By Ryan Girves

LEXINGTON, Ky. (May 18, 2023) — Weiss Mehrabi, a doctoral candidate and teaching assistant in the College of Arts & Sciences, is one of 10 winners to receive the University of Kentucky’s 2022-23 Outstanding Teaching Awards. 

These awards identify and recognize individuals who demonstrate special dedication to student achievement and who are successful in their teaching. Recipients were selected via nomination and reviewed by a selection committee based in the UK Provost’s Office for Faculty Advancement and the Center for the Enhancement of Learning and Teaching.

"I’m incredibly surprised, humbled and

By Daniel Flener 

LEXINGTON, Ky. (May 16, 2023) — The Office of the Vice President for Research and the University of Kentucky International Center  have announced the first cohort of UKinSPIRE fellows. UKinSPIRE is an internal funding opportunity for UK faculty, jointly funded by the OVPR and UKIC, intended to stimulate high-impact research projects in any discipline linking UK faculty and international collaborators and to establish collaborations with new international partner institutions or add greater depth to existing institutional partnerships.

Among them is Hugo Reyes-Centeno, assistant professor of anthropology in UK's College of Arts & Sciences. His project is “Resolving the Austronesian Problem:

By Jenny Wells-Hosley 

LEXINGTON, Ky. (May 12, 2023) — The University of Kentucky Appalachian Center is honoring 11 students with its annual research awards.

Eight graduate students received the James S. Brown Graduate Student Award for Research on Appalachia, and one graduate student and two undergraduate students received the center's Eller and Billings Student Research Award.

"The Appalachian Center and Appalachian Studies Program are thrilled to support these students and their summer work,” said Kathryn Engle, director of the center. “This group of students represents a range of disciplines and research interests. Thank you to the research mentors and advisers from across the university that are

By Jenny Wells-Hosley 

LEXINGTON, Ky. (May 9, 2023) — The University of Kentucky Department of Sociology in the College of Arts and Sciences has awarded Aaron Thompson, Ph.D., president of the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education, with the Thomas R. Ford Distinguished Alumni Award. The award is given to doctoral alumni who have distinguished themselves in a sociological career.

Thompson was presented with the award during the department’s annual awards ceremony

By Jesi Jones-Bowman 

LEXINGTON, Ky. (May 8, 2023) — The University of Kentucky Office of Undergraduate Research  has chosen 20 undergraduates for the 2023 Commonwealth Undergraduate Research Experience Fellowship program.

Sponsored by the Office of Undergraduate Research and the Office of the Vice President for Research, the CURE Fellowship program helps undergraduates to become leaders for their respective communities by providing opportunities to develop knowledge and skills through research within six of UK’s Research Priority Areas: cancer, cardiovascular health, diversity and inclusion

By A Fish 

LEXINGTON; Ky. — Writer Kasimma traveled to Croatia in 2022 to promote “Portret Za Dar-Mar,” the Croatian translation of her book, “All Shades of Iberibe.” The book is a collection of short stories mostly about Igbo people.  

Every short story gives different perception into facets of life in Nigeria as well as her feelings as a devout feminist and her complex feelings towards religions. 

“I wrote ‘All Shades of Iberibe’ from a place of love, deep love, for Igbo,” said Kasimma, who is from Igboland in Nigeria. “The Pula Book Fair is the biggest festival of books in Croatia. The organizers of the book fair read my book, liked it, and wanted me to come talk about the book.” 

Kasimma was flattered to be invited to the Book Fair(y) in Istria, Croatia. One of the short stories in “Iberibe” is about the

By Jenny Wells-Hosley

LEXINGTON, Ky. (May 5, 2021) — John Anthony, the C. W. Hammond Professor of Chemistry in the College of Arts and Sciences, has been named winner of the 2023 SEC Faculty Achievement Award for the University of Kentucky this spring.

Anthony, who also serves as associate director at the Center for Applied Energy Research (CAER), was awarded with 13 other SEC university professors for their “dedication to the classroom experience, the commitment to advance their disciplines and the determination to make a difference through service.”

"I am very grateful to UK and the SEC for this honor," Anthony said. "Given the interdisciplinary nature of modern science, my accomplishments represent the shared intellectual

By Whitney Hale

LEXINGTON, Ky. (May 5, 2023) — The University of Kentucky Office of Nationally Competitive Awards has announced that four students have been offered Fulbright U.S. Student Program scholarships to travel abroad to teach, study or pursue research for the 2023-24 academic year.

Recipients of Fulbright grants are selected based on academic or professional achievement, as well as demonstrated leadership potential in their fields. The program operates in more than 140 countries.

This year’s UK Fulbright recipients are:

By Brian Carrico

LEXINGTON, Ky. (May 5, 2023) — Walking across the commencement stage and receiving your diploma is a satisfying feeling and is the culmination of a lot of hard work. University of Kentucky graduate Gabija Ziemyte’s family will celebrate her accomplishments for the first time in the United States.

“My parents are from Lithuania, and they both earned master's degrees there,” said Ziemyte, a Lewis Honors student and Chellgren Student Fellow who majored in physics and mathematics with an English minor in the College of Arts and Sciences. “I think my parents are proud that I've been

By Lindsay Travis 

LEXINGTON, Ky. (May 2, 2023) — On Friday, the University of Kentucky Board of Trustees approved 16 University Research Professors for the 2023-24 academic year. Established by the Board of Trustees in 1976, the program recognizes excellence across the full spectrum of research at UK.

“The Commonwealth and university continue to benefit from the work and

By A Fish 

LEXINGTON;, Ky. — Oswald Research and Creativity Competition is a staple at the University of Kentucky. The competition is intended to promote creativity in all fields of study and accepts many varied forms of media as part of the competition. Colton Barton, a College of Arts & Sciences junior from Scottsville, Kentucky, received second place in the Social Sciences category for the paper “Gaymer Avatars: Analyzing the Relationship Between Gay Men and their Created Video Game Avatars” and an honorable mention in the Humanities: Critical Research categories for “A Potential for a Queer Utopia: Queer Futurity and Potentiality in Octavia Butler's Dawn” in the 2022-23 competition. He is also a UK (University of Kentucky) peer tutor.  

Q: What are the papers? Why did you write them and what has writing them and submitting them done for you?

By Kody Kiser and Jay Blanton 

LEXINGTON, Ky. (May 1, 2023) — Frank X Walker is the director of the University of Kentucky's Master of Fine Arts (MFA) program in creative writing. The state of Kentucky has a long and storied tradition of writers — across genres of fiction, poetry and essays — who are deeply connected to the state — its geography and landscape, its history and challenges. The program’s current faculty roster includes nationally recognized authors across a number of genres.

Walker is extending the legacy of UK and Kentucky’s reputation as central to the writing community, working as a poet, writer and artist. He has recently published a book geared toward a younger audience and is now at work on a new collection of poems that examines a

By Jenny Wells-Hosley 

LEXINGTON, Ky. (April 26, 2023) — Anne-Frances Miller,  professor in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Kentucky, is serving as the 2022-23 College of Arts and Sciences’ Distinguished Professor and will deliver the annual Distinguished Professor Lecture Monday, May 1, 2023.

The lecture, titled “Renewable: New Opportunities from one of Life’s Most Ancient Chemical Tools,” will begin at 5 p.m. in the William T. Young Library Athletic Auditorium. A reception will follow in the Alumni Gallery in the library.

The lecture will

By Lindsay Travis 

LEXINGTON, Ky. (April 26, 2023) — Research at the University of Kentucky is looking to nature to understand cellular processes that allow lost tissue to regenerate in spiny mice — processes that might lie dormant in humans.

Ashley Seifert,  an associate professor in the UK College of Arts and Sciences’ Department of Biology, teamed up with scientists in Germany and the Netherlands to examine how identical injuries in two different rodent species lead to regenerative healing in one case but not the other.

The paper, published today in Science Advances, compared tissue healing in

By Ann Blackford 

LEXINGTON, Ky. (April 25, 2023) — Two University of Kentucky students and one local citizen have received UK’s highest honor for humanitarian efforts — the Algernon Sydney Sullivan Award.

The Sullivan Award was established by the New York Southern Society in 1925 and was named in honor of its first president, Algernon Sydney Sullivan. Sullivan was a prominent businessman and philanthropist who was highly regarded as one who “reached out with both hands in constant helpfulness” to others. The Sullivan Award recognizes those “who exhibit Sullivan’s ideals of heart, mind, and conduct as evince a spirit of love for and helpfulness to other men and women.”

At UK, the Sullivan Award

By A Fish 

LEXINGTON, Ky. — Incorporating art and sciences, UK Ph.D. recipient Priya Karna seized on an opportunity to submit her illustration to the American Chemical Society Diversity and Inclusion Cover Art Series. As a result, her artwork and editorial ended up in the March 2, 2023, issue of the Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters. 

“The competition started in 2021, so it's just been two years since they’ve been doing this,” she said. “I saw some of the examples of the cover art, and it looked like something I could do.” 

The artwork, "Women in Science: From Country to Chemistry," displays Karna’s vision of representing women from rural areas in science. The cover art depicts a girl with her cattle on a farm; she dreams of being a scientist.  

Since she was

LEXINGTON, Ky. -- Samantha Malone, a doctoral candidate in experimental psychology with a concentration in cognitive neuroscience at the University of Kentucky, is one of 110 students within the United States and Canada selected to receive a $20,000 PEO Scholar Award from the PEO Sisterhood.

She was nominated by PEO Chapter AO of Lexington. The PEO Scholar Awards program, established in 1991, provides merit-based awards for women in the United States and Canada who are pursuing a doctoral-level degree at an accredited college or university.

Malone is a 2017 summa cum laude graduate of East Tennessee State University in psychology: behavioral neuroscience. She holds an M.S. in experimental psychology and a graduate certificate in Applied Statistics from UK.

Malone has written articles in scientific journals and given numerous presentations

LEXINGTON, Ky. (April 20, 2023) — The University of Kentucky Nu Circle of Omicron Delta Kappa National Leadership Honor Society hosted its annual awards night on Tuesday, April 11, in the W. T. Young Athletic Auditorium. Among those recognized for the Maurice A. Clay award  was Kameron Kraus, a student in the College of Arts & Sciences. In addition, A&S student Nora Sypkens received a Jerry D. Claiborne Scholarship.

The Maurice A. Clay award was created over 30 years ago to recognize the outstanding graduating senior in each academic college. Winners are selected by the college and are expected to be exceptional leaders who have provided service to their college while maintaining a strong academic record. Omicron Delta Kappa recognizes superior scholarship, leadership and exemplary character. The Maurice A. Clay

By Lindsay Travis 

LEXINGTON, Ky. (April 18, 2023) — Researchers at the University of Kentucky are studying how the chemical reactions in the air after wildfires contribute to changes in the color of aerosol particles.

Marcelo Guzman is an associate professor in the Department of Chemistry in the College and Arts and Sciences. He leads the Environmental Chemistry Laboratory.

Guzman, principal investigator, worked with graduate student Sohel Rana on the study funded by the National Science Foundation. Their findings have been published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology.

Guzman and Rana study how chemicals in atmosphere smoke

LEXINGTON, Ky. (April 17, 2023) — The University of Kentucky Women’s Executive Leadership Development (WELD) program has announced its 2023 cohort of faculty and staff participants. The eight-month WELD program seeks to develop a new generation of leaders of higher education who can adeptly navigate our complex environment and successfully chart the future of the university through retreats, monthly meetings, conversations with upper-level administrators, and other group interactions. 

WELD is supported and organized through the Office of Faculty Advancement and is currently in its ninth year. Current Faculty Trustee Hollie Swanson was the initial director of the program, followed by Professor Chana