Carter Smith, a PhD candidate at the UNC Institute of Marine Sciences, uses underwater sonar to count fish in low-visibility environments - a good indicator for the overall health of a marsh ecosystem.

Carter Smith is a PhD student at the UNC Institute of Marine Sciences. Her research focuses on the benefits of living shorelines, which use natural materials like plants, sand, or rock to stabilize the seashore.

Katie Stember is a PhD student in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine within the UNC School of Medicine. She is also the founder of Scientists of North Carolina, a social media platform striving to bridge the gap between scientists and the community. Her research focuses on the disease-causing role of T cells in ANCA vasculitis, an autoimmune disease that affects blood vessels throughout the body.

Ever since the Wright brothers flew at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina has proudly proclaimed to be “first in flight." Less well-known is Carolina’s connection to deep space — from the first astronomical observatory on a college campus, to the first planetarium in the South, to one of the first administrators at NASA, UNC scientists have long been connected to and inspired by the night sky.

Nur Shahir is a PhD student in the Curriculum in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology within the UNC School of Medicine, as well as a member of the UNC Initiative for Maximizing Student Diversity. Her research focuses on computational and statistical methods to investigate the role of the gut microbiome in inflammatory bowel diseases like Crohn’s disease.

When Fred Sanger figured out how to sequence DNA in 1975, the world changed — and so did UNC. As more and more scientists dove headfirst into the field of genetics, the university realized the need for a department dedicated to this cause.

Since its founding in 2000, the UNC Department of Genetics has continuously made the top-five list of NIH program funding and has grown to include 80 faculty, who have taken the world of research and medicine by storm.

Discussions of sixteenths, scales, and solos rang through the rooms of Kenan Music Hall during the 2017 UNC Summer Jazz Workshop, led by music professor Stephen Anderson. Those who attended were of a variety of ages, skill levels, and backgrounds — a true testament to the universal language of music.

Some students were involved in theory and improvisation courses, while others focused on jazz history, many receiving college credit during the five-day event. All participants had the opportunity to enjoy evening concerts performed by talented guests, professors, and peers. Some of the same students return each year, sure to receive a unique experience each time — that’s the beauty of jazz.

Rising senior Lin Cao is an undergraduate researcher in the Neher Lab within the UNC College of Arts & Sciences, double-majoring in anthropology and biology, with a minor in chemistry. She is also an ambassador for the Office of Undergraduate Research. Her research focuses on the maturation and structure of lipases, a group of proteins that digest fats in the body.

The major political events of the 1960s set the stage for the founding of the UNC Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute, which forever changed education research and practice.

Smarter. Healthier. Better prepared for the world. Those are just a few of the benefits early childhood education can have over the course of a lifetime — benefits made evident by the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute’s Abecedarian Project researchers, who have spent the past 45 years following up with their original research subjects.

Francesca Bernardi is a math PhD candidate within the UNC College of Arts & Sciences and a member of the Joint Applied Mathematics and Marine Sciences Fluids Lab. She is the co-founder of Girls Talk Math and president of the UNC Association for Women in Mathematics. Through experiments and mathematical modeling, Bernadi examines the behavior of fluids flowing through tubes of various geometric shapes such as square, rectangular, elliptical, and more.

Cheng Cao is a PhD student studying geological sciences within the UNC College of Arts & Sciences. Her research focuses on understanding Earth’s evolution over time, as well as the chemical processes that take place on the planet’s surface.