The Carolina Population Center is in it for the long haul. The 52-year-old institution leads data-driven studies that span decades, enriching population research across the world.

Cherokee language resources. Dean Smith’s personal papers. A first-person account of an enslaved woman. For more than a century, UNC researchers and libraries have collected millions of southern artifacts and documents — making Carolina a hub for the study of the American South.

Cheryl Giscombe is the Melissa and Harry LeVine Family Professor of Quality of Life, Health Promotion, and Wellness within the UNC School of Nursing and a Thorp Faculty Engaged Scholar. Her research focuses on developing ways to resolve stress and its effects on health behaviors, physiology, and health outcomes.

Alice Ammerman is a powerful force for nutrition research and community-based health promotion. Her nearly 40-year career heavily influences her personal approach to public health; by establishing relationships with community partners and making an effort to understand the context of community health, she aims to form lasting connections and accomplish real change.

Rising senior Savannah Swinea is an undergraduate researcher within the UNC College of Arts & Sciences majoring in environmental science, with a minor in marine science. Her research focuses on the effects of streambed clogging on water exchange, which she studies in the UNC fluids lab via a racetrack flume.

Imagine a drug that could cure everything from Ebola to the common cold. Utilizing the expertise of the Baric Lab at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health, Gilead Sciences is making breakthroughs in developing drugs to fight some of the world's deadliest viruses.

Min Zheng is a research associate in the Department of Ophthalmology within the UNC School of Medicine. Her research focuses on using nanotechnologies in gene and drug delivery for treating ocular disorders.

Rachel Noble is the Mary and Watts Hill Jr. Distinguished Professor at the UNC Institute of Marine Sciences. She is also a professor in the Department of Marine Sciences within the UNC College of Arts & Sciences and director of the Institute for the Environment’s Morehead City field site. Her research focuses on understanding the abundance and ecology of dangerous bacteria and viruses that are found in the ocean and within seafood.

One in nine new moms struggle with depression — but single moms, immigrants, and those in low socioeconomic situations are even more susceptible. And their children, whose brains triple in size and make nearly 1,000 nerve connections in the first three years of their life, are directly affected. To combat this, UNC nurse scientist Linda Beeber has spent the past two decades developing mental health interventions that treat both the mother and the child as a unit, called the “dyad.”

Cleo Samuel is an assistant professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management within the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health. Her research focuses on improving the equity and quality of supportive cancer care — such as care that optimizes comfort, function, social support, and overall quality of life — through the use of health informatics tools that address systemic barriers to care.

A series of studies by one research group in Oregon reported that, on average, children move one full level down the autism spectrum after 20 weeks of Qigong Sensory Training (QST) — a type of massage therapy adapted from Traditional Chinese Medicine. UNC postdoc Kristin Jerger found these results so intriguing that she has published a feasibility study for a new line of research on the neural mechanisms of QST massage.

Can the creation of a new park be influenced by a centuries-old mental hospital? The City of Raleigh has tasked UNC Community Histories Workshop researchers with merging the past and the future at Dorothea Dix Park.