Anna Geib is a junior double-majoring in exercise and sport science within the UNC College of Arts & Sciences and nutrition within the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health. She studies how diet and exercise improve the quality and length of life in different populations and is particularly interested in how it can mitigate the risks of space flight.

Most UNC-Chapel Hill PhD students oversee their own research projects for their dissertations. But Kriddie Whitmore did it in a foreign country — and with the added challenges of a language barrier, bad weather, and limited equipment. This past summer, Whitmore traveled to the Andes Mountains in Ecuador, tackling their demands with incredible tenacity and creativity.

Nichola Lowe spotted the gaps in the U.S. workforce long before the pandemic shined a light on them. She’s spent the last 15 years studying how employees develop and use skills at work, and how employers encourage development of those skills. Most recently, she’s written a book on the topic and is using lessons from the pandemic to drive her current research.

This summer, UNC-Chapel Hill PhD student Colleen Betti and 80 volunteers rushed to uncover a historic schoolyard that was about to be paved over and transformed into a parking lot. Their mission: to illuminate the overlooked, everyday lives of African American school children from the 19th century.

Rainier Masa is an assistant professor in the UNC School of Social Work. He studies the intersection of socioeconomic precarity, stigma, and HIV in adolescents and young adults.

Warming ocean waters are one of many climate change consequences, and scientists have observed fish migrating to stay within their preferred temperature range. Janet Nye, a UNC-Chapel Hill marine scientist, wants to understand how a warmer environment will affect these animals to help fisheries better prepare for the future.

Stephanie Smith is a PhD student in the Department of Earth, Marine, and Environmental Sciences within the UNC College of Arts & Sciences. By observing squid, she researches how bacteria acquire and exchange DNA from other bacterial cells — a process called horizontal gene transfer — to improve our understanding of bacterial evolution.

This summer, UNC-Chapel Hill research technicians Liz Farquhar and Tessa Davis traveled to the Andes Mountains in Ecuador for a project in the páramo, a beautiful but challenging ecosystem. While the high altitude and unpredictable weather took time to adjust to, they discovered that the resilience they gained during the pandemic aided them in all the obstacles they faced.

The pace of life varies often. Sometimes it drags, others it races. But if time always moves at the same rate, why does it feel different? That’s a question UNC-Chapel Hill philosopher Carla Merino-Rajme strives to answer.

Julian Rucker wants to motivate people to address the stark racial disparities that have characterized the history of the United States. As a UNC-Chapel Hill postdoctoral researcher, he uses social psychology to unpack why structural racism exists, how people perceive it, and why we must change policies to eliminate it from our society.

Commercial and recreational fishing are important contributors to the North Carolina economy, but there are still lots of unknowns about many fish species. UNC–Chapel Hill PhD student Lewis Naisbett-Jones is trying to unravel some of that mystery by tracking the migration of one popular species in the fishing community: sheepshead.

Maggie Melo is an assistant professor within the UNC School of Information and Library Science. She studies how design and spatial interventions can be integrated into makerspaces and other environments to foster the inclusion of diverse user communities.