s 2024 AI Awards.
PALOMA OLARTE CACERES, a graduate student in the Department of Geological Sciences, earned the Geological Society of America’s Coates Award.
The Department of Linguistics’ ELEONORA ROSSI, STEFFI WULFF, and ZOEY LIU received an NSF grant for their study on maintaining Spanish as a heritage language.
Assistant Professor of Linguistics SARAH MOELLER was awarded an ACLS Digital Justice Development Grant.
BHAVNA SHARMA and SHELBY MIKKELSON, both graduate students in the Department of Sociology and Criminology & Law, received 2023-2024 Graduate Student Teaching awards.
PRAKHIN ASSAVAPANUVAT, a graduate student in the Department of Geological Sciences, was awarded a Summer 2024 Water Institute Travel Award.
Doctoral Student of Geography NEHA
KOHLI received an American Institute of Indian Studies Junior Fellowship.
ISAIAH JINHYUK
LIM, a postdoctoral research associate at the Department of Physics, earned the 2024 AKPA Outstanding Young Researcher Award.
UF Florida Blue Endowed Chair in Health Disparities Research
CAROLYN TUCKER
earned the President’s Lifetime Achievement Award from the office of President Joe Biden.
Professor of Psychology
ISER DELEON
received the Nathan H. Azrin Distinguished Contribution to Applied Behavior Analysis Award.
Associate Professor of Psychology CHRIS PODLESNIK earned the Society for the Experimental Analysis of Behavior Don Hake Translational Research Award.
Crow Professor of Chemistry LISA
MCELWEE-WHITE
received the Paul G. Gassman Distinguished Service Award from the American Chemical Society.
George B. Butler
Professor of Chemistry
BRENT SUMERLIN received the Florida Award from the American Chemical Society Florida Section (see page 35).
EXPLORE AWARDS SHOWCASE
Eleni Papadopoulou
Andrés Izquierdo
Laura Blecha
Sarah Moeller
Lisa McElwee-White
Yuxuan Wang
Neha Kohli
UNIVERSITY of FLORIDA COLLEGE of LIBERAL ARTS and SCIENCES
With the support of our alumni and friends, we’re not just dreaming about a better future; we’re creating it.
— Interim Dean Mary Watt
We marvel at the possibilities your support creates.
As we look to the future at the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, we celebrate those who helped us reach this point.
The Dean’s Circle honors loyal alumni, friends, faculty, and staff, who go above and beyond to give back and empower us to bring innovation and discovery to the world. Annual gifts of $500 or more from this community enable our students to pursue their dreams.
HERE ARE JUST A FEW WAYS A DEAN’S CIRCLE GIFT MAKES A DIFFERENCE:
• Student scholarships
• Support for life-changing student experiences abroad
• Funding for faculty research and scholarly engagement
• Innovative technologies for teaching and research
By Brian Smith
ACROSS
1 What is left after a fire
4 Natural barrier to rising sea levels (pg. 8)
9 The property measured by Charles Telesco’s remotesensing technique (pg. 18)
11 To ponder carefully
12 Factor affecting scam vulnerability (pg. 25)
13 Sentient trees from “The Lord of the Rings”
14 Celestial body found rich in lithium (pg. 7)
15 Three strikes and you’re
16 A professor’s best friend (abbr.)
17 Inaugural director of the UF Astraeus Space Institute (pg. 15)
19 Top of their class
20 Way of the universe, according to East Asian philosophy and religion
23 Large country bordering Canada and Mexico
24 Primary source of voter data used by the UF Election Lab (pg. 20)
25 Home for animals
26 Italian poet who described reaching the stars as paradise (pg. 4)
1 Peak or apex 2 To ignore or push away 3 Jack Davis, for example (pg. 8) 4 2019 horror film starring Octavia Spencer 5 Donations to the poor 6 Funny person, or a violent demonstration
7 Type of small mammal loosely related to weasels and otters
8 Multi-headed beast of Greek and Roman mythology
17 Bitter rivalry
18 Adverb meaning “different” or “other”
20 About 2,000 pounds
21 Shorthand for another option
22 Common Spanish cheer at sporting events
24 Postal code for Pennsylvania
A STEP AHEAD
The brothers of Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity are no strangers to the profound impact of giving back. Since its inception in 1972 as the University of Florida’s first Black Greek-letter organization, the Zeta Phi chapter has led many philanthropic and communityfocused efforts.
Initially a social hub, the Zeta Phi Alumni Foundation has evolved to strengthen generational bonds, with alumni gathering every five years to celebrate. Their 50th-anniversary celebration in 2022, drawing over 300 attendees, ignited efforts to aim higher.
“We wanted to leave an indelible mark at UF, something that other Black Greeks can follow as a model,” said CEDRIC WASHINGTON (BSBA Marketing '87), the alumni foundation’s president.
The brothers began fundraising in earnest. Efforts culminated this fall, when the foundation established a $50,000 endowment to support the African American Studies Program.
“We want all students to be able to achieve the full Florida experience,” Washington said. “Our gift helps bring all voices to the table.”
The funds will annually support two $1,000 scholarships for students participating in study abroad excursions, vital experiences often hindered by financial constraints. The brothers hope their support will allow more students to gain a nuanced understanding of African Americans’ historical, political, and cultural impact.
“The Kappa men taught me if you see a need, do something,” said Lt. Col. MICHAEL LEON KILLINGS, vice president of the Zeta Phi Alumni Foundation. “We achieve, and when we achieve, we give back. This mantra gets me out of bed in the morning.”
With a vision of forward-thinking growth, the brothers plan to expand their initiatives to uplift the next generation of Gators.
“We’re trying to encourage students to be the best they can be, and anything we can do to make sure they’re hitting their goals, we’re going to do it,” Washington said. “It’s in our DNA.”
