a blacklight makes everything purple while a gloved hand places a test tube full of yellow fluid into a a test tube tray

Generating Power Like Plants

When plants absorb sunlight, they convert carbon dioxide into energy-rich organic compounds. What if humans could do the same thing? What if we could pull CO2 out of the air and use it to build organic molecules? This revolutionary idea is still just that — an idea. But organic chemists at UNC are laying the groundwork for turning it into reality.
a 20-something woman points to mathematical equations on a chalkboard

Katrina Morgan

Katrina Morgan is a fourth-year PhD candidate studying mathematics within the UNC College of Arts & Sciences. Her research is motivated by General Relativity, which says our universe bends near massive bodies like planets or black holes and becomes flat away from them. She examines how light waves decay on a variety of spacetimes that are curved, but become flat far away in space.
a 40-something male holds a container of fruit flies -- shelves with colorful labels are in the background

Why a Fly?

The genome of a fruit fly is strikingly similar to that of a human — so much so that scientists have been studying these tiny insects for over 100 years, in search of treatments for diseases like spinal muscular atrophy and neurological disorders. UNC geneticist Bob Duronio is one of those scientists.
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Nicole Gardner-Neblett

Nicole Gardner-Neblett is an advanced research scientist with the UNC Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute. She is also a research assistant professor in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience within the UNC College of Arts & Sciences. Her research focuses on investigating factors that promote children’s language and literacy development.

Rebecca Tippett

Rebecca Tippett is the founding director of Carolina Demography, a research consulting service at the Carolina Population Center. Her research focuses on informing decisions at local, state, and national levels through analyzing demographic data on topics like where and why people move, educational attainment and employment rates, and the housing market.
a woman sits at her desk and edits a survey

Teresa Edwards

Teresa Edwards is the assistant director for survey research within The Odum Institute for Research in Social Science at UNC. She conducts web and mail surveys for principal investigators within and outside the university, teaches within the graduate Certification Program in Survey Methodology, and provides survey research consultations to faculty, staff, and students across campus.
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Yaiza Canzani

Yaiza Canzani is an assistant professor in the Department of Mathematics within the UNC College of Arts & Sciences. Her research focuses on understanding the behavior of wave functions that solve Schrodinger’s equation — the mathematical formulation for studying the energy levels of quantum mechanical systems like atoms.
a young Asian woman in chemistry googles pours a solution from one beaker into another

Kimiko Suzuki

Kimiko Suzuki is a PhD student in the Curriculum for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology. She works in both the Dohlman and Elston labs located in the Department of Pharmacology at the UNC School of Medicine. Her research focuses on predicting how intracellular signaling pathways respond to stress.
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Carly Moreno

Carly Moreno is a PhD student studying marine science within the UNC College of Arts & Sciences. Her research focuses on using molecular sequencing to study the environmental factors that regulate phytoplankton growth in Antarctica.

Go with the Flow

Streambeds act as natural water filters by trapping particles and pollutants. To better understand the dynamics of these small yet complex systems, a UNC hydrologist is creating (and clogging) her own stream.

Higher Ed Hierarchy

Students across the United States graduate with, on average, $30,000 of student loan debt, which can take years — sometimes decades — to pay off. How this affects the Latino community, specifically, is an under-reported story. But the UNC Center for Community Capital has partnered with UndiosUS in an effort to change that.
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Sweta Karlekar

Sophomore Sweta Karlekar is an undergraduate researcher majoring in computer science within the UNC College of Arts and Sciences. She is also a Chancellor's Science Scholar. Her research focuses on building an artificial intelligence program that can automatically identify early signs of Alzheimer’s disease and dementia through a person's speech.