CHEMISTRY & BIOCHEMISTRY - Amid a global effort to transition to more climate-friendly biofuel options, a UO chemistry professor is helping develop carbon-free fermentation technology. Shannon Boettcher, professor of chemistry and biochemistry, received a $400,000, two-year grant from the U.S. Department of Energy.

PHYSICS - When Italian physicist Giorgio Parisi was one of three scientists named last week to receive this year’s Nobel Prize in Physics, UO physicist Eric Corwin was elated to see his longtime collaborator recognized.

CHEMISTRY & BIOCHEMISTRY - A certain class of enzymes are an important player in cell biology because they frequently mutate and become major drivers of cancer. Now, a research group including Scott Hansen have developed a blueprint for these enzymes and identified where a critical regulatory protein binds to the enzyme, a finding with potential to help boost the effort to build more specific cancer drugs.

The Division of Graduate Studies is proud to announce the 2021-2022 recipients of the prestigious Raymund Fellowship.

RELIGIOUS STUDIES - A team of three UO faculty members and one undergraduate student are creating a new, innovative curriculum for first-year Arabic at the UO.

Nayeon Kim believes there is benefit to society in reducing the prison terms of people of color and others victimized by excessive sentences and systemic racism. And she is dedicated to this work. Kim is finishing up her law degree at City University of New York (CUNY) in 2022, which puts her one step closer to that goal.

THEATRE ARTS - It’s been a breakout year for Jana Schmieding. Star of the Peacock network’s hit show Rutherford Falls, the Lakota Sioux Native is shattering the glass ceiling and making room for Indigenous creatives in the entertainment industry.

LINGUISTICS - Kaori Idemaru was a middle schooler living in the Japanese countryside when she discovered that learning a foreign language—English, in her case—could open a portal to a new world. Today, Idemaru studies how speech is learned and perceived.

FOLKLORE - The UO campus, which is dotted with buildings built in the 19th century, has its fair share of ghost stories. While some of them are far-fetched, others have developed lives of their own among students and faculty members.

BIOLOGY - Bee populations have been suffering sharp declines in recent years, part of a pattern of widespread loss of pollinator diversity and abundance. Now a UO biologist and former UO postdoctoral fellow have looked for ways to incentivize almond growers to adopt bee-friendly practices.

ANTHROPOLOGY - Sustainability is a 21st century buzzword, but a new interdisciplinary study shows that some communities have been conducting sustainable practices for at least a thousand years.

LINGUISTICS - Linguistics professor Don Daniels will spend next summer in Papua New Guinea, where he will document languages in the most linguistically diverse country on Earth. Daniels has been awarded a prized National Science Foundation Career Award.

PHYSICS - A research team that includes two UO physicists have outlined new techniques for controlling the building blocks of quantum computing, a potentially significant step toward making such computers more accurate and useful. Physicists David Allcock and David Wineland are founders of the new Oregon Ions Laboratory.

SOCIOLOGY - The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and shift to mostly remote instruction gave many students pause about starting, or returning, to college. Not Shawna Heurgue. The Springfield mother of three had been struggling to transition into a new career after leaving her longtime job as an emergency room nurse.

PSYCHOLOGY, BIOLOGY, THEATRE ARTS - The Center for Undergraduate Research and Engagement honored four faculty members this spring for excellence in mentoring students as they ask questions and seek answers.