How can animals travel thousands of miles on a migratory path yet most people need to rely on GPS to get around town? UNC researcher Brian Taylor explores the ability of many animals to use the earth’s magnetic field for navigation in hopes of improving humanmade systems.

Rachel Woodul is a PhD student in the Department of Geography within the UNC College of Arts & Sciences and a research assistant at the Carolina Population Center. She uses geographic information systems to model infectious disease spread, with a specific focus on epidemics and pandemics.

About 2 billion years ago, the oceans were green, the land red and rocky, and only 1 percent of Earth’s atmosphere was oxygen. How did the planet become what it is today? UNC geochemist Xiao-Ming Liu collects samples of soil, rocks, and water from places like Hawaii to find the answer.

About 71 percent of Earth is water. Of that water, 96.5 percent is oceans. So why do most air pollution and emissions studies focus on terrestrial research? An interdisciplinary team of researchers traveled to the Galápagos Islands to uncover how emissions released from the ocean impact human health and the earth.

Alan Weakley has spent his career cataloguing the plants of the Southeastern United States. Most recently, he has compiled this work into a digital guide that will aid fellow botanists and citizen scientists alike as they unearth and admire the colorful flora of the South.

Geovani Ramírez is a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of English and Comparative Literature within the UNC College of Arts & Sciences. He combines Latina/o studies, environmental humanities, and disability studies to better understand the social and ecological networks within Latina/o literature.

The record-breaking 2020 Atlantic hurricane season included 30 storms, and while North Carolina managed to dodge the 12 hurricanes that made landfall, that won’t always be the case in the future. A team of interdisciplinary researchers at UNC is combining their expertise in areas like human health, ecology, and urban planning to create a long-term holistic plan helping vulnerable communities prepare for the next generation of extreme weather events.

Ashleigh Henry is a junior and Chancellor’s Science Scholar majoring in environmental health sciences within the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health. She studies how body mass index can lead to adverse birth outcomes, such as preterm birth and preeclampsia, and the correlation between consuming water infused with heavy metals and cancer rates.

For decades, scientists warned of the potential for a global coronavirus outbreak. But when SARS-CoV-2 emerged, no therapeutics, drugs, or vaccines were readily available. The Rapidly Emerging Antiviral Drug Development Initiative (READDI) — founded by researchers at UNC and the Structural Genomics Consortium — is not only finding solutions to the COVID-19 pandemic, but also drugs and therapeutics for future viral outbreaks.

Just over 100 years ago, physicists stumbled upon an elementary particle that could answer questions about the origin of the universe. Elusive and nearly massless, neutrinos may be the solution to understanding everything from the Big Bang to the inner workings of the atomic nucleus — and UNC physicist Julieta Gruszko can’t stop chasing them.

North Carolina native and organic chemist Sidney Wilkerson-Hill is investigating ways to recreate the power of plants in the lab — work that could lead to advances in drug development.

Flocks of birds. Schools of fish. Colonies of ants. Their strength is in numbers as they can fend off larger predators, move faster, and mate more easily. Daphne Klotsa, an applied physicist, studies how these biological swarms function in hopes to improve how humans and automated technologies navigate the world.