After spending two months on a research expedition in Alaska last summer, UNC junior Carly Onnink, a biology major, shares her story of field-based discovery.

Most visitors return from Jordan Lake with a tan, a photograph, or maybe a unique bird feather. Ayla Gizlice collects something else entirely — chunks of clay, plastic bags, rocks, and dead fish. The UNC senior incorporates these materials into an art project addressing how human actions shape the physical environment.

Nichola Lowe is a professor in the Department of City & Regional Planning within the UNC College of Arts & Sciences. Her research unpacks the processes and practices that contribute to more equitable forms of regional economic development and labor market adjustment.

While the United States and China take up roughly the same amount of land mass, China’s population is over four times that of the U.S. — and more people means more change in vegetation growth. How do these factors connect to climate change? Conghe Song explores this relationship, pursuing a project that has led to his return to his birthplace: rural China.

How do sea turtles navigate using Earth’s magnetic fields? To shed light on this incredible ability, UNC PhD student Kayla Goforth observes the orientation of their eggs — often in the middle of the night.

Karen Sheffield is a doctoral candidate in the UNC School of Nursing. Her research focuses on developing strategies to reduce the long-term health effects of psychological trauma, anxiety, and depression on women’s health and birth outcomes.

Allison Duprey is a sophomore majoring in environmental sciences and minoring in marine sciences within the UNC College of Arts & Sciences. She uses drones to study how baleen whales spend and conserve energy when deep-diving for krill.

Henry Fuchs is always looking 20 years ahead, and two decades from now the computer scientist thinks augmented-reality eyeglasses will be the norm. Fuchs and his team of students and colleagues are developing an augmented-reality program to aid in laparoscopic surgery training and, maybe one day, revolutionize minimally invasive surgery.

Tainayah Thomas is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Health Behavior within the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health. Her research focuses on improving health care delivery and disease prevention for African Americans, Latinos, and other ethnically diverse populations.

Most people don’t think a sprained ankle is serious, but Erik Wikstrom disagrees. The UNC exercise and sports scientist studies the mechanisms and long-term impacts of lateral ankle sprains — exploring not only how they affect local tissues, but how they change the way the brain programs movement.

When an adult loses a front tooth, dentists can replace it with an implant. What about children, who have years of development ahead of them? The answer: relocate an existing tooth to the site of the missing tooth. UNC dentists are the first in the U.S. to try this innovative procedure, called autotransplantation.

In his youth, Boyce Griffith was writing computer programs before he could drive a car. Now a UNC mathematician, he creates computational models of the human heart to improve the prediction and treatment of cardiac diseases.