Jeramiah Smith, an associate professor of biology in the University of Kentucky College of Arts and Sciences, will deliver the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) Early Career Investigator (ECI) lecture next week at the National Institutes of Health.

His talk, "Ancient Bloodsuckers, Disposable Genes, and What It All Means," will explore Smith's research on the genome of sea lampreys.

“Lampreys are representatives of an ancient group of vertebrates that diverged [from most other vertebrates — including humans] more than 500 million years ago,” Smith said. “Unlike most other vertebrates, they also eliminate 20 percent of their genome from most cells during early development.

By Lindsey Piercy

A group of UK College of Arts & Sciences students in the Department of Modern and Classical Languages, Literatures and Cultures, are being recognized for outstanding accomplishments on a national level.

Sophia Decker was named the 2018 recipient for best student paper at the Eta Sigma Phi (National Classics Honor Society) convention, held March 23-25, in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. The paper titled, "Dorians Are Allowed to Speak Doric: Theocritus’ Idyll XV in the Context of Panhellenization" will be published in its entirety in the society's newsletter, NUNTIUS. Developed under the guidance of Jackie Murray, assistant professor of classics at UK, the paper reads the idyll as a manifesto for the survival of Greek regional dialects against the spread of a standardized form of Greek.

Valerio Caldesi Valeri, assistant

By Lindsey Piercy

Nazera Wright, associate professor of English at UK College of Arts & Sciences, has been named the 2018 recipient of the Children's Literature Association's Honor Book Award for her 2016 scholarly book titled, "Black Girlhood in the Nineteenth Century," published by University of Illinois Press.

The book shows how the figure of the black girl in African-American literature provided a powerful avenue for exploring issues like domesticity, femininity and proper conduct. Wright draws on heavy archival research and a wide range of texts about African-American girls to explore the unstudied phenomenon of black girlhood. In doing this, the book documents a literary genealogy of the cultural attitudes toward black girls in the United States.

Science is all around us, from the design of the buildings we drive by on our way to work, to the brewing of our favorite beverages, to the development of pharmaceuticals to help us live longer and healthier lives. But how much do you know about how these everyday commodities actually work?

A group of professors and students at the University of Kentucky College of Pharmacy, along with community partners like Keeneland and AllTech are working together to introduce the Lexington community to the science around us. Everything is Science is a science festival that will be held at different locations all throughout the city, with concurrent events happening Thursday, April 26th through Saturday, April 28th.

Everything is Science aims to bridge the gap between scientists and the general public while making science accessible. Their mission is to demonstrate how

By Kaitlyn Summe

The University of Kentucky's #IAmAWomanInSTEM project will host a week of activities featuring speakers and panels to promote STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) education and careers. This celebration week — #IAmAWomanInSTEMWeek — was created to encourage, empower and motivate women in STEM by sharing their stories and helping them network with other students and professionals.

The week of events was organized by Kayla Kuhfeldt, a senior from Grand Rapids, Michigan, studying biology and health, society and populations in the UK College of Arts and Sciences.

“Being a woman pursuing a career in a STEM field can

By Whitney Hale

Beau Revlett, a UK College of Arts & Sciences philosophy junior from Georgetown, Kentucky, has been selected to deliver the 24th annual Edward T. Breathitt Undergraduate Lectureship in the Humanities beginning 7 p.m. Thursday, April 5, in the UK Athletics Auditorium at William T. Young Library. Revlett’s free public lecture will explore how multidisciplinary approaches to deciding what is good or rational may be beneficial to society.

The Breathitt Lectureship was named for an outstanding UK alumnus who showed an exceptional interest in higher education and the humanities, Gov. Edward T. Breathitt. The

By Whitney Hale

The University of Kentucky Office of Nationally Competitive Awards has announced that recent College of Arts & Sciences philosophy graduate Benjamin Troupe, of Mercersburg, Pennsylvania, was named a finalist for the Thomas R. Pickering Foreign Affairs Fellowship. Troupe is one of 60 national finalists who will interview for the fellowship in Washington, D.C., in mid-April.

Funded by the U.S. Department of State and administered by The Washington Center for Internships and Academic Seminars, the Pickering

By Lindsey Piercy

A two-day event at the University of Kentucky will explore the diversity and complexity of Jewish history in Kentucky.

UK is hosting the Kentucky Jewish History Symposium starting Thursday, April 12, at the Hilary J. Boone Center. A public keynote lecture, by Professor and Rabbi Gary Zola, executive director of the Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives, will begin at 7:30 p.m. The lecture promises to place Kentucky Jewish history in its national and transnational contexts. 

A full day of sessions is scheduled from 8:30 a.m.-4 p.m. Friday, April 13, in the ballroom of the UK King Alumni House at 400 Rose St. They will feature national scholars, UK faculty and students as presenters. 

At a keynote lunch, attendees will hear from politician

By Lindsey Piercy

The University of Kentucky African American and Africana Studies Program hopes to send a message of empowerment throughout the 24th annual Black Women's Conference.

This year's conference, themed "The New Jane Crow; Black Women, Mass Incarceration, and Police Violence," will be held Friday, March 30, and Saturday, March 31.

"Black women are a fast-growing portion of the prison population and experience a myriad of challenges related to high incarceration rates in the U.S. Therefore, we thought it was essential that we draw attention to the very real impact mass incarceration and police violence have on black women," said Anastasia Curwood, director of African American and Africana Studies Program (

By Jenny Wells

The University of Kentucky will host a public talk on campus next week by John Preskill, the Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics and director of the Institute of Quantum Information and Matter at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech).

The talk, “Quantum Computing and the Entanglement Frontier,” will take place 4:15 p.m. Friday, April 6, at the Don & Cathy Jacobs Science Building Room 121.

Preskill's talk will be the 17th annual van Winter Lecture.  The van Winter Lectures were established in 2001 to honor the memory of Clasine van Winter, who held a professorship in the Department of Mathematics and the Department of Physics and Astronomy from 1968 until her retirement in 1999.  This year's van Winter Lecture is jointly sponsored by the 

By Lindsey Piercy

Several University of Kentucky faculty members within the College of Arts and Sciences presented research at the Association for Asian Studies annual conference last weekend.

The four-day event, in Washington, D.C., brought together scholars, professors, researchers and authors from around the world to present research and discuss topics devoted to the study of Asia.

The Association for Asian Studies (AAS) is the largest Asian Studies conference held in North America. More than 3,000 people attended this year, including UK faculty:

By Tatyanna Pruitt

Lauren Cagle, an assistant professor in the Department of Writing, Rhetoric, and Digital Studies in the College of Arts & Sciences, was recently named a rising star in Technical and Professional Communication by the Association of Teachers of Technical Writing (ATTW). Cagle

participated in the organization’s first plenary panel, on which rising stars and senior scholars discuss major issues in the field, during this year's conference which took place March 13-14. ATTW rising stars are faculty members who are considered among the best in the field.

The Association of Teachers of Technical Writing was formed to encourage dialogue among teachers of technical communication and to develop technical communication as an academic discipline. ATTW today has approximately 1,000 members that includes both graduate and undergraduate students of

By Tatyanna Pruitt

Growing up reading "The Hobbit" novels, Emily Dautenhahn never imagined she would get to visit the actual movie set of the trilogy. Her unexpected journey became a reality when she took a leap and decided to study abroad.

Dautenhahn, a senior double majoring in mathematics and history in the University of Kentucky College of Arts and Sciences, decided she wanted to participate in an education abroad program the summer after her sophomore year, and began researching and filling out applications. She ultimately decided on a program in New Zealand.

"After choosing an internship program in New Zealand, I was delighted to hear that I had been placed with the

By Jenny Wells

Francis Su, a mathematician from Harvey Mudd College, will deliver a talk on how math helps people flourish at the University of Kentucky next week.

Hosted by the UK Department of Mathematics in the UK College of Arts and Sciences, the 2017-18 J.C. Eaves Lecture will be held from 5 to 6 p.m. Thursday, March 29, in Room 110 of the White Hall Classroom Building.  

Su, who is the outgoing president of the Mathematical Association of America, is known for his powerful speeches on how mathematics can help people achieve their human desires, such as truth and justice.

“Why does the practice of mathematics often fall short of our ideals and hopes? How can deeply human themes

By Susan Odom and Jenny Wells

Kentucky’s middle school girls and their parents or guardians are invited to register for the second annual Expanding Your Horizons conference at the University of Kentucky Saturday, April 21. This day of hands-on workshops will give middle school girls the chance to meet role models and get exposure to opportunities in the STEM disciplines. This is the second iteration of the conference, which is organized by members of the UK Colleges of Agriculture, Food and Environment; the UK College of Arts and Sciences; and the UK College of Engineering.

Sometime during the transition from middle school to high school, middle school

By Stephanie Swarts

The University of Kentucky Gaines Center for the Humanities has selected 12 exceptional undergraduates as new scholars for the university’s Gaines Fellowship Program for the 2018-19 and 2019-20 academic years. Gaines Fellowships are given in recognition of outstanding academic performance, demonstrated ability to conduct independent research, an interest in public issues, and a desire to enhance understanding of the human condition through the humanities.

Gaines Fellowships are awarded for the tenure of students’ junior and senior years; students in all disciplines and with any intended profession are given equal consideration.

UK’s 12 new Gaines Fellows are:

By Kaitlyn Summe

As part of the "Year of Civics and Citizenship," the University of Kentucky College of Arts and Sciences will host guest speaker Sam Ford for a lecture regarding the Future of Work initiative in Kentucky: the power of narrative for imagining sustainable solutions. The free public talk will begin 4 p.m. Wednesday, March 28, in the William T. Young Library.

For a state at the front lines of economic disruption, the future of work can be a challenging subject. Ford will discuss how we can avoid dominant culture narratives becoming self-fulfilling prophecies as well as the roles questions of narrative and civic imagination play in economic development.

Ford is a

By Allison Cooper

Six students from the University of Kentucky will compete in Emory University’s Global Health Case Competition (GHCC) in Atlanta, Georgia, Saturday, March 17. This is the fourth year that UK will compete in Emory’s competition. Students from three teams that participated in UK’s GHCC were selected to form a new team for the competition.

Emory’s competition brings 24 teams together from national and international schools to propose solutions to current real-world health issues. The teams are presented with a case involving a specific issue, and they have a week to create a realistic approach to solving it. This year, the teams will be working on a method to contain a deadly virus during the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.

UK faculty and other professionals in the state will assist the students, providing their expertise to advise the team. Professor