By Whitney Hale

LEXINGTON, Ky. (April 22, 2021) — Two University of Kentucky students, Jacob Concolino and Benjamin Cortas, have been selected to receive Research Internships in Science and Engineering (RISE) from the German Academic Exchange Service (Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst – DAAD).

DAAD's RISE is a summer internship program for undergraduate students from the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom in the fields of biology, chemistry, physics, earth sciences and engineering. The internships give each student an opportunity to do research with one of Germany's top universities or research institutions. Around 300 students participate each summer.

Benjamin Cortas is the son of Edward and

By Richard LeComte 

LEXINGTON, Ky. – Laws originally designed to protect family farm owners from frivolous lawsuits have, in some states, grown in scope to protect the practices of industrial agriculture – a phenomenon that’s drawn the interest of UK researcher Loka Ashwood. 

"Originally these laws were a way to get agricultural exemptions to nuisance suits,” said Ashwood, assistant professor of environmental sociology in UK’s College of Arts & Sciences. “These nuisance suits are fundamentally about, OK, if somebody infringes upon my right to enjoy or use my property, technically I or my local government can file a nuisance suit. But right

By Julie Wrinn

Graduate students in political science are well aware of the importance of fieldwork for their dissertation research, but for Helen Kras (Ph.D. 2021, M.A. 2020), fieldwork also became a deciding factor in her academic job search.

“Every university I had interviews with asked about fieldwork and stated they would be interested in having me teach about fieldwork in methods classes,” she said.

Kras is completing her dissertation on public opinion and gender-based violence in Latin America. In fall 2021, she will join Regis University in Denver as a tenure-track assistant professor of political science. To relieve the financial burden of research travel, private support made all the difference for Kras.

“Through the Ken and Mary Sue Coleman Award and the Research and Travel Award, I was able to conduct fieldwork in Brazil and El Salvador,” she

By Whitney Hale

LEXINGTON, Ky. (April 19, 2021) — The University of Kentucky Office of Nationally Competitive Awards has announced that three Wildcats — biology students Kayli Bolton, Zoe Hert and Carly Karrick — have been awarded a Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship. The UK students are among 410 students nationwide selected to receive the 2021-22 Goldwater Scholarship.

This year's Goldwater Scholars were selected based on academic merit from a field of 1,256 math, science and engineering students who were nominated by the faculties of 438 of the nation's colleges and universities.

The Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education

By Vice President for Research Lisa Cassis

We are pleased to announce that Dr. Chad Risko has accepted our offer to be the new Faculty Director of the Office of Undergraduate Research.  Dr. Risko is an Associate Professor in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Kentucky (UK).

He received his PhD at the Georgia Institute of Technology under the direction of Professor Jean-Luc Brédas, undertook postdoctoral research with Professors Mark Ratner and Tobin Marks at Northwestern University and has been at UK since 2014.

Dr. Risko’s research blends principles from organic and physical chemistry, condensed-matter physics, and materials science to develop theoretical materials chemistry approaches to better understand and design materials for advanced electronics and power

By Aimee Nielson

LEXINGTON, Ky. (March 30, 2021) — When Quentin Tyler was a student in the University of Kentucky College of Agriculture, Food and Environment, he often found himself in Professor Lionel Williamson’s office.

“I just stopped to say hello, but when I looked at my watch, sometimes three hours had passed,” Tyler said. “He was so knowledgeable, and he taught me many life lessons. I’m forever grateful for him.”

Williamson was just one of Tyler’s mentors at UK that steered him onto his current career path and impacted his philosophy on leadership. After graduation, Tyler remained at UK, first as an extension associate for recruitment and retention. Later, he directed the college’s Office of Diversity as assistant dean. In 2018, Tyler became the

By Jenny Wells-Hosley

A team of faculty and students from the University of Kentucky Department of Physics and Astronomy in the College of Arts and Sciences, supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF), has contributed to a major experiment at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab). The landmark results, announced today, are changing how physicists understand the subatomic world.

Fermilab’s three-year Muon g-2 experiment revealed that fundamental particles, called muons, behave in a way not predicted by the Standard Model of particle physics. The researchers think this behavior could be caused by the existence of

By Lindsey Piercy

LEXINGTON, Ky. (April 6, 2021) — The University of Kentucky is home to the largest survey of American dialects, which contains 90 years’ worth of linguistic data.

Started in 1929 by the American Dialect Society, the Linguistic Atlas Project (LAP) aims to collect linguistic data using a comprehensive, systematic approach. Over the course of many decades, the project has moved from various institutions — eventually landing at the University of Georgia (UGA), where it stayed for more than 25 years.

“I was introduced to the Atlas at UGA and worked on the project as a graduate student,” Allison Burkette, a professor in the Department of Linguistics in the 

By Richard LeComte 

LEXINGTON, Ky. -- When Horace Bartilow was growing up in Jamaica in the 1970s, he’d watch helicopters carrying herbicide fly overhead. They were headed for the marijuana crops that farmers were growing in the center of the island --— one facet of the U.S. global war on drugs.  

Now, many years later, Bartilow is researching the politics and economics behind the drug wars as a professor of political science in the University of Kentucky’s College of Arts & Sciences. His latest book, “Drug War Pathologies: Embedded Corporatism and U.S. Drug Enforcement in the Americas,” finds the corporatist