video courtesy of UK Public Relations and Marketing

article by Jenny Wells

Planning and hosting a national conference is no easy task, but for the UK community, collaboration makes it all possible. The University of Kentucky will host the 2014 National Conference on Undergraduate Research, or NCUR, next semester, which will bring nearly 4,000 additional students from across the country to the UK campus. And as students, faculty and staff can attest -- it is something worth bragging about.

NCUR will take place April 3-5, 2014, all throughout UK's campus. The conference will give undergraduates a unique opportunity to present their research and creative endeavors, while meeting other like-minded students from all across the country. They not only promote their individual

By Sarah Geegan

For UK physics and astronomy professor Gary Ferland, the latest images of the Ring Nebula, captured by the Hubble Space Telescope, provide an invaluable resource to understand more about dying stars similar to the sun. Co-author of three papers resulting from the latest images, Ferland hopes to use the images to learn more about the chemical makeup of the star before it died.

The Ring Nebula's distinctive shape makes it a popular illustration for astronomy books. But new observations by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope of the glowing gas shroud around an old, dying, sun-like star reveal a new twist.

"The nebula is not like a bagel, but rather, it's like a jelly

By Whitney Hale

Four students from the University of Kentucky have been selected as recipients of Fulbright U.S. Student Program scholarships. The UK recipients are among 1,900 U.S. citizens who will travel abroad for the 2013-2014 academic year through the prestigious program. In addition, one of UK's four winners, medical student Juliana Odetunde, received one of only five prestigious Fulbright-Fogarty awards, which promote the expansion of research in public health and clinical research in resource-limited settings.

The Fulbright Program is the flagship international educational exchange program sponsored by the U.S. government and is designed to increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the people of other countries. The primary source of funding

At the University of Kentucky's 146th Commencement Ceremonies A&S alum Robert Milton Huffaker was honored with an honorary doctorate degree. The following was read at the ceremony in honor of his degree:

By Keith Hautala

The University of Kentucky Board of Trustees today approved University Research Professorships for 2013-14 for four faculty members. The professorships carry a $40,000 award to support research. Funds for these annual awards are provided by the Office of the Vice President for Research.

Now in its 37th year, the University Research Professors program's purpose is to enhance and encourage scholarly research productivity, to provide an opportunity for concentrated research effort for selected faculty members, and to recognize outstanding research achievement by members of the faculty.

The 2013-14 University Research Professors are:

By Alicia Gregory

“From the standpoint of training the next generation of highly skilled professors, industrial scientists, people to work in government laboratories, people to advance our understanding of disease and advance the next generation of therapies, it will be profoundly devastating for this generation of students.”

That’s the message University of Kentucky physiologist Michael B. Reid conveys in a University of Kentucky video on the impact of sequestration — automatic cuts in research and other government spending — due to take effect March 1. Reid and UK colleagues Suzanne Weaver Smith in mechanical engineering and

By Sarah Geegan

The science may be new, but the program itself is in its second year, after tremendous success in 2011-2012. The College of Arts and Sciences' "What's New in Science" series, an outreach program aimed to strengthen UK's relationships with high school science programs, will once again engage teachers and youth in various scientific areas.

A succession of UK scientists will discuss emerging discoveries and exciting developments occurring now in the realm of science. Held in a casual round table format, professors from various disciplines and science teachers from Kentucky schools talk among themselves at these events, asking questions and discussing answers about new and emerging scientific knowledge.

Each session focuses on a new topic in one of

By Sarah Geegan

University of Kentucky physics Professor Tim Gorringe's research collaboration has recently gained attention for an important experimental result.

Playing a leadership role in an international collaboration of physicists, Gorringe has measured precisely how rapidly muons, which are particles that behave like electrons but are 200 times heavier, are captured on protons, yielding a neutron and a neutrino.

The experiment, which gives an unprecedented probe of the weak force at low energies, was performed at the renowned Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) in Switzerland.

"The result is significant in confirming our understanding of how fundamental symmetries govern the nature

by Jay Blanton

video by UK Public Relations and Marketing.

University of Kentucky President Eli Capilouto Thursday praised the partnership of Gov. Steve Beshear and legislative leaders who are strongly supporting UK's self-financing of a dramatic $275 million transformation of the campus.

"We are here this morning because of your leadership and your willingness to partner with us, as educational institutions, united to provide Kentucky with the best education, research and service," Capilouto said at a Frankfort news conference with the governor and legislative leaders who are supporting UK's proposal. "In offering your support for us to self-finance facilities that will help dramatically improve and transform our campuses, you are voicing your faith in Kentucky's

“Most of our materials appeared here for the first time. I don’t remember any time when we followed in the direction of what somebody else made first.”

With these words, physics graduate student Oleksandr Korneta perfectly captures the importance of the groundbreaking work being done at UK’s Center for Advanced Materials (CAM).



Korneta, who will defend his dissertation in the summer of 2011, has been a part of CAM since its inception, but his journey to UK’s Physics Department began more than 10 years ago in his native Ukraine.



Korneta says that his interest in science came naturally because of his home environment. “It was easy for me because both my parents have a technical education and I’ve been surrounded by all kinds of hardware my entire life,” Korneta said.

By Sarah Geegan

There's just no telling where an education from the University of Kentucky can take you.

For U.S. Navy Cmdr. Jeffrey Smith, the journey that began at UK has taken him around the world and deep below the ocean's surface, as captain of the USS Kentucky, a nuclear submarine.

"Having been born in Kentucky and growing up there, I can’t imagine any pride greater than serving as commander of the ship that bears my home state's name," says Smith, whose parents and sister still live in Kentucky.

Born in Covington and raised in Independence, Smith graduated from Simon Kenton High School and attended Xavier University for a year before transferring to UK. After graduating in 1995 with a bachelor's degree in physics, Smith was commissioned in the Navy and went to officer candidate school in Pensacola, Fla., where he began nuclear

The Milky Way is a large spiral galaxy surrounded by dozens of smaller satellite galaxies. Scientists have long theorized that occasionally these satellites will pass through the disk of the Milky Way, perturbing both the satellite and the disk. A team of astronomers from the U.S. and Canada, including one professor from the University of Kentucky, have discovered what may well be the smoking gun of such an encounter, one that occurred close to our position in the galaxy and relatively recently, at least in the cosmological sense.

“We have found evidence that our Milky Way had an encounter with a small galaxy or massive dark matter structure about 100 million years ago,” said Larry Widrow, professor at Queen’s  University in Canada. “We clearly observe unexpected differences in the Milky Way’s stellar distribution above and below the Galaxy’s

By Sarah Geegan

Christopher Crawford, professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, recently received a prestigious five-year, $750,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Energy's 2012 Early Career Research Program.

The program supports the development of individual research programs of outstanding scientists early in their careers and stimulates research careers in the disciplines supported by the DOE Office of Science. Crawford's award will allow him to study the forces that hold the atomic nucleus together and that cause nuclear decays.

"I study symmetries of these forces," Crawford said. "There are certain properties of neutron postulated

By Sarah Geegan

The University of Kentucky recently received an $880,523 grant from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), as part of the DOE's Nuclear Energy Programs' $36.2 million initiative to enhance energy research and development projects.

This grant, titled "Elastic/Inelastic Measurement  Project," will center upon fuel cycle research and development. A consortium of three universities and a national laboratory has been formed to provide the necessary breadth for this effort, including scientists with extensive experience in neutron elastic and inelastic scattering measurements and with direct access to the facilities for completing the proposed neutron measurements, i.e., the UK Accelerator Laboratory. 

Steven W. Yates, a professor

By Sarah Geegan

Approximately 350 people turned out at The Arboretum Tuesday, June 5, to witness an astronomical phenomenon, not to occur again in this lifetime.

The transit of Venus, in which Venus traveled directly between Earth and the sun, began at 6:04 p.m. and could be seen from Lexington for approximately three hours.  

The MacAdam Student Observatory and the Bluegrass Amateur Astronomy Club provided telescopes and instruction for safely observing the phenomenon, as cloud cover allowed.

Tim Knauer, director of the MacAdam Student Observatory, said that he was pleased with the turnout.

"I thought given the weather, the response was good," Knauer said. "If

By Sarah Geegan

The UK and Lexington community will have a rare opportunity on Tuesday, June 5 — one that will not occur again for more than 100 years.

The Arboretum, the MacAdam Student Observatory and the Bluegrass Amateur Astronomy Club will present, "Standing in the Shadow of Venus," two events which will allow the community to both understand and observe the transit of Venus.

A solar transit involves an object in the solar system moving exactly between the sun and the observer; Venus will appear to glide slowly across the surface of the sun. Transits of Venus are especially rare, occurring at intervals of 8, 105.5, 8, 121.5, 8…

By Sarah Geegan

The University of Kentucky Biology, Physics and Astronomy, Chemistry, and Psychology departments are reaching out to area high school science teachers and teaching them something new: what's new in science.

The What's New in Science series, an outreach program aimed to strengthen UK's relationships with high school science programs, will engage teachers and youth in various scientific areas. It will focus specifically on emerging discoveries and developments in the realm of science.

"The university already has a strong history in supporting science teachers in Kentucky Schools," said 

The College of Arts & Sciences is pleased to announce that the recipients of the 2012-13 A&S Outstanding Teaching Awards are Drs. Christia Brown (psychology), Brenna Byrd (MCLLC), Yanira Paz (Hispanic Studies), and Bradley Plaster (physics & astronomy).

Dr. Christia Brown has been in the psychology department since 2007 and is affiliated with the Children at Risk Research Cluster, Gender and Women’s Studies, and the UK Center for Poverty Research.  She exemplifies teaching excellence.  She creates an innovative learning environment in every classroom she enters, whether through engagement activities in her large lecture courses or debates in her smaller seminars. One of her students stated, “This is the best class and professor I have ever had at UK.”  Outside the classroom she

By Torie Johnson, Kathy Johnson

The Southeastern Conference (SEC) today announced the winners of its first ever Southeastern Conference Faculty Achievement Awards. The awards honor professors from SEC universities with outstanding records in teaching and scholarship who serve as role models for other faculty and students. The University of Kentucky's recognized professor is Steven W. Yates, professor of chemistry, physics, and astronomy in the UK College of Arts and Sciences.

In presenting the awards, the SEC becomes the only Division I conference within the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) currently recognizing university faculty for their achievements, unrelated to athletics or student-athletes

By Sarah Geegan

Paul Steinhardt, professor of physics and astrophysical sciences at Princeton University, will deliver the Van Winter Memorial Lecture at the University of Kentucky from 3:15-4:15 p.m. Friday, March 23, in Room 139 of the Chemistry-Physics Building.

The Van Winter Memorial Lecture honors Clasine Van Winter, a professor in the UK departments of Mathematics and