By Jenny Wells-Hosley

LEXINGTON, Ky. (Dec. 14, 2020) — The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) has funded a University of Kentucky open source software project aimed at advancing scientific and biomedical research.

Derek Young, associate professor in the Dr. Bing Zhang Department of Statistics in the University of Kentucky College of Arts and Sciences, is the recipient of the award from CZI’s Essential Open Source Software for Science (EOSS) program. He will use the grant to significantly modernize and enhance his two R packages, titled “mixtools” and “tolerance.”

“R” refers to the programming language and free software environment for statistical computing, widely used by statisticians around the world.

“I maintain both packages regularly

By Richard LeComte

LEXINGTON, Ky. -- The College of Arts & Sciences has grabbed an opportunity to bring a scholar of post-colonial literature onto the faculty to expand the range of offerings to University of Kentucky students who want to find new ways of looking at fiction. 

Jap-Nanak K. Makkar is pursuing a two-year American Council of Learned Societies post-doctoral fellowship in the Department of English. At the end of the fellowship, her position will be moved to a tenure-track assistant professorship. 

“It’s almost two years ago now that the ACLS announced this post-doctoral partnership initiative grant designed to diversify departments in the humanities in higher education,” said 

This article previously appeared in Chemical and Engineering News on November 16.

Paul G. Sears, 96, died September 12 in Lexington, KY.

"Paul, a World War II veteran, served in the US Army Air Corps as a tail gunner on a B-17, which was shot down; he was a prisoner of war for 19 months. After the war, he completed his degrees and performed research for 2 years at Monsanto. He then joined the University of Kentucky faculty and became widely recognized for his research on nonaqueous solvents. He taught at all levels, influencing the lives of more than 7,000 students, and received several great-teacher awards. He was inducted into the College of Arts & Sciences Hall of Fame in 2013 and was the faculty representative on the board of trustees for 9 years."

- Steven W. Yates, friend and colleague

Most

By Richard LeComte 

Five recently hired faculty members associated with the African American and Africana Studies interdisciplinary program in the College of Arts & Sciences are broadening the range of diverse and inclusive course offerings to University of Kentucky students. The five new hires are JWells, Vieux Touré, Lydia Pelot-Hobbs, Brandon M. Erby and Aria S. Halliday. 

“It is important to hire Black faculty in these areas and all areas, because their individual and collective research expertise is essential to the mission of the University,” said Damaris B. Hill, interim director

Are you wondering what to get a 1-year-old this holiday season? Go with "big chunky blocks, like the kind featured in LEGO’s DUPLO sets," according to Christia Spears Brown, a professor of psychology at the University of Kentucky's College of Arts & Sciences. She

By Whitney Hale

LEXINGTON, Ky. (Dec. 7, 2020) —  University of Kentucky graduate Chimene Ntakarutimana of Lexington has received a 2021 Marshall Scholarship to study at  University College London. Ntakarutimana is a  2020 graduate of psychology and sociology in UK's College of Arts & Sciences as wel as the Lewis Honors College.

The scholarship finances two years of graduate study in the United Kingdom. Ntakarutimana is the sixth UK student to receive the honor from the Marshall Aid Commemoration Commission.

Yuanyuan Su joined the University of Kentucky as an assistant professor of astronomy in 2019 after being a postdoc at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. 

She is originally from Sichuan, China, the hometown of giant pandas. Su received her Ph.D. from the University of Alabama and went on to a postdoc in California before moving to Harvard.

Her primary research interest lies in clusters of galaxies. They are the largest gravitationally bound objects in the universe, containing thousands of galaxies that are held together by dark matter. The space between galaxies is filled with a very diffuse gas, the so-called “intracluster medium."

This gas is so hot that it radiates in X-rays but is undetectable at visual wavelengths. Su and her colleagues use space-based telescopes to observe galaxy clusters since the Earth's atmosphere absorbs X-rays.

By Lindsey Piercy

LEXINGTON, Ky. (Dec. 2, 2020) — How do you define success?

As 2020 comes to a close and we prepare to turn the page on the calendar, it’s inevitable to think about what you have accomplished.

Did you live up to your expectations? Or did you fall short?

Some of those answers may depend on how you define success. Benjamin Scales has been chasing his definition for nearly 30 years.

“Although I have attained ‘success,’ some small part of me always felt like a failure,” he said.

It was fall of 1984, and Scales was a freshman at the University of Kentucky extension campus in his hometown of Paducah. At the time, he was a model student — eager to learn and give back. “I was active in volunteer work.

By Richard LeComte

LEXINGTON, Ky. – Yuan Zhou, assistant professor of mathematics in the University of Kentucky’s College of Arts & Sciences, has received a $179,768 grant from the National Science Foundation through July 31, 2023.

The grant is titled “Collaborative Research: Next-Generation Cutting Planes: Compression, Automation, Diversity, and Computer-Assisted Mathematics.” Zhou is researching  the interface of global optimization, computational semialgebraic geometry, computer-assisted theorem proving and software verification in ways that promise to improve “the training of undergraduate and graduate students in computational mathematics and research skills, as well as development of high-quality open-source research software.”

“Students will increase their proficiency with the real-world programming language Python and with

By Kody Kiser and Carl Nathe

LEXINGTON, Ky. (Nov. 30, 2020) — Coming from a large family in Nebraska, Mark Prendergast grew up with a desire to help others.

Prendergast, the director of the Neuroscience Bachelor of Science degree program in the University of Kentucky College of Arts and Sciences, has used that desire to find demonstrative ways to increase the number of students of color in the neuroscience field.

“We have a longstanding commitment to addressing issues of diversity, inclusivity and equity,” Prendergast said. “And one of our most important missions as faculty and scientists is to train the next generation of scientists and professors. And we have to, absolutely

By Richard LeComte

Although the FBI collects statistics on hate crime in the United States, what gets reported as a hate crime depends on several factors, including whether police, victims and witnesses regard the act as an actual hate crime.

Chenghui Zhang, a doctoral candidate in sociology in the University of Kentucky’s College of Arts & Sciences, is studying the factors that go into how people interpret hate crime. She received a $50,000 grant from the National Institute of Justice for her study, “Social Construction of Hate Crime in the U.S.: A Factorial Survey Experiment.”

“My research contributes to understanding how social structure influences crime and crime reporting behaviors, with a specific focus on how racial inequalities affect perceptions of and reactions to bias crimes,” Zhang

By Richard LeComte

LEXINGTON, Ky. -- Francie Chassen-López, professor of history in the College of Arts & Sciences at the University of Kentucky, has been named the Otis A. Singletary Endowed Chair in Humanities.

The professorship is named after Otis A. Singletary, a historian and the eighth president of UK, serving from 1969 to 1987.

“Professor Chassen-López is an internationally renowned scholar whose research has had a profound impact on the understanding of Southern Mexican history all around the globe, but especially in the English-speaking and Spanish-speaking worlds,” said Christian Brady, interim dean of the College.

Chassen-López has produced three single-authored books, two co-authored books, two short books, three edited short anthologies, and 53 journal articles and books chapters, one of which won the Tibesar Prize in 2000 from the Council

By Jenny Wells-Hosley

The University of Kentucky Appalachian Center is currently offering awards and funding opportunities for students involved with work and research in the Appalachian region.

Applications for the 2021 James S. Brown Graduate Student Award for Research on Appalachia and applications for the 2021 UK Appalachian Center Eller & Billings Student Research Award are both due Feb. 15. 2021.

Graduate students are eligible to apply for the James S. Brown Graduate Student Award for Research on Appalachia and both

LEXINGTON. Ky. (Nov. 19, 2020) — The University of Kentucky's GradResearch Live! hosted the 3-Minute Thesis competition online this year. The 24 research presentations by graduate students and postdocs garnered more than 9,500 total views on YouTube.  Among them were several graduate students in the College of Arts & Sciences. 

The competition challenges presenters to tell their research story in three minutes or less using one static slide to an imagined audience of nonspecialists. This is the eighth year the UK Graduate

By University Press of Kentucky and Danielle Donham

LEXINGTON, Ky. (Nov. 17, 2020) — When the Declaration of Independence was signed by a group of wealthy white men in 1776, poor white men, African Americans and women quickly discovered that the unalienable rights it promised were not truly for all. 

The 19th Amendment eventually gave women the right to vote in 1920, but the change was not welcomed by people of all genders in politically and religiously conservative Kentucky. As a result, the suffrage movement in the Commonwealth involved a tangled web of stakeholders, entrenched interest groups, unyielding constitutional barriers and activists with competing strategies.

In this new release

By Lindsey Piercy

LEXINGTON, KY. (Nov. 17, 2020) — Did you know, federal agencies have identified Russian as a priority language of national need?

A new course at the University of Kentucky aims to meet that need by preparing students for careers as global language professionals.

The Department of Modern and Classical Languages, Literatures and Cultures (MCLLC) in the College of Arts and Sciences strives to teach students how to read, speak and write in various languages on matters ranging from poetry to politics. Now, with support from an Alternative Textbook Grant from UK Libraries

By Jenny Wells-Hosley

When it comes to portable electronic devices, such as cell phones, laptops, tablets or smart watches, how often do we feel frustrated because the battery is about to die, or because it doesn’t last as long as it did a few months ago?

Chad Risko, an associate professor of chemistry and affiliated faculty researcher at the Center for Applied Energy Research at the University of Kentucky, says this simple context shows the value in creating better batteries. But it is not just small portable electronics that need more robust, and differentiated, energy storage.

“Electric and hybrid vehicles are becoming more omnipresent, and here we need batteries that are lighter in weight, safer and can store ever more energy,” Risko said. “Further, as our nation’s

Dr. Richard Milich, Emeritus Professor and Provost’s Distinguished Professor of Psychology, University of Kentucky

Richard (Rich) Milich, 71, died on November 7, 2020, at home in Lexington, KY. He was born, along with his twin brother Henry, on June 26, 1949, to Helen and Lester Milich in New York City and grew up in New Jersey. He is survived by his brother Henry and proceeded in death by his brother Robert. His sister-in-law Katherine, nephews Stephen and Matthew, and grand-nephew William and grand-niece Sophia also survive.

Rich received his undergraduate degree from Columbia University in 1971. He went on to Washington University in St. Louis for graduate training, where he earned his Ph.D. in clinical psychology in 1976. After a one-year clinical internship in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of North Carolina, he moved to the

Aria S. Halliday, assistant Professor in the department of gender and women’s studies and in African American and Africana Studies at the University of Kentucky,  participated recently in "The future of America, according to 7 teachers," a feature on the NBC "Today" show.

"The future of America is a diverse, people-centered and people-led democracy that actively works to end white supremacist capitalist patriarchy and its effects (racism, colorism, fatphobia, xenophobia, etc.) in policies and cultural landscapes," Halliday said on the NBC website. 

You can take a look at more of what she has to say here. 

By Richard LeComte

Last year, the College of Arts & Sciences at the University of Kentucky started bringing together a group of people from several walks of life to learn about diversity.

The broadness of the new program – an online Graduate Certificate in Diversity and Inclusion --  goes a long way to practice what it preaches.

“I think that's really one of the ideas behind the certificate: to bring people together from different backgrounds and in different careers and studies and professions,” said M. Cristina Alcalde, associate dean of Inclusion and Internationalization, who founded the program. “Given what's happening at the University right now and nationally, I think this is a particularly relevant certificate to have.”

The program, now in its