ANTHROPOLOGY - Ever since the first human-controlled spacecraft escaped Earth’s gravity, people have been pushing toward permanent human life inhabiting planets beyond Earth. Some might say it's brand-new territory, but UO professor and Museum of Natural and Cultural History associate director Scott Fitzpatrick argues that humans have already faced similar great unknowns.

BIOLOGY - Gut microbes encourage specialized cells to prune back extra connections in brain circuits that control social behavior, new UO research in zebrafish shows. The pruning is essential for the development of normal social behavior.

CHEMISTRY & BIOCHEMISTRY - A University of Oregon chemist who is studying RNA structures that carry specific biological functions hopes to translate the findings into advances that will impact all of humanity, such as the COVID vaccine.

BIOLOGY - A new gene editing technique developed by UO researchers compresses what previously would have been years of work into just a few days, making new kinds of research possible in animal models.

The University of Oregon continued its multiyear streak of increasing grant funding in fiscal year 2021-22 (FY22). Numerous faculty members received recognition for their contributions to research, as well as the number of research awards with direct positive effects on local and regional communities.

THEATRE ARTS - Before “Stranger Things,” there was “She Kills Monsters,” a 2011 coming-of-age drama-comedy brimming with Mind Flayers and Bulettes, also known as landsharks, and an array of other monsters and heroes drawn from the popular role-play game Dungeons & Dragons.

A $4.2 million National Science Foundation grant will boost the UO’s efforts to build a support community for STEM teachers across 14 Western states through the agency’s Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship Program.

PSYCHOLOGY - A new discipline in psychology at the University of Oregon is broadening the department’s inclusivity with three new dedicated faculty hires.

ENGLISH - Ben Saunders was voted best professor for the second year in a row. He is professor of Comics and Cartoon Studies.

BIOLOGY - Almost a decade ago, UO graduate student Jennifer Hampton Hill made a fortuitous find: A protein made by gut bacteria that triggered insulin-producing cells to replicate. The protein was an important clue to the biological basis for Type 1 diabetes.

BIOLOGY - It’s 6 a.m. on a summer morning on the Oregon coast, and a dozen undergraduate students wearing tall rubber boots are piling into vans. They’re juggling granola bars and notebooks, texting friends who are running late.

ENGLISH - Ben Saunders has co-founded and directs University of Oregon’s minor in Comic and Cartoon Studies (the first undergraduate minor of its kind in the country), and he is a book editor, author and curator of numerous museum exhibits, including the latest hosted at OMSI.

PSYCHOLOGY - Over the course of seventeen years as a school counselor in Eugene, Sara Matteri has supported students through just about every kind of challenge a kid can face. When she started as a high school counselor in 2005, the big ones were truancy, teen pregnancy, and drug and alcohol use, in addition to managing students’ class schedules and helping them plan for the future.

ENGLISH - Life rarely follows a linear narrative. It zigs. Sometimes it zags. Just ask Lidia Yuknavitch—teacher, lecturer, and best-selling author of Thrust and soon-to-be feature film, The Chronology of Water—whose fierce and fragmentary form of storytelling took root at the University of Oregon.

NEUROSCIENCE - As technology has improved, neuroscientists are now pushing the boundaries of traditional experiments and studying the brain in more naturalistic ways. UO neuroscientist Cris Niell is part of this growing movement. In two recent papers, his team has developed ways to study mouse vision that more realistically represent the way animals navigate the world beyond the lab.