By Jenny Wells and Alicia Gregory

Chad Risko, an assistant professor of chemistry in the University of Kentucky College of Arts and Sciences, didn’t always know there was a career to be had in doing research – until a mentor encouraged him to study chemistry as an undergraduate.

“From there, and when I went to graduate school, is where I think the research bug really took hold,” Risko said. “Being in the lab, working with people, trying to understand new ways to solve problems – that really motivated me to pursue a career in research.”

Now, as a chemistry professor and affiliated researcher in UK’s Center for Applied Energy Research (CAER), Risko says mentoring

By Lindsey Piercy

In front of a crowd of fellow classmates, faculty, staff and local leaders, victimology student Ann Pitts stepped to the podium and began to share a heartfelt story of hurt, hope and healing.

"Beyond protecting society from crime, we need to protect our survivors," Pitts said. "This has inspired a fire in me to keep pushing for change."

Pitts is one of several passionate students who had a hand in organizing the Clothesline Project held on the University of Kentucky campus on April 12.

"I decided to speak because I believe if you want to change things, you have to be brave. I wasn't just being brave for myself but for all of the survivors in the audience," Pitts continued. "I was silent for three years of my life, but I know now that it's time to speak up. I don't want survivors to think speaking out is the only option towards

By Whitney Hale, Amy Jones-Timoney, and Kody Kiser

See how UK Truman Scholar Hadeel Abdallah learned about her Truman Scholarship from UK President Eli Capilouto.

The University of Kentucky Office of Nationally Competitive Awards has announced that political science and Arabic and Islamic studiesjunior Hadeel Abdallah, of Lexington, has been named a 2018 Truman Scholar and will receive $30,000 to support her graduate study. Abdallah is the 14th UK student to receive the honor from the Harry S. Truman Scholarship Foundation.  

“The Truman Scholarship is a

Awards are rolling in for Political Science major Hadeel Abdallah.

First, she won entry into the College of Arts & Science's Trunzo Scholars Program, taking the top ($5,000) award so that she could pursue a nationally recognized internship.

Then, she won the university's VanMeter Award for outstanding volunteer and community service.

But the big prize -- and the big surprise -- came today.  A number of top UK administrators joined Hadeel's mentors, Prof. Jesse C. Johnson and Prof. Tiffany Barnes, in a surprise visit to Hadeel's class to announce that she'd received the nationally competitive $30,000 Truman Scholarship for graduate study.  Given to students intending to pursue a career in public service.

By Kaitlyn Summe

Students from the University of Kentucky's Society of Physics Students (SPS) will host Open Lab Day from noon to 5 p.m. Friday, April 13, in the Chemistry-Physics Building. The event is free and open to all students and faculty wishing to learn more about physics, astronomy and science.

“Attendees will tour active research labs in the physics and astronomy department, hearing from professors and graduate students about work such as fundamental particle research, synthesis of complex materials, and current projects in astronomy,” said Cierra Dany Waller, president of the SPS and mathematics senior and research assistant in the UK College of Arts and Sciences. “There will be a

We are proud to announce that Aaron Mueller has been chosen to receive a National Science Foundation Grant via the Graduate Research Fellowship Program. Aaron is one of only seven awardees in Linguistics nationwide. 

The Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) is a critical program

in the NSF's overall strategy to develop a globally engaged workforce necessary to ensure the nation's leadership in advancing science and engineering

research and innovation.

Former NSF fellows make transformative breakthroughs in STEM, are leaders in their chosen careers, and have been honored as Nobel laureates. A hallmark of GRFP is its contribution to increasing the diversity of the STEM workforce, including geographic districts. The support is for graduate study that leads to a research-based master's or doctoral degree in a STEM field.

Charles P. Roland, alumni professor emeritus at the University of Kentucky, celebrated a major milestone last weekend. On Sunday, the leading scholar turned 100 years old.

Family, friends and colleagues threw a surprise party in his honor. Festivities included a military honor guard and the singing of “Happy Birthday to You” and the Army song by the UK Department of History's faculty. One of Roland's doctoral students, Thomas Appleton, presented a resolution commending Roland on behalf of UK President Eli Capilouto.

Roland, the son and grandson of teachers, holds a bachelor's degree from Vanderbilt University, a master's degree from George Washington University and a doctoral degree in history from Louisiana State University.

As a former captain in the United States Army, Roland's

Jeramiah Smith, an associate professor of biology in the University of Kentucky College of Arts and Sciences, will deliver the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) Early Career Investigator (ECI) lecture next week at the National Institutes of Health.

His talk, "Ancient Bloodsuckers, Disposable Genes, and What It All Means," will explore Smith's research on the genome of sea lampreys.

“Lampreys are representatives of an ancient group of vertebrates that diverged [from most other vertebrates — including humans] more than 500 million years ago,” Smith said. “Unlike most other vertebrates, they also eliminate 20 percent of their genome from most cells during early development.

By Lindsey Piercy

A group of UK College of Arts & Sciences students in the Department of Modern and Classical Languages, Literatures and Cultures, are being recognized for outstanding accomplishments on a national level.

Sophia Decker was named the 2018 recipient for best student paper at the Eta Sigma Phi (National Classics Honor Society) convention, held March 23-25, in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. The paper titled, "Dorians Are Allowed to Speak Doric: Theocritus’ Idyll XV in the Context of Panhellenization" will be published in its entirety in the society's newsletter, NUNTIUS. Developed under the guidance of Jackie Murray, assistant professor of classics at UK, the paper reads the idyll as a manifesto for the survival of Greek regional dialects against the spread of a standardized form of Greek.

Valerio Caldesi Valeri, assistant

By Lindsey Piercy

Nazera Wright, associate professor of English at UK College of Arts & Sciences, has been named the 2018 recipient of the Children's Literature Association's Honor Book Award for her 2016 scholarly book titled, "Black Girlhood in the Nineteenth Century," published by University of Illinois Press.

The book shows how the figure of the black girl in African-American literature provided a powerful avenue for exploring issues like domesticity, femininity and proper conduct. Wright draws on heavy archival research and a wide range of texts about African-American girls to explore the unstudied phenomenon of black girlhood. In doing this, the book documents a literary genealogy of the cultural attitudes toward black girls in the United States.

Science is all around us, from the design of the buildings we drive by on our way to work, to the brewing of our favorite beverages, to the development of pharmaceuticals to help us live longer and healthier lives. But how much do you know about how these everyday commodities actually work?

A group of professors and students at the University of Kentucky College of Pharmacy, along with community partners like Keeneland and AllTech are working together to introduce the Lexington community to the science around us. Everything is Science is a science festival that will be held at different locations all throughout the city, with concurrent events happening Thursday, April 26th through Saturday, April 28th.

Everything is Science aims to bridge the gap between scientists and the general public while making science accessible. Their mission is to demonstrate how

By Kaitlyn Summe

The University of Kentucky's #IAmAWomanInSTEM project will host a week of activities featuring speakers and panels to promote STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) education and careers. This celebration week — #IAmAWomanInSTEMWeek — was created to encourage, empower and motivate women in STEM by sharing their stories and helping them network with other students and professionals.

The week of events was organized by Kayla Kuhfeldt, a senior from Grand Rapids, Michigan, studying biology and health, society and populations in the UK College of Arts and Sciences.

“Being a woman pursuing a career in a STEM field can

By Whitney Hale

Beau Revlett, a UK College of Arts & Sciences philosophy junior from Georgetown, Kentucky, has been selected to deliver the 24th annual Edward T. Breathitt Undergraduate Lectureship in the Humanities beginning 7 p.m. Thursday, April 5, in the UK Athletics Auditorium at William T. Young Library. Revlett’s free public lecture will explore how multidisciplinary approaches to deciding what is good or rational may be beneficial to society.

The Breathitt Lectureship was named for an outstanding UK alumnus who showed an exceptional interest in higher education and the humanities, Gov. Edward T. Breathitt. The

By Whitney Hale

The University of Kentucky Office of Nationally Competitive Awards has announced that recent College of Arts & Sciences philosophy graduate Benjamin Troupe, of Mercersburg, Pennsylvania, was named a finalist for the Thomas R. Pickering Foreign Affairs Fellowship. Troupe is one of 60 national finalists who will interview for the fellowship in Washington, D.C., in mid-April.

Funded by the U.S. Department of State and administered by The Washington Center for Internships and Academic Seminars, the Pickering

By Lindsey Piercy

A two-day event at the University of Kentucky will explore the diversity and complexity of Jewish history in Kentucky.

UK is hosting the Kentucky Jewish History Symposium starting Thursday, April 12, at the Hilary J. Boone Center. A public keynote lecture, by Professor and Rabbi Gary Zola, executive director of the Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives, will begin at 7:30 p.m. The lecture promises to place Kentucky Jewish history in its national and transnational contexts. 

A full day of sessions is scheduled from 8:30 a.m.-4 p.m. Friday, April 13, in the ballroom of the UK King Alumni House at 400 Rose St. They will feature national scholars, UK faculty and students as presenters. 

At a keynote lunch, attendees will hear from politician

By Lindsey Piercy

The University of Kentucky African American and Africana Studies Program hopes to send a message of empowerment throughout the 24th annual Black Women's Conference.

This year's conference, themed "The New Jane Crow; Black Women, Mass Incarceration, and Police Violence," will be held Friday, March 30, and Saturday, March 31.

"Black women are a fast-growing portion of the prison population and experience a myriad of challenges related to high incarceration rates in the U.S. Therefore, we thought it was essential that we draw attention to the very real impact mass incarceration and police violence have on black women," said Anastasia Curwood, director of African American and Africana Studies Program (

By Jenny Wells

The University of Kentucky will host a public talk on campus next week by John Preskill, the Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics and director of the Institute of Quantum Information and Matter at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech).

The talk, “Quantum Computing and the Entanglement Frontier,” will take place 4:15 p.m. Friday, April 6, at the Don & Cathy Jacobs Science Building Room 121.

Preskill's talk will be the 17th annual van Winter Lecture.  The van Winter Lectures were established in 2001 to honor the memory of Clasine van Winter, who held a professorship in the Department of Mathematics and the Department of Physics and Astronomy from 1968 until her retirement in 1999.  This year's van Winter Lecture is jointly sponsored by the 

By Lindsey Piercy

Several University of Kentucky faculty members within the College of Arts and Sciences presented research at the Association for Asian Studies annual conference last weekend.

The four-day event, in Washington, D.C., brought together scholars, professors, researchers and authors from around the world to present research and discuss topics devoted to the study of Asia.

The Association for Asian Studies (AAS) is the largest Asian Studies conference held in North America. More than 3,000 people attended this year, including UK faculty: