Research

Eric Heberlig, a faculty member in the Department of Political Science and Public Administration, will be a guest on WFAE’s “Charlotte Talks” on Thursday, July 18. The program, which airs live at 9 a.m. with a rebroadcast in the evening, will focus on the current North Carolina political scene.

Jennifer Weller, an associate professor of bioinformatics and genomics in the College of Computing and Informatics (CCI), is helping Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools (CMS)students to fight chestnut blight, an Asian fungus that has killed off billions of American chestnut trees since 1904.
Weller is working with Olympic High School science teachers Jeanne Smith and Erica Putnam through the school’s B-3 Summer Program, which focuses on biotechnology, biodiversity and bioinformatics at Olympic’s School of Biotechnology, Health and Public Administration.

UNC Charlotte Center City will be the location for a transit-oriented breakfast on Monday, July 8, where panelists will discuss a variety of issues that resulted from a project that began with students in the Master of Urban Design program.

The College of Arts + Architecture hosted more than 20 engineers and executives from Ingersoll Rand, Wednesday, June 26, to assist in building the Solar Decathlon house UrbanEden. The Ingersoll Rand guests helped pour geopolymer tiles that will be used in the structure’s rain catchment troughs.

Juan Vivero-Escoto, an assistant professor of chemistry, is the 2013 recipient of the Ralph Powe Junior Faculty Enhancement Award from Oak Ridge Associate Universities (ORAU), a 109-member university consortium affiliated with Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL).
Vivero-Escoto was among 30 winners in a pool of 147 applicants from consortium institutions. Only two faculty members per institution were permitted to apply; they underwent a highly competitive peer-review process organized by ORAU from among its members.

Many elementary students’ math performance improves when their teachers collaborate, work in professional learning communities or do both, yet most students don’t spend all of their elementary school years in these settings, according to a new study by UNC Charlotte researchers recently published in the journal Sociology of Education.

The North Carolina economy will grow modestly in 2013 after a relatively flat performance in 2012, but the state is positioned for stronger growth in 2014, reported UNC Charlotte economist John Connaughton in his quarterly forecast for the state.

UNC Charlotte’s Charlotte Research Scholars (CRS) program provides undergraduate students the training and experience to be successful in research, a critical component for graduate education. Sixty scholars have been selected for the research program’s second year. Starting Tuesday, May 28, they will conduct original research during a 10-week program in collaboration with a faculty member.

The Charlotte Action Research Project (CHARP) will host a neighborhood campus forum from 5:45 to 8 p.m., Wednesday, May 29, in Cone University Center, Room 210.
According to organizers, the forum is designed to connect UNC Charlotte faculty, staff and students with research opportunities with residents of Charlotte’s low-income and minority neighborhoods.
During a series of workshops, CHARP partners identified five research themes for further study: neighborhood change, spatial justice, empowerment and citizen rights, communities and schools and neighborhood safety.

Cindy Crusto from the Yale University School of Medicine will speak on “The Impact of Trauma on Young Vulnerable Children: Implications for a Public Health Approach to Children’s Mental Health” at 11 a.m., Friday, May 24, in the Colvard Building, Room 3120, as part of the Health Psychology Speaker Series.