Some researchers believe gratitude is a fundamental human emotion, connecting us to friends and partners who support our well-being. Two UNC psychologists focus on the long-lasting effects of living a life full of thanks.

Tamera Coyne-Beasley is a professor of pediatrics and internal medicine within the UNC School of Medicine, as well as director of the North Carolina Child Research Health Network at the North Carolina Translational and Clinical Sciences Institute (NCTraCS). She is the president of the Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine. Her research focuses on sexual health, vaccines, injury, and violence prevention among adolescents.

From the time he was a child, Bryan Reatini has always held an inherent fascination for the natural world. Now, as he pursues his PhD in biology, Reatini has the unique opportunity to collect data from one of the most distinct ecosystems in the world — the Galápagos Islands.

Senior Madeline Fisher is an undergraduate researcher double-majoring in environmental studies and music within the UNC College of Arts & Sciences. She is also a Summer Undergraduate Research Fellow. Her research focuses on gathering oral histories from musicians who have come from coal-mining communities and the role environmental science plays in their lives.

Sarah Ramdeen is a doctoral candidate in the UNC School of Information and Library Science. Her research focuses on the information-seeking behavior of scientists who use physical data sources within the geosciences such as cores, cuttings, fossils, and other specimens. She successfully defended her dissertation on July 28.

Blossom Damania is the vice dean for research and Cary C. Boshamer Distinguished Professor within the UNC School of Medicine. Her research focuses on the biological mechanism behind cancer-causing viruses.

12,340 miles separates the North Pole from the South Pole. But many geophysicists believe the two points are connected. How has always been a mystery, but UNC geophysicist José A. Rial has a hypothesis — they actually “talk” to each other through a natural process called synchronization.

Casey Berger is a PhD student in the Department of Physics and Astronomy within the UNC College of Arts and Sciences. She is a Department of Energy Computational Science Graduate Fellow and a William Neal Reynolds Fellow within The Graduate School’s Royster Society of Fellows. She uses high-performance computing to simulate interactions between particles to understand situations that arose in the early universe — and still occur inside our atoms, stars, and special materials like superconductors.

If a picture is worth 1,000 words, what is a nearly 500-year-old painting worth? “Portrait of a Young Lady” sat in storage at the Ackland Art Museum since its arrival there in 1968 — until UNC art history professor Christoph Brachmann pulled it from the vaults last year. He immediately sensed the potential importance of this piece, thought to be created in 1522 by Barthel Bruyn, a German Renaissance painter.

Rising senior Morgan Vickers is an undergraduate research assistant for the Community Histories Workshop in the Digital Innovations Lab. She is a Summer Undergraduate Research Fellow double-majoring in American studies and communications studies, with a minor in creative writing within the UNC College of Arts and Sciences. Her research focuses on mapping historic cities now underwater, with attention to factors like racial dynamics, changing town infrastructure, and occupations.

Fort Bragg, the largest military installation in North Carolina, spans 500 square miles packed with sand dunes, longleaf pines, and a handful of rare and endangered plants. To protect the vital vegetation covering training lands, the army base has partnered with the North Carolina Botanical Garden to reintroduce four species endemic to the region.

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.