Founded in 2013, the University of Virginia’s Data Science Institute has always had collaboration at the heart of its mission. The institute was built around creating opportunities for students and researchers from across the University in a range of fields, to focus on big-picture problems affecting society.

That is what data science is all about: pulling together data from a wide and ever-growing range of sources, and mining it for insight using new methods and techniques. Applications range from health care to the environment, finance, and everything in between.

By providing fellowships, real-world instruction and seed funding for researchers, the institute has inspired faculty, students and postdoctoral fellows with the opportunity to dream big and uncover data-driven solutions to our most pressing challenges.

“Data science is a team sport that brings together diverse perspectives to address issues that no one discipline could tackle alone. The Data Science Institute facilitates collaboration and brings cutting-edge data science methods and techniques to those teams,” the institute’s director, Phil Bourne, said.

As UVA begins to pursue plans to establish a full School of Data Science, here are five examples of the impactful, cross-disciplinary work being done by its Data Science Institute researchers.

Seeking Insights to Autism

The prevalence of autism has been on the rise since the American Psychiatric Association first classified it as a disorder in 1980. In 2000, about one of every 150 children was diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum; last year, the number was one in 59.

There are many possible reasons for the growing trend, but experts agree that more research is needed to better understand and diagnose the disorder and support the growing number of individuals and families affected.

Toward that end, Don Brown, the Data Science Institute’s founding director and a chaired professor of systems and information engineering; and Micah Mazurek, associate professor and director of the Supporting Transformative Autism Research project, are working with an interdisciplinary team to build a new system for collecting, integrating and analyzing data from multiple sources.

As part of the Supporting Transformative Autism Research project, funded by a $6.2 million grant from UVA’s Strategic Investment Fund, the team plans to use machine learning and integrated data – the application of algorithms to improve computer analysis as a means for uncovering new insights – to develop personalized therapy approaches for individuals with autism.

“Data science approaches can rapidly uncover new insights into autism and help us translate these discoveries into real-world solutions for individuals and families,” Mazurek said.

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Criminal Justice Reform and Mental Health

For the past decade, students and faculty in the Engineering Systems and Environment Department have worked with local and regional criminal justice agencies in the Charlottesville and Albemarle County area with the goal of enhancing public safety and reducing recidivism. Participating agencies include the regional jail, law enforcement agencies, mental health service providers, advocates for the homeless, probation and parole agencies, and others who are working together to ensure public safety and also address the mental health needs of individuals.

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In recent years, the Data Science Institute has provided complex technical support for this effort, which requires gathering, organizing, validating, merging, protecting and analyzing data from multiple agencies and organizations; presenting information in ways that are actionable by agency leadership; and providing evidence of the need for and effectiveness of specific interventions.

As a result, local criminal justice agencies received funding to establish a therapeutic docket that allows non-violent offenders suffering from mental illness to choose mental health treatment rather than incarceration as a means for helping them achieve stability and avoid returning to custody. Additional funds were acquired to expand mental health services for inmates at the regional jail and to help with their transition after release, so they can continue to receive services in the community.

“This collaborative effort has established a community of trust among the participating agencies and the UVA faculty and students,” said Michael Smith, an engineering systems professor who has worked on the project since its inception. “These relationships enable project participants to share sensitive data and work together to improve the community for all residents, including individuals in the criminal justice system who suffer from mental illness.”

Using Data Science to Design Drugs and Repurpose Existing Drugs

Drugs often have unwanted side effects, and even the desired effects often are not optimal. While a given drug can effectively target molecules in cells that may inhibit cancer growth, for example, that same drug may also inhibit an immune response or other natural protective effect in the body. As a result, pharmacologists are continuously seeking better drugs to treat illness and pain with minimal negative side effects.

Data Science Institute director and researcher Philip Bourne is working with UVA’s Department of Biomedical Engineering to use a systems approach to drug discovery and for repurposing drugs already in use. This involves exploring countless small molecules that could act as drugs; understanding all the target molecules that bind with a given drug; and determining the cumulative effects of multiple drugs on the human body. That involves sorting through an enormous amount of data, creating a relatively new field, systems pharmacology.

“Using systems pharmacology, we have made some computational inroads into suggesting new designs for drugs, identifying multiple drug targets, and we also are beginning to analyze the cumulative effects of drug action,” Bourne said.

He and his collaborators are working to reduce the side effects of an effective cancer-inhibiting drug; understand why a cholesterol-controlling medication failed to work as desired; repurpose an HIV drug to shrink tumors; compute the drug-target network for the tuberculosis bacterium; and find other drug targets.

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The Microbiome and the Brain

Within the human body, microorganisms – collectively called the microbiome – outnumber our own human body cells, and in the gut microbiome alone, there are more than 1,000 species that encode 200 times as many genes as the entire human genome. Given advances in mapping the human microbiome, there is growing interest in investigating how the microbiome affects developmental processes, specifically, brain and cognitive development.

Former Data Science Institute Presidential Fellows in Data Science Caitlin Dreisbach, a Ph.D. candidate in nursing and an alumna of the institute’s master’s program; and Caroline Kelsey, a Ph.D. candidate in psychology, are studying the interplay between the intestinal microbiome, anxiety and depression during pregnancy, and subsequent maternal-child attachment. Their work is a continuation of their Presidential Fellows project.

“As a registered nurse, I intimately work with mothers and children and can see the direct linkages between theoretical thinking, bench science and the real-world application,” Dreisbach said.

The interdisciplinary approach of the project will generate a first-of-its-kind data set allowing for a comprehensive and novel analysis of factors impacting maternal and child mental health. It brings together researchers from the UVA Babylab at the Department of Psychology and the School of Nursing to examine how the intestinal microbiome predicts levels of maternal internalizing symptoms and threat bias in mothers and their infants.

“This partnership between myself and Caitlin is vital to addressing the important questions of how the brain and body interact, and yet, due to traditional university infrastructure, this pairing tends to be rare,” Kelsey said. “The opportunity provided by the Presidential Fellows project through the DSI allowed us to cross those barriers to collaboration and work on new and compelling interdisciplinary research.”

Using Machine Learning to Improve Gut Disease Diagnosis

Bangladesh, Zambia and Pakistan all possess pockets of extreme poverty where sanitation, potable water and abundant food are scarce. And in each of those countries there are high rates of children suffering from environmental enteric dysfunction, a disease which limits the gut’s ability to absorb essential nutrients and impacts children’s mental and physical growth.

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For Dr. Sana Syed, an assistant professor of pediatrics in the School of Medicine, this is why she got into medicine. “You’re talking about a disease that affects hundreds of thousands of children, and that is entirely preventable,” she said.

Funded by a grant from the Translational Health Research Institute of Virginia, Syed is working with Dr. Don Brown, founding director of the UVA Data Science Institute, to incorporate machine learning into the diagnostic process for health officials combating this disease. Syed and Brown are using a deep learning approach, called “convolutional neural networks,” to train computers to read thousands of images of biopsies. Pathologists can then learn from the algorithms how to more effectively screen patients based on where the neural network is looking for differences and where it is focusing its analysis to get results.

“These are the same type of algorithms Google is using in facial recognition, but we’re using them to aid in the diagnosis of disease through biopsy images,” Brown said.

The machine learning algorithm can provide insights that have evaded human eyes, validate pathologists’ diagnoses, shorten the time between imaging and diagnosis, and from a technical engineering perspective, might be able to offer a look into data science’s “black boxes” by giving clues into the thinking mechanism of the machine.

But for Syed, it is still about saving lives.

“There is so much poverty and such an unfair set of consequences,” she said. “If we can use these cutting-edge technologies and ways of looking at data through data science, we can get answers faster and help these children sooner.”

Settling in to watch the University of Virginia men’s basketball team take on the University of Pittsburgh Saturday, alumnus Cory Paradis saw something that took his breath away.

Paradis, who graduated from UVA’s School of Architecture in May, was born with cerebral palsy and has been in a wheelchair most of his life. Throughout his time on Grounds, he was a committed advocate for accessibility. Among other activities, he served on the University’s Barrier-Free Access Committee, working with administrators, faculty members and students to push for permanent wheelchair ramps on the Lawn.

On Saturday, cameras panning over the Lawn caught one of those new ramps, completed and opened last week.

“It hit me then that every time they show that image, from here on out, everyone watching will see that ramp,” said Paradis, who now works as a design project coordinator for UVA’s Facilities Management Department. (Read more about Paradis in our feature on 2018 graduates.)

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“Even though the average person may not know the story behind it, knowing that I played a small part in making it happen is pretty awesome,” he said. “The team that made this happen has been added to the history of the University of Virginia.”

The two permanent ramps, located on either side of the Lawn adjacent to Pavilions V and IX, allow students, faculty members, staff and visitors with mobility issues significantly greater access to the four terraced levels of the Lawn. Previously, only the uppermost and lowermost terraces of the Lawn were accessible by ramp, with well-worn stone stairs limiting access to the full space in between.

The ramps are set into sloping banks between terraces, and were designed with the same custom brick blend used for wall repairs in the Academical Village buildings, in order to preserve the look and feel of the UNESCO World Heritage Site.

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“This project is an excellent example of the ‘village’ of UVA staff working together,” said Associate Provost for Academic Support and Classroom Management M. Wynne Stuart, who chairs the Barrier-Free Access Committee.

She cited contributions from Alice Raucher, the architect for the University, and her team; Senior Vice President for Operations Colette Sheehy and her team; and the Facilities Management team that worked diligently through several weather delays to complete the project.

“The Facilities Management team worked very hard throughout the construction process to get everything exactly right, and everyone has been very committed to this project from the moment we started,” Stuart said. “Our whole committee is very happy to see this accomplishment in UVA’s progress toward inclusion and equity.”

Paradis said he was particularly excited to see the addition of permanent ramps on a historic site like the Lawn. He hopes it could set a significant precedent for other historic sites and attractions.

“If this can happen on a UNESCO World Heritage site, I would say the standard excuse of ‘We can’t make this accessible because it is too historic,’ is no longer valid,” he said. “This is a huge accomplishment by all involved, a huge step forward for ADA access on Grounds and something I am honored to be a part of.”

On April 12, the University of Virginia and the Thomas Jefferson Foundation at Monticello will present their highest honors, the 2019 Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medals in Architecture, Citizen Leadership and Law.

This year's medalists are:

• Architecture: Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa, co-founders of the Tokyo-based firm SANAA whose major projects span the globe from Tokyo to Paris and Milan. MORE 
• Citizen Leadership: Sylvia Earle, an oceanographer, explorer, author and lecturer named a Living Legend by the Library of Congress. MORE 
• Law: Carlton W. Reeves, a federal judge on the United States District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi who has ruled in a number of important cases involving equality and civil rights. Reeves is the second African American appointed to a federal judgeship in Mississippi, following a nomination by President Barack Obama in 2010. MORE 

The Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medals recognize the exemplary contributions of recipients to the endeavors in which Jefferson – the author of the Declaration of Independence, the third U.S. president and the founder of the University of Virginia – excelled and held in high regard.

“The Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medals are the highest external honor given by the University,” said UVA president Jim Ryan. “This year’s winners have pushed the boundaries of form and function, explored the depths of the oceans, and fought for truth and justice. I applaud them for their accomplishments and look forward to presenting them with their medals next month.”

The awards are presented annually in observance of Jefferson’s birthday, April 13 – known locally as Founder’s Day – by the president of the University and the president of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, the independent, nonprofit organization that owns and operates his home, Monticello. This year’s celebrations, including the medal presentations, will be held on Friday April 12.

“Jefferson’s vision for this nation (and the world) began with his belief in progress,” said Leslie Greene Bowman, president and CEO of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation. “We are honored to welcome the 2019 Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medalists who serve as an inspiration to future leaders. Like Jefferson, they have shaped our world for the better.”

Bowman and Ryan will present the medals, struck for the occasion, at a luncheon on April 12 in the Rotunda Dome Room at UVA. The medalists in Architecture and Law will each give a free public lecture at UVA and all medalists will be honored at a formal dinner at Monticello.

The complete schedule of events for Founder’s Day can be found here.

The Citizen Leadership medalist, Sylvia Earle, will also be the featured keynote speaker at Monticello’s commemoration of Jefferson’s 276th birthday on April 12 at 10 a.m. on the West Lawn of Monticello. The event is free and open to the public, and will also be livestreamed online.

This year’s medalists join a distinguished roster of past winners that includes architects Sir David Adjaye OBE, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, I.M. Pei, Frank Gehry, Toyo Ito and Cecil Balmond; seven former and current U.S. Supreme Court justices; former U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher; former U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch; special counsel, former FBI director and UVA alumnus Robert S. Mueller III; Gordon Moore, engineer, technologist and entrepreneur; Alice Waters, chef, food activist and founder of the Edible Schoolyard Project; Marian Wright Edelman, founder of the Children’s Defense Fund; Wendy Kopp, founder of Teach for America; Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the Federal Reserve; former Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano; and several former and current U.S. senators and representatives, including John Lewis and John Warner.

Japanese architects Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa, co-founders of the Tokyo-based firm SANAA, are the 2019 recipients of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medal in Architecture. 

Sejima studied architecture at the Japan Women’s University and launched her own practice in 1987. In 1995, Sejima partnered with Nishizawa to found the Tokyo-based firm SANAA (Sejima + Nishizawa and Associates). Nishizawa studied architecture at Yokohama National University, and in addition to his work with Sejima, has also maintained an independent practice since 1997.

Sejima and Nishizawa were jointly awarded the Golden Lion at the 9th Venice Architecture Biennale in 2004 and were recipients of the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2010, honoring their significant contributions to humanity and the built environment through the art of architecture.

They will give a public talk on April 12 at 3 p.m. in the Old Cabell Hall auditorium.

A citation for the Pritzker prize noted, “They often opt for non-hierarchical spaces, or in their own words, the ‘equivalence of spaces,’ creating unpretentious, democratic buildings according to the task and budget at hand.”

School of Architecture Dean Ila Berman agreed.

“In a contemporary world that so often lauds excess, SANAA’s highly inventive and carefully crafted works expose the immense power of restraint, precision and synthesis in design,” Berman said. “They create light-filled spaces of serenity and extreme beauty, that are sublime yet always inviting and open. There are few architects whose work is so truly exceptional and yet, simultaneously so highly accessible.”

SANAA’s major works include the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa, Japan; the Christian Dior Omotesando Building in Tokyo, Japan; the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York; the Rolex Learning Center at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne in Switzerland; and the Louvre-Lens in France. Current projects include La Samaritaine in Paris, Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem and Bocconi University campus in Milan.

Their work is known for its carefully crafted connections between building and landscape, and its ability to provide people with meaningful experiences with their surroundings. Whether rural, as powerfully expressed in their Grace Farms project in New Canaan, Connecticut, or urban, such as The New Museum in the Bowery neighborhood of New York City, SANAA’s architecture has been described as creating a sense of fullness and experiential richness.

On the anniversary of Thomas Jefferson’s birthday, April 13 (known locally as Founder’s Day), the University of Virginia and the Thomas Jefferson Foundation at Monticello join together to present the Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medals to recognize achievements of those who embrace endeavors in which Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence and third U.S. president, excelled and held in high regard. These medals are the highest external honors bestowed by the University of Virginia, which grants no honorary degrees. For information on Founder’s Day, the Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medals and the 2019 recipients, click here.

The Jefferson Trust, an initiative of the University of Virginia Alumni Association, will distribute more than $800,000 in seed money to 13 UVA initiatives in 2019, the largest focusing on innovation in education.

The trust will also add to its long-running support of UVA’s Data Science Institute, a venture that is itself a testament to The Jefferson Trust’s catalytic powers.

On the education front, this year’s grants include $141,000 for web-based observation tools to evaluate teacher classroom performance and $100,000 to support a multimedia research project known as the Religion Lab.

Three different projects support new approaches to teaching health science, including $100,000 for three-dimensional modeling of infectious diseases, $82,000 for design-thinking instruction for first-year medical students and $70,000 for interactive and psychometric approaches to teaching kinesiology.

Since the Alumni Association founded it in 2006, the Jefferson Trust has invested $7.8 million in 192 student and faculty projects, representing all 11 schools.

And it will play a role in the ramp-up to UVA’s 12^th school, the forthcoming School of Data Science. This year’s grants include $50,000 for a community outreach initiative of the Data Science Institute.

The Jefferson Trust planted a first kernel for that venture in 2012 with $100,000 in grant money. A year later came the private philanthropy that helped UVA open a Data Science Institute. The institute will transform into a full-fledged school as early as next fall, pending approvals, with a projected $200 million in private and state funding. When it does, it will represent the 2,000-fold fruition of The Jefferson Trust’s original investment.

“It’s actually what we do,” Jefferson Trust Executive Director Wayne Cozart said. “We are seed funding for the University of Virginia.”

The full list of 2019 Jefferson Trust grants follows.

• Rotunda Planetarium: $30,000

The Rotunda Planetarium reconstructs Thomas Jefferson's inaugural vision for the Rotunda Library’s Dome Room. The Rotunda Planetarium will run from November 2019 until June 2020.

• Infectious Disease in 3-D: $99,945

The proposed “Infectious Disease in 3D” program aims to build virtual reality and augmented reality content for teaching complex biological information in UVA classrooms. The end product will directly benefit students in UVA classrooms by enhancing their motivation and retention of material.

• Religion, Race, and Democracy: An Undergraduate Multimedia Research Project: $100,000

The Religion Lab will offer to undergraduate student research collaborators regular training and mentorship; funding and technology; and a website to publish the research. They will also benefit from the expertise and guidance of Religion Lab faculty and staff.

• Cadaver-Specific Virtual Dissection Table: $70,491

An initiative to provide state-of-the-art interactive and psychometric learning to kinesiology students for the enhancement of knowledge in anatomy and patient care, leading to the development of unparalleled clinical skills. 

• Developing Tools to Transform Student Experiences: $141,173

To develop and use web-based observation tools to not only shed light on how UVA faculty teach in their classrooms, but also to use the data from the tools to work with instructors and the broader University to improve teaching at UVA.

• UVA Medical Design Program: Phase II: $81,500

The UVA Medical Design Program provides first-year medical students with hands-on instruction in the application of design thinking to address health care challenges.

• Student Veteran’s Support Initiative: $60,000

The Veteran’s Support Initiative is seeking support to set up a structure to better meet the needs of student veterans.

• Data for the Social Good: $50,000

With support from the Jefferson Trust, faculty, staff, students and alumni of the Data Science Institute will develop a set of tools to match community non-profits needing data analysis help with students and service-learning classes who can provide it.

• Concussion and Headaches: $25,837

This project proposes to study administration of magnesium and riboflavin (two common supplements) as agents to reduce the length of time a student \ might experience headache following concussion. 

• Flux Poetry Series: $21,800

The project proposal is a three-semester-long poetry series that will invite award-winning and influential poets to host workshops, performances, consultations and more, bolstering the art community at UVA.

• Madayin Aboriginal Art Catalog: $56,000

UVA’s Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection will produce a fully illustrated scholarly catalog to accompany the touring exhibition “Madayin: Eight Decades of Aboriginal Bark Painting from Yirrkala, Australia.”

• Reshaping Public and Archival Space: $32,260

The project is the first attempt to capture testimonies videographically about the black nursing experience, to be made available to a large audience. The project aims to enhance visibility of black nurses in archives and public spaces via written documents, photographs, videos and exhibitions.

• Minority Youth Development Program: $31,573

This program aims to increase the number of underrepresented minorities, especially African-Americans, pursuing careers in architecture.

In recent years, the University of Virginia has established four multidisciplinary institutes designed to tackle some of society’s most pressing challenges from multiple angles: the Data Science Institute, the Brain Institute, the Global Infectious Diseases Institute and the Environmental Resilience Institute. And last September the University welcomed the Biocomplexity Institute and Initiative. Each institute focuses in detail and broadly on target areas of study, but they also collaborate – sharing ideas, members and resources where interest areas overlap.

Now, in partnership with UVA’s Office of the Vice President for Research and the Office of the Executive Vice President and Provost, the institutes are kicking off a Building Bridges Lecture Series for the University community.

The inaugural seminar, “Advancing the Practice of Transdisciplinary Research: Disasters, Bio-Threats, and Social Behavior,” will be held Monday from 4 to 5 p.m. in the Rotunda’s Dome Room.

The speaker is Madhav Marathe, a division director at the UVA Biocomplexity Institute and Initiative and a professor of computer science in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. With colleagues at the Biocomplexity Institute and Initiative, Marathe’s research is on the cutting edge of network science, advanced simulations, computational epidemiology and socially coupled system science. He and his colleagues have applied their research to global threats, such as pandemic flu.

Marathe will discuss the successes and challenges of this trans-disciplinary approach and offer examples of how to remove traditional institutional barriers to achieve hard-to-make breakthroughs.

“When researchers from disparate disciplines focus on a common societal problem or need, possibilities for innovation and solutions to some of the most challenging aspects become possible,” Melur K. (Ram) Ramasubramanian, UVA’s vice president for research, said. “One of the challenges in pursuing interdisciplinary research is the lack of opportunities to learn about the capabilities of fellow faculty members. The intention of the Building Bridges Lecture Series is to provide an opportunity for faculty discovery and to plant the seeds for future collaboration through informal peer-to-peer interactions.”

Alison Criss, director of the Global Infectious Diseases Institute and a professor of microbiology, immunology and cancer biology, fielded some questions about the seminar series for readers of UVA Today.

Q. How did the idea to start a Building Bridges Lecture Series come about, and what do you expect to accomplish by holding periodic seminars?

A. The pan-University institutes share the mission of catalyzing cutting-edge interdisciplinary research at UVA. At one of our regular meetings, institute directors Phil Bourne, Karen McGlathery, Jaideep Kapur and I raised the idea of a lecture series, featuring amazing research that could only have happened when multiple fields converge.

This fits well with President Ryan’s goal of “building bridges” – here, bridges between disciplines. Our goal is for this series to showcase to the UVA community what can happen when researchers from different fields make the commitment to tackle large, multi-perspective societal problems.

Q. Why is research more cross- and multi-disciplinary than ever?

A. The big, complex problems that we as a society are experiencing in the 21^st century – like water security, global pandemics, understanding global investment flows and aging-related cognitive impairment – require large scale, multi-investigator teams to address. By enabling researchers to work together using their complementary expertise, the team synergizes to achieve something that no one person can do.

Q. Do you find that faculty and students are open to talking with people outside of their own areas of focus?

A. Absolutely, and the institutes enable this by bringing together faculty and students on topics of shared interest, even if their areas of expertise and educational background are very different. We work hard to build on those positive encounters to seed new research teams and give them the tools to thrive. Students are especially excited to get a broader perspective on their research topic and are key members of these teams.

Q. How else are the four institutes working together?

A. We quickly realized that there is obvious overlap between the research thrusts of each of the four institutes. We have capitalized on that by co-hosting working groups on areas of intersection between our institutes and jointly supporting student training activities.

The associate directors of the institutes work closely together and with the Office of the Vice President for Research to develop best practices for interdisciplinary research at UVA. We plan to host workshops and other interactive events in conjunction with future Building Bridges Lectures as a way to continue the conversation from the seminar.

Lastly, we meet regularly to discuss the opportunities and challenges of interdisciplinary research, since it involves changing culture, which is the hardest of all we wish to accomplish.

Q. What other subjects do you expect to cover in future seminars?

A. We will focus on compelling topics that engage a broad swath of the UVA community, like the impact of a changing climate on health, mapping the developing brain, and data ethics in an increasingly online world. We welcome suggestions from the University community.

University of Virginia faculty and students intend to wow audiences this weekend with three projects and a performance at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C. The event, called “ACCelerate Festival,” celebrates innovations in science, engineering, art and design at the 15 schools in the Atlantic Coast Conference.

The free festival, held Friday through Sunday, is open to the public from 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. The venue features an outdoor sound garden, sculptures, projection installation and interactive activities for visitors.

UVA participants will exhibit projects in environmental engineering, architecture and landscape architecture, and, on Sunday at 11 a.m., present a live experimental multimedia dance performance called [I]nquiry.

“The event’s audience is far broader than a typical university activity – anticipating 50,000 people per day at the National Museum of American History,” said Bill Sherman, the Lawrence Lewis Jr. Professor of Architecture at UVA and special adviser to the provost. “The first time that the festival was held, 18 months ago, thousands of people of all ages had their minds opened to the incredible array of research being conducted at universities. Our goal is to stretch the imagination and the preconceptions that many may have about academic research through examples of creative innovation.”

Here’s a roundup of the UVA presentations.

Bio-Inspired Morphing to Create the World’s Largest Wind Turbines

Offshore wind is nearly constant, and therefore an incredible energy resource. Engineering professor Eric Loth, engineering research associate Carlos Noyes and engineering Ph.D. students Meghan Kaminski and Juliet Simpson, in collaboration with engineers at other universities, are working to design huge offshore wind turbines that could reduce the cost of wind energy by as much as 25 percent by 2025.

But as conventional turbines get bigger, capturing ever more wind power, their upwind rotors have blades that face the wind. At large scales, the blades become heavy and can bend back, striking the towers to which they are mounted. Such turbines are especially vulnerable to hurricanes and nor’easters.

Loth’s team is conceptualizing a new design, one that faces downwind, allowing blades to safely bend away from the tower as wind loads increase. That morphing may allow blades as large as 200 meters long – resulting in turbines taller than the Eiffel Tower – far exceeding what current technology allows.

“Such blades may power 50-megawatt wind turbines that will produce five times more energy than current wind turbines, and at 25 percent less cost,” Loth said. “Bringing our project to full fruition will be a major step toward maximizing U.S. offshore wind power and increasing national manufacturing competitiveness.”

Arctic Portals - “White Out”

The Arctic is a place of extreme cold, increasingly affected by a changing climate. As climate in that region warms, it will unlock the grips of a deep freeze, opening up new potential for economic, political and landscape development. How will this affect the people who live there, and who will increasingly come to live there?

Landscape architecture professor Leena Cho and architecture professor Matthew Jull in 2013 formed an Arctic Design Group to look into the challenges and possibilities for the built environment in a rapidly transforming environment – the Far North – and they are engaging with communities in the region to explore meaningful possibilities for the future.

“At the intersection of material, cultural, environmental and technological dimensions, the Arctic is a catalyst for rethinking the built environment, from the scale of buildings and infrastructures to that of cities,” Cho said.

“It also is a prime testing ground to develop innovative design strategies in the age of weather extremes and climate change,” Jull said. “But first we need to understand unique aspects of the Arctic environment and its relationship to people’s ways of living in order to speculate and conceive changes that may come in the future.”

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In partnership with the Anchorage museum, the team’s installation, Arctic Portals, will “teleport” visitors to the region, where they will experience and learn about the rich and varied qualities of the Arctic through a combination of visual, haptic and auditory interfaces.

One of the interactive portals, “White Out,” which will be on display at the ACC festival, manufactures a meteorological condition common in the Arctic in which light is diffused, visibility is reduced and boundaries, including the horizon, are vanished. In this illuminated-but-‘featureless’ interior space that distorts one’s spatio-temporal and sensorial reference points, visitors will “engage with the whiteout” as a context to experience Arctic inhabitation.

Kinesthetic Montage Hong Kong

Kinesthetic Montage Hong Kong is an ongoing research project led by architecture professor Esther Lorenz that explores the unique relationship between film, dense urban space and movement in Hong Kong through the perspective of the perceiving human body in motion. It is designed to provide a deep understanding of Hong Kong’s spatial characteristics, and a broadening of approaches in architectural analysis and design.

Kinesthetic Montage describes, Lorenz said, the “cinematic experience” that an individual undergoes when moving through Hong Kong’s pedestrian infrastructure, public transport systems and architectural landscapes, capturing the aesthetic experience of the sensorial-rich pedestrian city through audio-visual, graphical and architectural means. As a design research project, the montage explores the relationship between film, urban space and movement in Hong Kong.

“The exhibit is comprised of a physical construct that represents unique spatial characteristics of Hong Kong’s cityscape and that is conceived as a large film set available for exploration to the visitors, as well as short films that focus on a variety of experiential aspects, offering poetic and critical reflections on Hong Kong’s unique spatial qualities,” Lorenz said.

“In today’s automobile-dominated city design, the variety of spatial characteristics found in Hong Kong present a valuable resource for future cities that moderate between the convenience of public transportation and the richness of urban life.”

[I]nquiry: An Experimental Live, Multimedia Performance

Combining media technologies and live performance, [I]nquiry alludes to the contemporary phenomenon of selfies and prompts a new dialogue about the perception, representation, and projection of the curated self in the digital culture.

“With dancers moving in and amongst audience members, this multimedia performance blurs the lines between the performer and spectator to bring attention to our everyday engagement in each of these roles within our live and online interactions, as well as the impact each has on the other,” dance professor Kim Brooks Mata said.

[I]nquiry originally premiered three years ago at UVA’s Ruth Caplin Theatre, through the support of an Arts Enhancement grant and the Arts Endowment through UVA’s Office of the Provost and Vice Provost of the Arts. The new iteration is a collaboration between Brooks Mata, new media artist and drama professor Mona Kasra, and composer and music professor Leah Reid.

The University of Virginia School of Medicine and School of Nursing have each received Health Professions Higher Education Excellence in Diversity Awards from INSIGHT Into Diversity magazine, which covers diversity in higher education. The School of Medicine earned the award for the seventh consecutive year; this was the first time the Nursing School was honored. The two UVA schools are among 35 health professions schools nationwide to receive 2018 HEED Awards.

“The Health Professions HEED Award process consists of a comprehensive and rigorous application that includes questions relating to the recruitment and retention of students and employees – and best practices for both; continued leadership support for diversity; and other aspects of campus diversity and inclusion,” Lenore Pearlstein, INSIGHT Into Diversity’s publisher, said.

The School of Medicine supports a range of diversity initiatives. They include a Summer Medical Leadership Program to prepare college undergraduates from underrepresented groups for medical school and leadership roles in medicine, as well as partnerships with community groups to improve access to care for local Latino residents through the Latino Health Initiative.

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Over the past year, diversity and inclusion efforts at the Medical School – and across the UVA Health System – have focused on how to respond when health care providers experience prejudice or bigotry while at work.

“We have a duty to take care of people regardless of beliefs, but we have a duty to everyone who works here, and to our other patients, to create an environment that is respectful,” said Dr. Margaret Plews-Ogan, a School of Medicine faculty member who helped form the Committee on Responding to Discriminatory Behavior. The committee includes more than 30 faculty and staff members, medical students and medical residents.

Along with messaging throughout the Health System that reflects the institution’s commitment to inclusion, the committee developed training to help team members respond when they experience or witness acts of prejudice or bigotry. Complementing online training available to all team members, the committee created a 90-minute workshop for faculty, supervisors and managers that included short films based on events experienced by care providers and discussions of how to respond. The workshops began earlier this year in the Department of Medicine and will be conducted throughout the Health System in the next year.

“Our faculty, staff and students work constantly to make the School of Medicine and the Health System a more welcoming and inclusive place for everyone,” School of Medicine Dean Dr. David S. Wilkes said. “Earning the HEED Award for the seventh consecutive year is a testament to the hard work of countless people across the School of Medicine.”

“The HEED Award is truly an honor,” School of Nursing Dean Dorrie K. Fontaine said, “and acknowledges the comprehensive, deliberate and strategic approach our school has taken in this important domain. From admissions to hiring, clinicals to curricula, everything we do is examined through this important lens.”

Since establishing the Initiative on Diversity, Inclusion and Excellence Achievement, or IDEA, in 2014, the Nursing School has shifted its recruitment, admissions and retention strategies to welcome more underrepresented and first-generation applicants, established affinity groups for students of color, initiated expansive diversity training for faculty and staff, and urged professors to incorporate diverse perspectives and inclusive content into their courses.

While faculty and graduate teaching assistants attend trainings across a variety of diversity-related topics, all nursing students also take part in cultural humility training and a plethora of regular activities – from classes, simulations, lectures and other experiential learning opportunities – that drive the message of inclusivity home.

Nearly 100 percent of students across all racial and ethnic group categories graduate from UVA Nursing’s many programs, and a growing array of minority and other students underrepresented in nursing are applying and accepting admission at UVA. For 2018, nearly a third of enrolled students are from groups underrepresented in nursing, and more than 17 percent are male.

The school has also declared the recruitment and retention of faculty members from diverse backgrounds a key priority.

This fall, the Nursing School’s senior leaders took part in an eight-week equity institute delivered by the Center for Race and Equity at the University of Southern California. Through the academic year, those lessons will be shared with the balance of faculty and staff through regular training sessions and equity projects developed in the institute.

“So many individuals deserve praise for their part in transforming the culture of our nursing school,” Susan Kools, associate dean for diversity and inclusion, said. “It truly takes each community member to commit to creating a place of learning where all feel affirmed and respected.”

UVA Architecture Professors Win Architecture Masterprize Award

School of Architecture professors Luis Pancorbo and Inés Martín Robles, through their Madrid-based firm Pancorbo-de Villar-Chacon-Martín Robles, have won the Architecture MasterPrize in the “Cultural Building” category for their design of the Vegas Altas Congress Center, located in Badajoz, Spain.

According to the award’s official citation, “The ‘Vegas Altas’ Center grows in an ambiguous peripheral location, in a land that is both urban and agricultural boundary. The architectural proposal is intended to highlight this timeless condition of a building belonging to the Vega – a free-standing building, floating in the countryside like a giant bale of straw with a flat horizon. The main program is drawn on a half-buried ring that adapts to the terrain and to the boundaries of the plot, but hides its condition to visitors. Only a cubic volume covered with a skin made of ropes rises above ground.”

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[Read more about the project.] 

The winners were selected by a panel of architects, academics and industry experts.

The Architecture MasterPrize was previously known as the American Architectural Prize, established with a mission to advance the appreciation of quality architectural design worldwide. It is the latest of many significant international awards Pancorbo and Robles have won for this project.

Publication: McIntire Marketing Professor Among Top 50 in the Nation

Poets&Quants for Undergraduates, a publication for business students, recently profiled Carrie Heilman, associate professor of marketing in the McIntire School of Commerce, as one of its “Top 50 Undergraduate Business Professors.”

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Heilman teaches “Promotions,” a yearlong course focusing on market research and advertising strategy. Students annually participate in the National Student Advertising Competition, and her UVA teams have thrice placed in the top three, including a first-place finish in 2016.

According to the profile, “Student comments revere Heilman for balancing her rigorous standards with very generous guidance that often extends well beyond normal business hours. Because of the special mix of teamwork, real client interaction, and tremendous mentorship that Heilman brings to the experience, students say they leave the class feeling prepared for their careers.”

Rita Dove’s Vita Gets Longer With Three New Awards

Former U.S. Poet Laureate Rita Dove, Commonwealth Professor of English, has added three more honors to her extensive list of plaudits.

In November, she received the 2018 Kenyon Review Award for Literary Achievement. The prize honors careers of extraordinary literary achievement, recognizing writers whose influence and importance have shaped the American literary landscape. It celebrates writers for the courage of their vision, their unparalleled imagination and for the beauty of their art. Previous recipients include Elie Weisel (2012), Louise Erdrich (2009), Margaret Atwood (2007), Seamus Heaney (2004) and Joyce Carol Oates (2003).

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In October, Dove – an Akron, Ohio native – received the 2018 Cleveland Arts Prize-Lifetime Achievement Award. The Cleveland Arts Prize has recognized and honored artistic excellence in northeast Ohio for nearly 60 years, and awardees represent the best and most talented artists in the region. Previous recipients include Russell Atkins (2017), Adrienne Kennedy (1990), Toni Morrison (1978) and Robert Wallace (1969).

And in September, Dove was presented with the Alice Dunbar Nelson Award for Literary Achievements at the inaugural Great Lakes Black Authors Expo and Writers Conference, also in Cleveland. The award is named for one of the prominent African-Americans involved in the artistic flourishing of the Harlem Renaissance.

Education Historian Derrick Alridge to Lead International Society

Derrick Alridge, a professor in the Curry School of Education and Human Development, was elected president of the History of Education Society at the organization’s annual meeting, held in November in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

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The History of Education Society is an international scholarly society “devoted to promoting and teaching the history of education across institutions.” As president, Alridge will be responsible for leading the society over the next 12 months and will deliver his presidential address at next year’s conference in Columbus, Ohio.

Alridge is the program coordinator for Curry’s Social Foundations in Education program and directs the recently created Center for Race and Public Education in the South. He is the founder and director of Teachers in the Movement, an oral history project that examines the ideas and pedagogy of teachers in the civil rights movement.

Nursing Doctoral Student Receives Major Funding Award

From a national pool of 75 applicants, the American Association of Colleges of Nursing has selected Lourdes Carhuapoma, a doctoral student in UVA’s School of Nursing, as one of six 2019 Nurse Faculty Scholars.

The Nurse Faculty Scholar program – which offers Doctor of Nursing Practice and Ph.D. in Nursing students $18,000 in funding over two years – aims to increase diversity in nursing academia. Carhuapoma, a first-generation college student and the daughter of Cuban immigrants, is one of just 60 such scholars since the program’s inception. She plans to become a nurse researcher, professor and mentor to a new generation of nurses.

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Prior to her arrival at UVA, Carhuapoma worked with critically ill neurological and neurosurgical patients and their families at George Washington University Hospital and Johns Hopkins Hospital, and taught acute care nurse practitioner students at Georgetown University.

Carhuapoma’s scholarship focuses on end-of-life care, a passion that stemmed from observations made in her own practice.

While “critical care is designed to save lives, many people die in these environments, and there are very few resources for patients and families around end-of-life care. It’s clear to me that we can do better” for patients and families who are facing death, she said.

Carhuapoma’s research aims to provide support to surrogate decision-makers of patients with neurological illness or injuries, a group that’s at high risk for decisional regret and poor mental health outcomes. She’s also energized by her future role as a mentor-scholar.

“It became clear to me that I absolutely needed to be in the academic role,” she said, “mentoring students and honing my research interests, all of which fuel my desire to become a nurse researcher and leader.”

Two Alumni Among ‘New Voices in Science, Engineering and Medicine’ Group

The National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine have selected two UVA alumni among 18 early- to mid-career scholars in the first cohort of “New Voices in Science, Engineering and Medicine.”

Joel Baumgart, an alumnus who is currently a senior research program officer in UVA’s Office of the Vice President for Research, and Olujimi Ajijola, who received a B.A. from UVA and is an assistant professor in the departments of Medicine-Cardiology and Molecular, Cellular & Integrative Physiology at the University of California, Los Angeles, were selected for the inaugural group.

According to the announcement, “The initial group of 18 [Science, Engineering and Medicine] early-career leaders will gather over a two-year period with a senior advisory committee to discuss key emerging challenges in science, engineering and medicine, engage nationally with a wider group of young leaders from diverse groups, and attend international events on science policy.”

12 Grad Students Among Finalists for Federal Government Fellowships

A dozen UVA students – including eight from the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy – have been selected as finalists to participate in the Class of 2019 Presidential Management Fellows program, the federal government’s most prestigious fellowship for graduate students entering the federal workforce.

UVA’s 12 finalists are the most of any institution in Virginia.

The Batten students are Kathryn L. Babbin (seeking a fellowship in policy analysis), Ellen B. Beahm (policy analysis), Conor Boyle (policy analysis), Layla A. Bryant (policy analysis), Amy E. Dalrymple (policy analysis), Matthew T. Hensell (public administration), Shea L. Kearns (policy analysis) and Joshua A. Margulies (policy analysis). From other programs are Elizabeth Hoffman (biology/biological sciences), Deborah Luzader (microbiology), Ellen L. Mintz (unspecified) and Rena W. Yuan (statistics).

Nursing, Pediatrics Professor Named Distinguished Fellow

UVA School of Nursing professor Dr. Julie Haizlip, a physician specializing in pediatrics who directs the school’s interprofessional outreach, was named a distinguished fellow of the National Academies of Practice in Medicine. She will be inducted at a ceremony to be held in early March in Pentagon City.

The National Academies of Practice was established in 1981 to advise government bodies on health care issues and systems. Fellows are elected by peers from across 14 different health professions to join the only interprofessional group of health care practitioners and scholars dedicated to the support of affordable, accessible, coordinated quality care for all.

Haizlip’s scholarship focuses on positive psychology, appreciative practice and interprofessional learning and teaching. Currently researching the concept of “mattering” – the perception that one is significant in the lives of others and has an impact in the world – in health care with colleagues at UVA’s Darden School of Business, she is interested in how the presence (and absence) of mattering impacts practice, personal well-being, professional longevity and burnout, especially among physicians and nurses.

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As the Center for ASPIRE’s co-director and a clinical professor of nursing, Haizlip educates students and faculty to improve their teamwork skills and cohesion when operating within health care teams. The Center for ASPIRE, or Academic Strategic Partnerships for Interprofessional Research and Education, researches and supports the development, implementation and evaluation of educational and clinical programs that train students, faculty and clinicians to deliver safe, high-quality, team-based patient care.

She is also among the core planners of the center’s twice-annual Train-the-Trainer Conference, initially funded by the Macy Foundation and the Center for Interprofessional Learning and Practice, for which she’s developed a host of novel workshops and simulations to engage attendees.

Haizlip also directs UVA’s Center for Appreciative Practice, which organizes regular workshops and lecture series, including the Wisdom & Well-Being lecture series and UVA’s offering of Schwartz Center Rounds, emphasizing compassion and the human connection between professional caregivers and patients. She has written books, chapters and articles on appreciative practice, interprofessional learning and positive psychology.

Professors Appointed to Federal Administrative Review Agency

Professors John Duffy and Michael Livermore of the School of Law have been appointed public members of the Administrative Conference of the United States.

The conference is an independent federal agency charged with convening experts to recommend improvements to administrative processes and procedures.

The Administrative Conference of the United States has adopted more than 250 statements and recommendations – directed to all branches of government, but largely with federal agencies – to improve agency decision-making, promote regulatory oversight and save costs. Its 150 volunteers are drawn from more than 70 federal agencies, as well as academia and private legal practice. The organization currently has 34 public members.

Duffy is the Samuel H. McCoy II Professor of Law and Elizabeth D. and Richard A. Merrill Professor of Law. In the field of intellectual property, Duffy has been identified as one of the 25 most influential people in the nation by The American Lawyer and one of the 50 most influential people in the world by the U.K. publication Managing Intellectual Property. In the field of administrative law, Duffy is a past recipient of the Annual Scholarship Award, conferred by the American Bar Association’s Section on Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice for the best piece of scholarship in the year.

Livermore is a professor of law whose research focuses on environmental law, regulation, bureaucratic oversight and the computational analysis of law. He is a leading expert on cost-benefit analysis and regulatory review, and frequently collaborates on interdisciplinary projects with researchers in other academic fields, including economics, computer science and neurology. Prior to joining the faculty in 2013, Livermore was the founding executive director of the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University School of Law.

Professor Andrew Vollmer, director of UVA Law’s John W. Glynn Jr. Law & Business Program, is currently serving as an Administrative Conference of the United States public member.

Professor Molly Brady, Alumnus James Nelson Earn Awards for Scholarship

School of Law professor Maureen “Molly” Brady is a co-winner of the 2019 Scholarly Papers Competition, sponsored by the Association of American Law Schools.

Her paper, “The Forgotten History of Metes and Bounds,” forthcoming in the Yale Law Journal, explores the social and legal context surrounding earlier metes and bounds systems and the important role that nonstandardized property can play in stimulating growth. “Metes and bounds” is a method of describing land or real estate that uses physical features of the local geography, along with directions and distances, to define and describe boundaries.

James Nelson, a 2009 UVA Law alumnus and an assistant professor of law at the University of Houston Law Center, also won for his paper, “Corporate Disestablishment,” forthcoming in the Virginia Law Review.

The competition, in its 34th year, is open to law faculty who have been teaching for five years or fewer. There were 55 entries this year.

The award will be presented in January during the AALS Annual Meeting in New Orleans. As winners, Brady and Nelson were invited to serve on the Scholarly Papers selection committee in 2020.

In architecture, the phenomenon is referred to simply as “the missing 32 percent.”

The phrase is shorthand for the drop-off between the percentage of architecture students who are female – about 50 percent – and the percentage of licensed, practicing architects who are female – about 18 percent.

The gap can be attributed to a number of factors, from architecture’s long history as a male-dominated profession to all-consuming workplace cultures that leave little flexibility for women expected to balance work and family. However, many at the University of Virginia – women and men – are working hard to close that gap, through their own achievements and through partnerships among students, alumni, faculty members and practicing architects.

That work started with women like Linda Harris Michael, who graduated from UVA’s School of Architecture in 1959, a full decade before women were generally admitted to the University. Michael, the only woman in her class and the school’s second female graduate, went on to practice architecture for more than 30 years.

After her came women like current School of Architecture Dean Ila Berman, an acclaimed architect who has also led efforts supporting female architects in academia. Berman is the fourth woman to serve as dean, putting UVA near the top of the list for architecture schools with the most female deans.

And now, there are women like Zazu Swistel, a current graduate student and the co-founder of manifestA, a new student organization of female and male students dedicated to helping women advance the discipline, discourse and practice of architecture and design.  

These three – and many more women like them – have changed, and are changing, their chosen profession. Here are their stories.

Linda Harris Michael, Class of 1959

Michael was one of a small group of professors’ daughters admitted to the College of Arts & Sciences before UVA went co-ed in 1970. However, she really wanted to study in the School of Architecture, which required any female students to have two years of academic credit and be at least 20 years of age.

Undeterred, the 17-year-old Harris took 60 credits over the course of one academic year and two summers and joined the Architecture School at age 18, the age requirement waived because of her strong academic record. She was the only woman in her class.

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“I think it was good training for me, living in that male-dominated world, because when I got into the profession, it was still a man’s world,” she said.

For the most part, she said, her classmates were welcoming and became her friends. She recalls one incident of open harassment, when someone left a printed photo of male genitalia on her drafting board – an insult that she quickly swept aside, determined that whoever it was would not see her rattled.

“That was an exception,” she said. “I did not react, and I was very proud of myself for how I handled it.”

Michael, now retired, went on to practice architecture for 30 years, primarily in an Alexandria, Virginia practice she opened with her then-husband, fellow UVA architecture graduate G. Revell Michael Jr. They focused on historic buildings, renovations and remodels.

Along the way, Michael mentored many young architects, including many women, and was an enthusiastic supporter of the women’s rights movement sweeping the country in the 1970s. She hopes her career can provide an example for younger women to follow.

“I tried to leave the door open behind me every time I opened one,” she said.

Ila Berman, Dean of the School of Architecture

Berman, whose design work and installations have been exhibited in public and private galleries and museums around the world, held leadership positions at three other architecture schools before becoming UVA’s dean in 2016.

Among many other projects, she founded and led the URBANbuild program at Tulane University, a two-year program supporting the revitalization of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

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Berman has also done extensive scholarly work focused on feminism, architecture and the opportunities and challenges facing women in her profession. She has served on the Women’s Leadership Council, comprising women in leadership positions in architecture schools; and worked on the American Institute of Architects’ “The Missing 32 Percent” campaign, hoping to close the gap between the number of women studying architecture and the number of women practicing it.

In the fall, Berman hosted a “Women in Design” panel discussion with the UVA Club of New York, highlighting several School of Architecture alumnae and discussing the gender gap in the profession.

“In recent years, we had gone from women representing about 5 percent of all architecture students to getting close to 50 percent in the classroom,” she said. “But this gap still exists within the profession, and that is what we are addressing now.”

Correcting that gap, Berman said, will require changing perceptions of architecture as a male-dominated profession, building company cultures that promote flexibility and diversity, encouraging young women through mentorship and other forms of support and highlighting the work and practices of great female architects.

“It will also require addressing the deeper forms of gender bias that underpin the architectural profession in general and the cloning mechanisms that often dominate in hiring practices and the promotion of individuals to leadership positions within firms,” Berman said.

As a young practicing architect, Berman remembers being one of few women, and often the only woman, in any given room. She was one of the only female architects in a firm of about 250 men. Most often, she said, people assumed she was a secretary or someone’s assistant.

“I handled it by opening my mouth and by persisting,” she said. “It’s important to know that you have a place at the table, something that women have had to fight for continuously.”

Today’s UVA students, she said, are extremely interested in gender and social justice issues and improving gender dynamics in the workplace, Berman said – an uptick in interest she noticed both before and after the #MeToo movement addressing sexual harassment at work.

“We are continually making progress. It is not a straight line, but rather an undulation between smaller incremental changes and more significant advances toward equity,” she said. “Today’s students have a different set of expectations than those of the women that proceeded them, simply because of when they started out. … I want them to be aware of all the pioneers whose struggles enabled their opportunities, but I also want to let them lead and write their own material futures, without having to mine the same territory that my generation has.” 

Zazu Swistel, Master’s Student and manifestA Founder

Swistel is a member of that next generation. She calls Berman an influential mentor, and has worked with her to establish manifestA, a student organization focused on women in architecture and design.

Swistel is in the final year of UVA’s Master of Architecture program. She grew up in New York City and came to Charlottesville both for the excellent program and for the milder weather and relative quiet.

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“I happened to come here on a beautiful April day, and I loved it,” she said. “I was taken not just by the weather, but by the environment of the Architecture School – everyone was so friendly.”

After graduation, Swistel hopes to practice public architecture, creating public spaces that are open to and affect large groups of people.

“To design a public library is the ultimate dream,” she said.

First though, she has a few things she wants to see through at UVA. High on that list is manifestA, which she founded this year with fellow graduate student Katie Kelly, who is pursuing a master’s degree in landscape architecture.

“The topic of women in architecture is still a big discussion. Other fields with professional degrees – like law or business – don’t seem to struggle with it quite as much anymore,” she said. “At this point, it is not about educating great women architects; we are doing that. It is about both elevating them in the field and providing opportunities for them to transform the future of the profession.”

The organization, which is open to both women and men, is addressing the issue in multiple ways. Some students are working with faculty to build a syllabus highlighting architecture, design and landscape architecture work and scholarship by women. Some are working on a spring exhibition of work by female alumni of the School of Architecture. Others are building the organization’s outreach – by crafting blog posts and conducting interviews with practicing female architects – or helping students find mentors in the field.

“We are trying to advance the agency of women in architecture, to challenge implicit and explicit biases that have been perpetuated in the discipline,” Swistel said. “There has been a ton of progress, and there is always more to be done.”

“It’s a really exciting time to be at UVA,” says Barbara Wilson, a professor of urban and environmental planning in the University of Virginia’s School of Architecture. “We’re at this moment where our university president is really thinking about how the University can be a better neighbor.” 

Wilson makes that declaration in one of 31 new radio spots being broadcast on WTJU, UVA’s radio station.

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The audio bytes began airing throughout the station’s broadcast day in mid-December and feature a diverse group of faculty members, many of whom have been engaged in community-related work for decades.

Louis Nelson, UVA’s vice provost for academic outreach, said the new effort is part of “Engaged UVA,” a relatively new program billed as the front door to community partnerships. “Our tag line is ‘Building Bridges with Communities,’” said Nelson, who is also UVA’s primary representative for community engagement.

“UVA faculty have been building bridges with communities for decades,” he said. “Some of these projects are many, many years old, and this is a great opportunity for us to tell the story of the work that we’ve already been doing around building bridges with communities and how we hope to expand this kind of work in the future.”

Nelson and WTJU’s general manager, Nathan Moore, first discussed the radio spots last fall, and before long, members of the faculty were invited to WTJU’s studios to record their pieces. Topics range from how the community is joining UVA to help create a more equitable environment to how Charlottesville and UVA can thoughtfully rebound from the events of Aug. 11 and 12, 2017. “A number of listeners have told me they really enjoy the stories,” Moore said.

See for yourself with this sample of the new audio spots.

Suzanne Moomaw, Professor of Urban and Environmental Planning

Dr. Cameron Webb, Professor of Medicine

Webb discusses the importance of equal access to health care and other community resources.

Melissa Levy, Co-Director, Young Women Leaders Program, Assistant Professor and Program Area Director of Youth and Social Innovation 

Levy talks about the empowerment that comes from youth in the community working with UVA students.

Andrew Kaufman, Russian Literature Scholar

In this clip, listen to Kaufman discuss the role of compassion in building community.

Becca Dillingham, Director, Center for Global Health

Dillingham talks about the important role of good health in nurturing communities, including those surrounding family, school and workplaces.

Vikram Jaswal, Professor of Psychology

In his class, which blends UVA students with college-aged people with autism, Jaswal hosted a discussion about how they can be welcoming to all sorts of people, including refugees, LGBTQ people and those from different races or ethnicities.

Andrew Kahrl, Professor of History

Kahrl talks about the importance of civic engagement to a vibrant, healthy community.

Barbara Wilson, Professor, Urban and Environmental Planning

Wilson discusses how to think about building an environment that “better brings together coalitions of people.”

You can listen to all the spots, or simply tune into WTJU to enjoy the community discussion as well as all of the radio station’s programming.

Founded in 2013, the University of Virginia’s Data Science Institute has always had collaboration at the heart of its mission. The institute was built around creating opportunities for students and researchers from across the University in a range of fields, to focus on big-picture problems affecting society.

That is what data science is all about: pulling together data from a wide and ever-growing range of sources, and mining it for insight using new methods and techniques. Applications range from health care to the environment, finance, and everything in between.

By providing fellowships, real-world instruction and seed funding for researchers, the institute has inspired faculty, students and postdoctoral fellows with the opportunity to dream big and uncover data-driven solutions to our most pressing challenges.

“Data science is a team sport that brings together diverse perspectives to address issues that no one discipline could tackle alone. The Data Science Institute facilitates collaboration and brings cutting-edge data science methods and techniques to those teams,” the institute’s director, Phil Bourne, said.

As UVA begins to pursue plans to establish a full School of Data Science, here are five examples of the impactful, cross-disciplinary work being done by its Data Science Institute researchers.

Seeking Insights to Autism

The prevalence of autism has been on the rise since the American Psychiatric Association first classified it as a disorder in 1980. In 2000, about one of every 150 children was diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum; last year, the number was one in 59.

There are many possible reasons for the growing trend, but experts agree that more research is needed to better understand and diagnose the disorder and support the growing number of individuals and families affected.

Toward that end, Don Brown, the Data Science Institute’s founding director and a chaired professor of systems and information engineering in the Department of Engineering Systems and Environment; and Micah Mazurek, associate professor and director of the Supporting Transformative Autism Research project, are working with an interdisciplinary team to build a new system for collecting, integrating and analyzing data from multiple sources.

As part of the Supporting Transformative Autism Research project, funded by a $6.2 million grant from UVA’s Strategic Investment Fund, the team plans to use machine learning and integrated data – the application of algorithms to improve computer analysis as a means for uncovering new insights – to develop personalized therapy approaches for individuals with autism.

“Data science approaches can rapidly uncover new insights into autism and help us translate these discoveries into real-world solutions for individuals and families,” Mazurek said.

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Criminal Justice Reform and Mental Health

For the past decade, systems engineering students and faculty have worked with local and regional criminal justice agencies in the Charlottesville and Albemarle County area with the goal of enhancing public safety and reducing recidivism. Participating agencies include the regional jail, law enforcement agencies, mental health service providers, advocates for the homeless, probation and parole agencies, and others who are working together to ensure public safety and also address the mental health needs of individuals.

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In recent years, the Data Science Institute has provided complex technical support for this effort, which requires gathering, organizing, validating, merging, protecting and analyzing data from multiple agencies and organizations; presenting information in ways that are actionable by agency leadership; and providing evidence of the need for and effectiveness of specific interventions.

As a result, local criminal justice agencies received funding to establish a therapeutic docket that allows non-violent offenders suffering from mental illness to choose mental health treatment rather than incarceration as a means for helping them achieve stability and avoid returning to custody. Additional funds were acquired to expand mental health services for inmates at the regional jail and to help with their transition after release, so they can continue to receive services in the community.

“This collaborative effort has established a community of trust among the participating agencies and the UVA faculty and students,” said Michael Smith, a professor in the Department of Engineering Systems and Environment who has worked on the project since its inception. “These relationships enable project participants to share sensitive data and work together to improve the community for all residents, including individuals in the criminal justice system who suffer from mental illness.”

Using Data Science to Design Drugs and Repurpose Existing Drugs

Drugs often have unwanted side effects, and even the desired effects often are not optimal. While a given drug can effectively target molecules in cells that may inhibit cancer growth, for example, that same drug may also inhibit an immune response or other natural protective effect in the body. As a result, pharmacologists are continuously seeking better drugs to treat illness and pain with minimal negative side effects.

Data Science Institute director and researcher Philip Bourne is working with UVA’s Department of Biomedical Engineering to use a systems approach to drug discovery and for repurposing drugs already in use. This involves exploring countless small molecules that could act as drugs; understanding all the target molecules that bind with a given drug; and determining the cumulative effects of multiple drugs on the human body. That involves sorting through an enormous amount of data, creating a relatively new field, systems pharmacology.

“Using systems pharmacology, we have made some computational inroads into suggesting new designs for drugs, identifying multiple drug targets, and we also are beginning to analyze the cumulative effects of drug action,” Bourne said.

He and his collaborators are working to reduce the side effects of an effective cancer-inhibiting drug; understand why a cholesterol-controlling medication failed to work as desired; repurpose an HIV drug to shrink tumors; compute the drug-target network for the tuberculosis bacterium; and find other drug targets.

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The Microbiome and the Brain

Within the human body, microorganisms – collectively called the microbiome – outnumber our own human body cells, and in the gut microbiome alone, there are more than 1,000 species that encode 200 times as many genes as the entire human genome. Given advances in mapping the human microbiome, there is growing interest in investigating how the microbiome affects developmental processes, specifically, brain and cognitive development.

Former Data Science Institute Presidential Fellows in Data Science Caitlin Dreisbach, a Ph.D. candidate in nursing and an alumna of the institute’s master’s program; and Caroline Kelsey, a Ph.D. candidate in psychology, are studying the interplay between the intestinal microbiome, anxiety and depression during pregnancy, and subsequent maternal-child attachment. Their work is a continuation of their Presidential Fellows project.

“As a registered nurse, I intimately work with mothers and children and can see the direct linkages between theoretical thinking, bench science and the real-world application,” Dreisbach said.

The interdisciplinary approach of the project will generate a first-of-its-kind data set allowing for a comprehensive and novel analysis of factors impacting maternal and child mental health. It brings together researchers from the UVA Babylab at the Department of Psychology and the School of Nursing to examine how the intestinal microbiome predicts levels of maternal internalizing symptoms and threat bias in mothers and their infants.

“This partnership between myself and Caitlin is vital to addressing the important questions of how the brain and body interact, and yet, due to traditional university infrastructure, this pairing tends to be rare,” Kelsey said. “The opportunity provided by the Presidential Fellows project through the DSI allowed us to cross those barriers to collaboration and work on new and compelling interdisciplinary research.”

Using Machine Learning to Improve Gut Disease Diagnosis

Bangladesh, Zambia and Pakistan all possess pockets of extreme poverty where sanitation, potable water and abundant food are scarce. And in each of those countries there are high rates of children suffering from environmental enteric dysfunction, a disease which limits the gut’s ability to absorb essential nutrients and impacts children’s mental and physical growth.

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For Dr. Sana Syed, an assistant professor of pediatrics in the School of Medicine, this is why she got into medicine. “You’re talking about a disease that affects hundreds of thousands of children, and that is entirely preventable,” she said.

Funded by a grant from the Translational Health Research Institute of Virginia, Syed is working with Dr. Don Brown, founding director of the UVA Data Science Institute, to incorporate machine learning into the diagnostic process for health officials combating this disease. Syed and Brown are using a deep learning approach, called “convolutional neural networks,” to train computers to read thousands of images of biopsies. Pathologists can then learn from the algorithms how to more effectively screen patients based on where the neural network is looking for differences and where it is focusing its analysis to get results.

“These are the same type of algorithms Google is using in facial recognition, but we’re using them to aid in the diagnosis of disease through biopsy images,” Brown said.

The machine learning algorithm can provide insights that have evaded human eyes, validate pathologists’ diagnoses, shorten the time between imaging and diagnosis, and from a technical engineering perspective, might be able to offer a look into data science’s “black boxes” by giving clues into the thinking mechanism of the machine.

But for Syed, it is still about saving lives.

“There is so much poverty and such an unfair set of consequences,” she said. “If we can use these cutting-edge technologies and ways of looking at data through data science, we can get answers faster and help these children sooner.”

Settling in to watch the University of Virginia men’s basketball team take on the University of Pittsburgh Saturday, alumnus Cory Paradis saw something that took his breath away.

Paradis, who graduated from UVA’s School of Architecture in May, was born with cerebral palsy and has been in a wheelchair most of his life. Throughout his time on Grounds, he was a committed advocate for accessibility. Among other activities, he served on the University’s Barrier-Free Access Committee, working with administrators, faculty members and students to push for permanent wheelchair ramps on the Lawn.

On Saturday, cameras panning over the Lawn caught one of those new ramps, completed and opened last week.

“It hit me then that every time they show that image, from here on out, everyone watching will see that ramp,” said Paradis, who now works as a design project coordinator for UVA’s Facilities Management Department. (Read more about Paradis in our feature on 2018 graduates.)

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“Even though the average person may not know the story behind it, knowing that I played a small part in making it happen is pretty awesome,” he said. “The team that made this happen has been added to the history of the University of Virginia.”

The two permanent ramps, located on either side of the Lawn adjacent to Pavilions V and IX, allow students, faculty members, staff and visitors with mobility issues significantly greater access to the four terraced levels of the Lawn. Previously, only the uppermost and lowermost terraces of the Lawn were accessible by ramp, with well-worn stone stairs limiting access to the full space in between.

The ramps are set into sloping banks between terraces, and were designed with the same custom brick blend used for wall repairs in the Academical Village buildings, in order to preserve the look and feel of the UNESCO World Heritage Site.

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“This project is an excellent example of the ‘village’ of UVA staff working together,” said Associate Provost for Academic Support and Classroom Management M. Wynne Stuart, who chairs the Barrier-Free Access Committee.

She cited contributions from Alice Raucher, the architect for the University, and her team; Senior Vice President for Operations Colette Sheehy and her team; and the Facilities Management team that worked diligently through several weather delays to complete the project.

“The Facilities Management team worked very hard throughout the construction process to get everything exactly right, and everyone has been very committed to this project from the moment we started,” Stuart said. “Our whole committee is very happy to see this accomplishment in UVA’s progress toward inclusion and equity.”

Paradis said he was particularly excited to see the addition of permanent ramps on a historic site like the Lawn. He hopes it could set a significant precedent for other historic sites and attractions.

“If this can happen on a UNESCO World Heritage site, I would say the standard excuse of ‘We can’t make this accessible because it is too historic,’ is no longer valid,” he said. “This is a huge accomplishment by all involved, a huge step forward for ADA access on Grounds and something I am honored to be a part of.”

On April 12, the University of Virginia and the Thomas Jefferson Foundation at Monticello will present their highest honors, the 2019 Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medals in Architecture, Citizen Leadership and Law.

This year's medalists are:

• Architecture: Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa, co-founders of the Tokyo-based firm SANAA whose major projects span the globe from Tokyo to Paris and Milan. MORE 
• Citizen Leadership: Sylvia Earle, an oceanographer, explorer, author and lecturer named a Living Legend by the Library of Congress. MORE 
• Law: Carlton W. Reeves, a federal judge on the United States District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi who has ruled in a number of important cases involving equality and civil rights. Reeves is the second African American appointed to a federal judgeship in Mississippi, following a nomination by President Barack Obama in 2010. MORE 

The Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medals recognize the exemplary contributions of recipients to the endeavors in which Jefferson – the author of the Declaration of Independence, the third U.S. president and the founder of the University of Virginia – excelled and held in high regard.

“The Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medals are the highest external honor given by the University,” said UVA president Jim Ryan. “This year’s winners have pushed the boundaries of form and function, explored the depths of the oceans, and fought for truth and justice. I applaud them for their accomplishments and look forward to presenting them with their medals next month.”

The awards are presented annually in observance of Jefferson’s birthday, April 13 – known locally as Founder’s Day – by the president of the University and the president of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, the independent, nonprofit organization that owns and operates his home, Monticello. This year’s celebrations, including the medal presentations, will be held on Friday April 12.

“Jefferson’s vision for this nation (and the world) began with his belief in progress,” said Leslie Greene Bowman, president and CEO of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation. “We are honored to welcome the 2019 Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medalists who serve as an inspiration to future leaders. Like Jefferson, they have shaped our world for the better.”

Bowman and Ryan will present the medals, struck for the occasion, at a luncheon on April 12 in the Rotunda Dome Room at UVA. The medalists in Architecture and Law will each give a free public lecture at UVA and all medalists will be honored at a formal dinner at Monticello.

The complete schedule of events for Founder’s Day can be found here.

The Citizen Leadership medalist, Sylvia Earle, will also be the featured keynote speaker at Monticello’s commemoration of Jefferson’s 276th birthday on April 12 at 10 a.m. on the West Lawn of Monticello. The event is free and open to the public, and will also be livestreamed online.

This year’s medalists join a distinguished roster of past winners that includes architects Sir David Adjaye OBE, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, I.M. Pei, Frank Gehry, Toyo Ito and Cecil Balmond; seven former and current U.S. Supreme Court justices; former U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher; former U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch; special counsel, former FBI director and UVA alumnus Robert S. Mueller III; Gordon Moore, engineer, technologist and entrepreneur; Alice Waters, chef, food activist and founder of the Edible Schoolyard Project; Marian Wright Edelman, founder of the Children’s Defense Fund; Wendy Kopp, founder of Teach for America; Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the Federal Reserve; former Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano; and several former and current U.S. senators and representatives, including John Lewis and John Warner.

Japanese architects Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa, co-founders of the Tokyo-based firm SANAA, are the 2019 recipients of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medal in Architecture. 

Sejima studied architecture at the Japan Women’s University and launched her own practice in 1987. In 1995, Sejima partnered with Nishizawa to found the Tokyo-based firm SANAA (Sejima + Nishizawa and Associates). Nishizawa studied architecture at Yokohama National University, and in addition to his work with Sejima, has also maintained an independent practice since 1997.

Sejima and Nishizawa were jointly awarded the Golden Lion at the 9th Venice Architecture Biennale in 2004 and were recipients of the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2010, honoring their significant contributions to humanity and the built environment through the art of architecture.

They will give a public talk on April 12 at 3 p.m. in the Old Cabell Hall auditorium.

A citation for the Pritzker prize noted, “They often opt for non-hierarchical spaces, or in their own words, the ‘equivalence of spaces,’ creating unpretentious, democratic buildings according to the task and budget at hand.”

School of Architecture Dean Ila Berman agreed.

“In a contemporary world that so often lauds excess, SANAA’s highly inventive and carefully crafted works expose the immense power of restraint, precision and synthesis in design,” Berman said. “They create light-filled spaces of serenity and extreme beauty, that are sublime yet always inviting and open. There are few architects whose work is so truly exceptional and yet, simultaneously so highly accessible.”

SANAA’s major works include the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa, Japan; the Christian Dior Omotesando Building in Tokyo, Japan; the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York; the Rolex Learning Center at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne in Switzerland; and the Louvre-Lens in France. Current projects include La Samaritaine in Paris, Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem and Bocconi University campus in Milan.

Their work is known for its carefully crafted connections between building and landscape, and its ability to provide people with meaningful experiences with their surroundings. Whether rural, as powerfully expressed in their Grace Farms project in New Canaan, Connecticut, or urban, such as The New Museum in the Bowery neighborhood of New York City, SANAA’s architecture has been described as creating a sense of fullness and experiential richness.

On the anniversary of Thomas Jefferson’s birthday, April 13 (known locally as Founder’s Day), the University of Virginia and the Thomas Jefferson Foundation at Monticello join together to present the Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medals to recognize achievements of those who embrace endeavors in which Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence and third U.S. president, excelled and held in high regard. These medals are the highest external honors bestowed by the University of Virginia, which grants no honorary degrees. For information on Founder’s Day, the Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medals and the 2019 recipients, click here.

The Jefferson Trust, an initiative of the University of Virginia Alumni Association, will distribute more than $800,000 in seed money to 13 UVA initiatives in 2019, the largest focusing on innovation in education.

The trust will also add to its long-running support of UVA’s Data Science Institute, a venture that is itself a testament to The Jefferson Trust’s catalytic powers.

On the education front, this year’s grants include $141,000 for web-based observation tools to evaluate teacher classroom performance and $100,000 to support a multimedia research project known as the Religion Lab.

Three different projects support new approaches to teaching health science, including $100,000 for three-dimensional modeling of infectious diseases, $82,000 for design-thinking instruction for first-year medical students and $70,000 for interactive and psychometric approaches to teaching kinesiology.

Since the Alumni Association founded it in 2006, the Jefferson Trust has invested $7.8 million in 192 student and faculty projects, representing all 11 schools.

And it will play a role in the ramp-up to UVA’s 12^th school, the forthcoming School of Data Science. This year’s grants include $50,000 for a community outreach initiative of the Data Science Institute.

The Jefferson Trust planted a first kernel for that venture in 2012 with $100,000 in grant money. A year later came the private philanthropy that helped UVA open a Data Science Institute. The institute will transform into a full-fledged school as early as next fall, pending approvals, with a projected $200 million in philanthropy and University funding. When it does, it will represent the 2,000-fold fruition of The Jefferson Trust’s original investment.

“It’s actually what we do,” Jefferson Trust Executive Director Wayne Cozart said. “We are seed funding for the University of Virginia.”

The full list of 2019 Jefferson Trust grants follows.

• Rotunda Planetarium: $30,000

The Rotunda Planetarium reconstructs Thomas Jefferson's inaugural vision for the Rotunda Library’s Dome Room. The Rotunda Planetarium will run from November 2019 until June 2020.

• Infectious Disease in 3-D: $99,945

The proposed “Infectious Disease in 3D” program aims to build virtual reality and augmented reality content for teaching complex biological information in UVA classrooms. The end product will directly benefit students in UVA classrooms by enhancing their motivation and retention of material.

• Religion, Race, and Democracy: An Undergraduate Multimedia Research Project: $100,000

The Religion Lab will offer to undergraduate student research collaborators regular training and mentorship; funding and technology; and a website to publish the research. They will also benefit from the expertise and guidance of Religion Lab faculty and staff.

• Cadaver-Specific Virtual Dissection Table: $70,491

An initiative to provide state-of-the-art interactive and psychometric learning to kinesiology students for the enhancement of knowledge in anatomy and patient care, leading to the development of unparalleled clinical skills. 

• Developing Tools to Transform Student Experiences: $141,173

To develop and use web-based observation tools to not only shed light on how UVA faculty teach in their classrooms, but also to use the data from the tools to work with instructors and the broader University to improve teaching at UVA.

• UVA Medical Design Program: Phase II: $81,500

The UVA Medical Design Program provides first-year medical students with hands-on instruction in the application of design thinking to address health care challenges.

• Student Veteran’s Support Initiative: $60,000

The Veteran’s Support Initiative is seeking support to set up a structure to better meet the needs of student veterans.

• Data for the Social Good: $50,000

With support from the Jefferson Trust, faculty, staff, students and alumni of the Data Science Institute will develop a set of tools to match community non-profits needing data analysis help with students and service-learning classes who can provide it.

• Concussion and Headaches: $25,837

This project proposes to study administration of magnesium and riboflavin (two common supplements) as agents to reduce the length of time a student \ might experience headache following concussion. 

• Flux Poetry Series: $21,800

The project proposal is a three-semester-long poetry series that will invite award-winning and influential poets to host workshops, performances, consultations and more, bolstering the art community at UVA.

• Madayin Aboriginal Art Catalog: $56,000

UVA’s Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection will produce a fully illustrated scholarly catalog to accompany the touring exhibition “Madayin: Eight Decades of Aboriginal Bark Painting from Yirrkala, Australia.”

• Reshaping Public and Archival Space: $32,260

The project is the first attempt to capture testimonies videographically about the black nursing experience, to be made available to a large audience. The project aims to enhance visibility of black nurses in archives and public spaces via written documents, photographs, videos and exhibitions.

• Minority Youth Development Program: $31,573

This program aims to increase the number of underrepresented minorities, especially African-Americans, pursuing careers in architecture.

In recent years, the University of Virginia has established four multidisciplinary institutes designed to tackle some of society’s most pressing challenges from multiple angles: the Data Science Institute, the Brain Institute, the Global Infectious Diseases Institute and the Environmental Resilience Institute. And last September the University welcomed the Biocomplexity Institute and Initiative. Each institute focuses in detail and broadly on target areas of study, but they also collaborate – sharing ideas, members and resources where interest areas overlap.

Now, in partnership with UVA’s Office of the Vice President for Research and the Office of the Executive Vice President and Provost, the institutes are kicking off a Building Bridges Lecture Series for the University community.

The inaugural seminar, “Advancing the Practice of Transdisciplinary Research: Disasters, Bio-Threats, and Social Behavior,” will be held Monday from 4 to 5 p.m. in the Rotunda’s Dome Room.

The speaker is Madhav Marathe, a division director at the UVA Biocomplexity Institute and Initiative and a professor of computer science in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. With colleagues at the Biocomplexity Institute and Initiative, Marathe’s research is on the cutting edge of network science, advanced simulations, computational epidemiology and socially coupled system science. He and his colleagues have applied their research to global threats, such as pandemic flu.

Marathe will discuss the successes and challenges of this trans-disciplinary approach and offer examples of how to remove traditional institutional barriers to achieve hard-to-make breakthroughs.

“When researchers from disparate disciplines focus on a common societal problem or need, possibilities for innovation and solutions to some of the most challenging aspects become possible,” Melur K. (Ram) Ramasubramanian, UVA’s vice president for research, said. “One of the challenges in pursuing interdisciplinary research is the lack of opportunities to learn about the capabilities of fellow faculty members. The intention of the Building Bridges Lecture Series is to provide an opportunity for faculty discovery and to plant the seeds for future collaboration through informal peer-to-peer interactions.”

Alison Criss, director of the Global Infectious Diseases Institute and a professor of microbiology, immunology and cancer biology, fielded some questions about the seminar series for readers of UVA Today.

Q. How did the idea to start a Building Bridges Lecture Series come about, and what do you expect to accomplish by holding periodic seminars?

A. The pan-University institutes share the mission of catalyzing cutting-edge interdisciplinary research at UVA. At one of our regular meetings, institute directors Phil Bourne, Karen McGlathery, Jaideep Kapur and I raised the idea of a lecture series, featuring amazing research that could only have happened when multiple fields converge.

This fits well with President Ryan’s goal of “building bridges” – here, bridges between disciplines. Our goal is for this series to showcase to the UVA community what can happen when researchers from different fields make the commitment to tackle large, multi-perspective societal problems.

Q. Why is research more cross- and multi-disciplinary than ever?

A. The big, complex problems that we as a society are experiencing in the 21^st century – like water security, global pandemics, understanding global investment flows and aging-related cognitive impairment – require large scale, multi-investigator teams to address. By enabling researchers to work together using their complementary expertise, the team synergizes to achieve something that no one person can do.

Q. Do you find that faculty and students are open to talking with people outside of their own areas of focus?

A. Absolutely, and the institutes enable this by bringing together faculty and students on topics of shared interest, even if their areas of expertise and educational background are very different. We work hard to build on those positive encounters to seed new research teams and give them the tools to thrive. Students are especially excited to get a broader perspective on their research topic and are key members of these teams.

Q. How else are the four institutes working together?

A. We quickly realized that there is obvious overlap between the research thrusts of each of the four institutes. We have capitalized on that by co-hosting working groups on areas of intersection between our institutes and jointly supporting student training activities.

The associate directors of the institutes work closely together and with the Office of the Vice President for Research to develop best practices for interdisciplinary research at UVA. We plan to host workshops and other interactive events in conjunction with future Building Bridges Lectures as a way to continue the conversation from the seminar.

Lastly, we meet regularly to discuss the opportunities and challenges of interdisciplinary research, since it involves changing culture, which is the hardest of all we wish to accomplish.

Q. What other subjects do you expect to cover in future seminars?

A. We will focus on compelling topics that engage a broad swath of the UVA community, like the impact of a changing climate on health, mapping the developing brain, and data ethics in an increasingly online world. We welcome suggestions from the University community.

University of Virginia faculty and students intend to wow audiences this weekend with three projects and a performance at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C. The event, called “ACCelerate Festival,” celebrates innovations in science, engineering, art and design at the 15 schools in the Atlantic Coast Conference.

The free festival, held Friday through Sunday, is open to the public from 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. The venue features an outdoor sound garden, sculptures, projection installation and interactive activities for visitors.

UVA participants will exhibit projects in environmental engineering, architecture and landscape architecture, and, on Sunday at 11 a.m., present a live experimental multimedia dance performance called [I]nquiry.

“The event’s audience is far broader than a typical university activity – anticipating 50,000 people per day at the National Museum of American History,” said Bill Sherman, the Lawrence Lewis Jr. Professor of Architecture at UVA and special adviser to the provost. “The first time that the festival was held, 18 months ago, thousands of people of all ages had their minds opened to the incredible array of research being conducted at universities. Our goal is to stretch the imagination and the preconceptions that many may have about academic research through examples of creative innovation.”

Here’s a roundup of the UVA presentations.

Bio-Inspired Morphing to Create the World’s Largest Wind Turbines

Offshore wind is nearly constant, and therefore an incredible energy resource. Engineering professor Eric Loth, engineering research associate Carlos Noyes and engineering Ph.D. students Meghan Kaminski and Juliet Simpson, in collaboration with engineers at other universities, are working to design huge offshore wind turbines that could reduce the cost of wind energy by as much as 25 percent by 2025.

But as conventional turbines get bigger, capturing ever more wind power, their upwind rotors have blades that face the wind. At large scales, the blades become heavy and can bend back, striking the towers to which they are mounted. Such turbines are especially vulnerable to hurricanes and nor’easters.

Loth’s team is conceptualizing a new design, one that faces downwind, allowing blades to safely bend away from the tower as wind loads increase. That morphing may allow blades as large as 200 meters long – resulting in turbines taller than the Eiffel Tower – far exceeding what current technology allows.

“Such blades may power 50-megawatt wind turbines that will produce five times more energy than current wind turbines, and at 25 percent less cost,” Loth said. “Bringing our project to full fruition will be a major step toward maximizing U.S. offshore wind power and increasing national manufacturing competitiveness.”

Arctic Portals - “White Out”

The Arctic is a place of extreme cold, increasingly affected by a changing climate. As climate in that region warms, it will unlock the grips of a deep freeze, opening up new potential for economic, political and landscape development. How will this affect the people who live there, and who will increasingly come to live there?

Landscape architecture professor Leena Cho and architecture professor Matthew Jull in 2013 formed an Arctic Design Group to look into the challenges and possibilities for the built environment in a rapidly transforming environment – the Far North – and they are engaging with communities in the region to explore meaningful possibilities for the future.

“At the intersection of material, cultural, environmental and technological dimensions, the Arctic is a catalyst for rethinking the built environment, from the scale of buildings and infrastructures to that of cities,” Cho said.

“It also is a prime testing ground to develop innovative design strategies in the age of weather extremes and climate change,” Jull said. “But first we need to understand unique aspects of the Arctic environment and its relationship to people’s ways of living in order to speculate and conceive changes that may come in the future.”

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In partnership with the Anchorage museum, the team’s installation, Arctic Portals, will “teleport” visitors to the region, where they will experience and learn about the rich and varied qualities of the Arctic through a combination of visual, haptic and auditory interfaces.

One of the interactive portals, “White Out,” which will be on display at the ACC festival, manufactures a meteorological condition common in the Arctic in which light is diffused, visibility is reduced and boundaries, including the horizon, are vanished. In this illuminated-but-‘featureless’ interior space that distorts one’s spatio-temporal and sensorial reference points, visitors will “engage with the whiteout” as a context to experience Arctic inhabitation.

Kinesthetic Montage Hong Kong

Kinesthetic Montage Hong Kong is an ongoing research project led by architecture professor Esther Lorenz that explores the unique relationship between film, dense urban space and movement in Hong Kong through the perspective of the perceiving human body in motion. It is designed to provide a deep understanding of Hong Kong’s spatial characteristics, and a broadening of approaches in architectural analysis and design.

Kinesthetic Montage describes, Lorenz said, the “cinematic experience” that an individual undergoes when moving through Hong Kong’s pedestrian infrastructure, public transport systems and architectural landscapes, capturing the aesthetic experience of the sensorial-rich pedestrian city through audio-visual, graphical and architectural means. As a design research project, the montage explores the relationship between film, urban space and movement in Hong Kong.

“The exhibit is comprised of a physical construct that represents unique spatial characteristics of Hong Kong’s cityscape and that is conceived as a large film set available for exploration to the visitors, as well as short films that focus on a variety of experiential aspects, offering poetic and critical reflections on Hong Kong’s unique spatial qualities,” Lorenz said.

“In today’s automobile-dominated city design, the variety of spatial characteristics found in Hong Kong present a valuable resource for future cities that moderate between the convenience of public transportation and the richness of urban life.”

[I]nquiry: An Experimental Live, Multimedia Performance

Combining media technologies and live performance, [I]nquiry alludes to the contemporary phenomenon of selfies and prompts a new dialogue about the perception, representation, and projection of the curated self in the digital culture.

“With dancers moving in and amongst audience members, this multimedia performance blurs the lines between the performer and spectator to bring attention to our everyday engagement in each of these roles within our live and online interactions, as well as the impact each has on the other,” dance professor Kim Brooks Mata said.

[I]nquiry originally premiered three years ago at UVA’s Ruth Caplin Theatre, through the support of an Arts Enhancement grant and the Arts Endowment through UVA’s Office of the Provost and Vice Provost of the Arts. The new iteration is a collaboration between Brooks Mata, new media artist and drama professor Mona Kasra, and composer and music professor Leah Reid.

The University of Virginia marked Founder’s Day on Friday with the presentation of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medals, the University’s highest external honors, marking extraordinary achievement in fields Jefferson admired.

The medals were presented jointly by UVA and the Thomas Jefferson Foundation at Monticello during the annual Founder’s Day festivities commemorating Jefferson’s April 13 birthday; because the anniversary is on a Saturday this year, the official ceremonies were shifted to Friday.

The 2019 medalists are: 

• Architecture: Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa, co-founders of the Tokyo-based firm SANAA, whose major projects span the globe from Tokyo to Paris and Milan. 
• Citizen Leadership: Sylvia Earle, an oceanographer, explorer, author and lecturer named a “Living Legend” by the Library of Congress.
• Law: Carlton W. Reeves, a federal judge on the United States District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi who has ruled in a number of important cases involving equality and civil rights. Reeves is the second African American appointed to a federal judgeship in Mississippi, following a nomination by President Barack Obama in 2010. 

UVA President Jim Ryan and Leslie Greene Bowman, president and CEO of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation at Monticello, presented the medals during a lunch in the Rotunda Dome Room. Each of the medalists also gave a public talk, recapped below.

Additional events included a public talk in Old Cabell Hall by historian John Ragosta on “Thomas Jefferson’s Contributions and Contradictions.” Ragosta, a historian at the Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies at Monticello and a fellow at Virginia Humanities, discussed the Founding Father’s achievements and the contradictions inherent in his views of human freedom, given that he also owned enslaved laborers and supported the institution of slavery.

A few hours before that talk, Ryan and other members of the University community gathered near the Rotunda for a tree-planting ceremony honoring retiring UVA Vice President and Chief Officer for Diversity and Equity Dr. Marcus L. Martin. The annual Founder’s Day tree-planting celebrates an individual who has made significant and lasting contributions to the University community.

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Martin, who began his career at UVA in 1996, has expanded the work of the Office for Diversity and Equity and introduced numerous efforts to promote diversity and inclusion, including committees and programs like the Disability Advocacy and Action Committee, the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Committee, the Women’s Leadership Council, the annual Charlottesville Community Health Fair and the annual Community Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration. He also co-chaired the President’s Commission on Slavery and the University, established in 2013 to research and address the history of slavery at UVA.

In addition, Martin has served on boards and committees at several nonprofits in the Charlottesville community, and is the principal investigator for the National Science Foundation-funded VA-NC Alliance, promoting underrepresented students in STEM degrees. He also served as the founding vice president of the 100 Black Men of Central Virginia organization, whose goal is to close the achievement gap for African American males.

U.S. Judge Carlton W. Reeves Says Justice Under Attack

U.S. Judge Carlton W. Reeves, a 1989 graduate of the University of Virginia School of Law and this year’s recipient of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medal in Law, used his speech marking the occasion Thursday to make an appeal.

Reeves asked the capacity audience in the Law School’s Caplin Auditorium, comprising primarily law students, to defend the judiciary.

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President Barack Obama appointed Reeves to the U.S. District Court of the Southern District of Mississippi in 2010, a time of historic gains for diversity on the bench. Reeves became the second African American appointed to a federal judgeship in the state. Other races and the LGBT community also witnessed breakthroughs in representation, he said.

“For a brief moment there were so many firsts, each one making our judiciary better reflect the best of America,” Reeves said. “I know, because I was there.”

But he said those gains have been under attack in a new period of pushback.

“The proof is in my mailbox, in the countless letters of hatred,” the judge said. He added, “The deliverers of hate, who send these messages, aim to bully and scare judges.”

Reeves said the current administration’s confirmed Article III judges – federal judges appointed for life by the president and confirmed by the Senate – have been 90 percent white, including only one black and two Hispanic judges.

In order to truly represent “we the people,” he said, “we need a judiciary as diverse as our country.”

He pointed out that past Republican administrations have made greater efforts to appoint diverse judges to the judiciary.

Reeves also questioned the current trend of political attacks on the judiciary – “when the executive branch calls our courts, in their words, ‘stupid,’ ‘horrible,’ ridiculous,’ ‘incompetent,’ ‘a laughingstock’ and ‘a complete and total disgrace’” – and the impact it has on public perception about judges’ ability to administer justice.

“Courts can and should be criticized,” Reeves said. “Judges get it wrong – all the time. That includes me. Scrutiny of our reasoning is not, on its own, troubling.”

But, he said, the “slander and falsehoods thrown at courts today are not those of a critic seeking to improve the judiciary’s search for truth. They are the words of an attacker, seeking to distort and twist that search toward falsehood.”

The judge has been an important voice for upholding the rights of minorities in Mississippi. In Campaign for Southern Equality v. Bryant, a same-sex marriage dispute, and Barber v. Bryant, Reeves ruled in favor of LGBT rights. In his hate-crime sentencing in United States v. Butler, a case that involved the racially motivated killing of an African American man, Reeves gave moving remarks on the related history of lynching in the state.

Reeves prefaced his appeal on behalf of the judiciary with a history of racial injustice in the U.S., mentioning both Mississippi and Virginia. He started with Thomas Jefferson, whom he noted as a singular thinker of his time who furthered ideals of equality, yet also an owner of slaves whose legacy “cannot be separated from an assault on the judiciary.” Reeves wondered what Jefferson might have thought of him receiving the award.

“I’m here today not just as a black man, but a black judge,” he said.

He concluded his history on racial justice in the civil rights era with Brown v. Board of Education, the U.S. Supreme Court decision that determined segregated schools to be unconstitutional. Reeves, a native of Yazoo City, Mississippi, was among the first children in that state to receive a desegregated education.

He said with each major stride for racial justice by “brave leaders, judges, plaintiffs,” white supremacy has mustered resistance, including through organized attacks on the courts.

“We are now eyewitnesses to the third great assault on our judiciary,” he said.

But Reeves said he has hope. Not just for racial justice, but justice on all fronts. For every hate-driven letter he receives, he said, he receives 10 others that are positive and appreciative.

-- By Eric Williamson

Sylvia Earle: ‘We Have a Choice’

As rainy, gray clouds loomed over Monticello, Sylvia Earle – an oceanographer, explorer, author and lecturer named a “Living Legend” by the Library of Congress, and this year’s recipient of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medal in Citizen Leadership – gave her keynote address. 

“I wish I could wish Thomas Jefferson a happy birthday,” she said. “I would like to imagine what he would think if he came back today, knowing what he knew about his world then and the world we live in now.”

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The Citizen Leadership Medal is bestowed by the Thomas Jefferson Foundation at Monticello and UVA’s Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy.

A lifelong explorer and outspoken advocate for the protection and conservation of the world’s oceans, Earle embodies one of the attributes Jefferson admired – that of exploration.

“Jefferson understood the importance of exploration,” she said. “He knew we needed science-based evidence to better understand the natural world in order to foster prosperity.”

As the deleterious effects of climate change begin to reach a tangible dimension – one that can no longer be ignored – citizens such as Earle, who possess the deep knowledge and science yielded through decades of exploration, play a critical role in the planet’s future, she said.

“We are faced with a choice today,” Earle said. “We have the power to consume everything – and have so for centuries – but for the first time in our history, we are faced with the repercussions of that behavior.”

Earle pointed out how the passenger pigeons that once outnumbered people in the 19th century became extinct in 1914, and that the bison that Lewis and Clark encountered on the Great Plains – once a symbol of the unspoiled American West – nearly vanished at one time.

As someone who championed the importance of exploration, Earle was convinced that Jefferson would share her same concern for the ocean – the plight of its sharks, bluefin tuna, whales and coral reefs. He would understand what was at stake and feel compelled to act, knowing that the natural world in all its abundance had allowed this nation and the world to prosper and to advance.

“I think it would be obvious to [Jefferson], as it should be to everybody, we have to take care of the natural world that makes our existence possible now that we know what we could not know even 50 years ago,’ she said.

-- By Molly Hannon

Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa Share the Philosophies Behind Their Memorable, Minimalist Designs

Japanese architects Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa took a large UVA audience through some highlights of their portfolio Friday afternoon, shedding light on the philosophies and influences that inform the sleek, minimalist buildings they have designed around the world.

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Sejima and Nishizawa received the Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medal in Architecture on Friday. The pair, co-founders of the Tokyo-based firm SANAA, are known for light-filled, contemporary designs, with major works including the 21^st Century Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa, Japan; the Christian Dior Omotesando Building in Tokyo; the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York; the Rolex Learning Center  at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland; and the Louvre-Lens in France.

Several of those projects came up in Friday’s discussion, including the modular New Museum in New York, which features large white boxes – each one containing a separate gallery – seemingly stacked atop one another.

“Each has a separate gallery with its own proportion, and each one shifts slightly as the building rises,” Nishizawa said.

Sejima, showing the audience the long, smooth curves of the central student center they designed for the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, said SANAA’s designs increasingly focus on bringing building and landscape together.

“The idea of the building as landscape is something we developed farther in our design,” she said.

“We began to feel that large, single volumes actually create a stronger boundary between inside and outside, and so our design shows a different approach,” Nishizawa said, showing designs for the Louvre-Lens Museum in France.

Instead of one large building, the site – an annex of the Louvre museum in Paris – features what he termed a “necklace” of buildings and spaces that can “react to local conditions along the site.”

Their practice, Nishizawa said, continues to “explore a very soft boundary between architecture and nature.”

School of Architecture Dean Ila Berman, introducing the two medalists, said that SANAA’s work “makes clear the difference between what is architecture and what is mere building.”

Their design philosophies – modern though they are – actually have a lot in common with Jefferson’s views on architecture, Berman said. Though the aesthetics are very different, both SANAA’s work and Jefferson’s Academical Village reflect a desire for architectural spaces that promote a democratic exchange of ideas. 

“They understand that in order to embody the aspirational values of a culture in a democratic space, architecture should be awe-inspiring, yet also accessible,” Berman said.

Sejima and Nishizawa’s current projects include La Samaritaine in Paris, Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem and Bocconi University campus in Milan.

By Caroline Newman

On Monday, the world watched in shock and sadness as Notre Dame Cathedral, a Gothic masterpiece at the physical and symbolic heart of Paris, burned.

The 800-year-old structure, built in the 12^th and 13^th centuries, was significantly damaged by what officials believe was an accidental fire started amid restoration work. The destruction was not total, however.

Though the cathedral’s roof and spire were largely lost, the sanctuary remained mostly intact and many of the artworks and relics it held – including part of the crown of thorns that some believe to have been worn by Jesus Christ during his crucifixion – were saved or can be restored. French President Emmanuel Macron has promised to rebuild the cathedral, which has long served as a magnificent centerpiece of France and of the global Catholic Church, and many private donors, corporations and foundations have already pledged assistance.

University of Virginia professors Lisa Reilly and Nichole Flores were among those monitoring the fire and its aftermath. Reilly is a professor the School of Architecture, specializing in medieval visual culture; Flores is a religious studies professor focusing on Catholicism and its connections to modern social and political thought.

We spoke with them both on Tuesday to discuss the architectural and religious significance of the cathedral and considerations for its restoration.

Notre Dame’s Architecture

Q. How did the architecture of the cathedral influence the path of the fire Monday?

Reilly: At Notre Dame, as with other cathedrals of the time, there is a network of wooden trusses above the stone ceiling, supporting the steeply pitched roof that was designed to move water and snow away from the building through the system of drains and gargoyles.

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Those wooden tresses fueled the fire, but the separation of wood and stone vaulting worked as intended, actually. Fire was a huge problem in the Middle Ages, as people relied on it for heat and used oil lamps and candles [as lighting]. Separating the stone covering from the wooden tresses seems quite intentional on the part of the architects, and it largely kept the fire from spreading from the wooden part of the building to the stone part.

Religious Significance

Q. What does Notre Dame symbolize for the Catholic Church?

Flores: Many commentators discussed its significance as an artistic, historical and cultural landmark, but it is also very much a practicing Catholic church and a site of significance for the global Catholic Church. In Catholic theology, cathedrals are not simply buildings that hold people who pray; they are physical expressions of theology. The intricacy of Gothic architecture in particular mirrors all of the nuances of Catholic theology.

Additionally, the church’s view of sacraments gives larger spiritual significance to ordinary matter, including buildings. Watching Notre Dame burn, many Catholics felt they were watching much more than just a building being destroyed.

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Even beyond its religious significance, a colleague raised the point that the building of cathedrals represents a longing from people, even those with limited resources, to contribute to projects that convey beauty in the world. Beyond the experience of beauty and joy that Catholics have had in this space, so many, regardless of religious background, have been moved by Notre Dame’s beauty. That is at the heart of the outpouring of emotion and sadness we saw yesterday.

Potential Restorations

Q. What advice do you have for architects and others leading the restoration of the cathedral?

Reilly: For architects, the first step is determining how damaged the stonework was, and how that affects the building’s stability. High temperatures can cause stone to crack, as can pouring cold water on hot stone. At this point, the walls are still standing, but architects will need to make sure they are strong enough to hold any roof that is put on.

It does not look like the buttresses, which form the building’s exoskeleton, were damaged, but those will need to be evaluated as well. Part of the vault and the crossing tower did go, so that will need to be stabilized until it can be repaired.

Flores: There are a lot of ethical considerations as well. What does it mean to restore Notre Dame, a building that has changed so much over time? What should be restored and how?

Overnight, a lot of money has been received in pledges toward restoring this beautiful site of history and faith. That is encouraging, but also raises questions about how we distribute our resources. Many organizations, religious and nonreligious, are fighting poverty around the world and would struggle to raise that kind of money over years. How do we distribute our resources between these landmarks of human and religious history, and very real human needs of today? Those questions are already being raised and will keep coming up.

In addition, even as the global community focuses on Notre Dame, there are churches, mosques and temples being desecrated and burned around the world. What does it mean to preserve a space like Notre Dame in light of the violence being done to other religious communities around the world, especially marginalized communities?

Those are all crucial questions moving forward.

Comparable Catastrophes and Restorations

Q. What examples does history offer us, including UVA’s own restoration efforts after the Rotunda fire in 1895?

Reilly: In terms of cathedrals, I look to the Reims Cathedral [in Reims, France]. Its roof was largely destroyed during World War I, and though it took 20 years, France was able to rebuild it. They certainly have the same will to rebuild now, and more resources.

The Rotunda is a much smaller building than Notre Dame, but in some ways the damage from that fire was even more substantial, because the interior was entirely gutted. It shows us that even buildings damaged that badly can be rebuilt and their restoration can actually teach us something about the architecture. With the roof gone, architects can learn a lot about the interior structure of Notre Dame, and that can help them better understand and better rebuild the building.

The recent Rotunda renovation was similarly revealing, and at the end of it all, the Rotunda still stands at the center of the University today.

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Flores: The Rotunda, with its complicated history, is subject to some of the same questions about its importance in the life of community as Notre Dame is. I had the incredible experience of teaching a class in the Rotunda the year it reopened, and experiencing the beauty of that space made me feel like I had a place at the heart of the University. However, like Notre Dame, it is a space that we continue to invest in and preserve while also revisiting its history and asking tough questions about the ideologies that fueled the system under which it was built.

For Notre Dame, this might be an opportunity to think more about how the cathedral was built, who built it, and what their lives were like. How did ordinary people in the Middle Ages – Christians who made the pilgrimage there; those who helped lay its foundation – how were they involved with the cathedral’s life? What did it mean to them?

Photo at top published under Creative Commons.

This summer, pairs of University of Virginia student researchers will study the social networks of the forked fungus beetle, the influence of propaganda on non-governmental organizations, and how people interpret the impact of their own conversations.

They will be backed by 15 “Double Hoo” research awards, which fund pairings of undergraduate and graduate students who collaborate on research projects. Each project is awarded up to $6,000 toward research expenses, plus $500 to compensate a faculty mentor.

This year’s winners were selected from a pool of 56 pairs of applicants. The research grants, awarded for the 15th year, have been funded since 2015 through the University’s Cornerstone Plan, which captures many student, faculty and staff aspirations, organized around the theme of leadership.

The funding will allow some students to continue research they have already started, or present their findings at a conference; for others, it will be an opportunity to start something new. Five of last year’s teams had their grants renewed, up to $3,000, to help fund the presentation and continuation of their research.

“The Double Hoo award helps introduce undergraduates into research by pairing them with graduate students who can guide them through a research experience, from proposing a topic of inquiry to presenting their findings,” said Brian Cullaty, director of UVA’s Office of Undergraduate Research. “The pairing allows the undergraduate student to work on a higher level of research than they might otherwise do on their own. The relationship also provides an opportunity for the undergraduate to learn about life in graduate school and seek advice about their own future plans.”

The relationship is not just one-sided.

“The benefit for the graduate student is to gain mentoring experience and valuable skills for the academic job market,” Cullaty said. “Many graduate students also tell me that their undergraduate partners push them to think in new and creative ways about their research.” 

Archie Holmes, UVA’s vice provost for academic affairs, said academic scholarship is one of the more exciting endeavors in which undergraduates can get involved at the University.

“Though participating in research, students learn to collect and assimilate information and knowledge needed to answer questions in their area of interest, think clearly though complex issues and present their findings in a clear manner,” Holmes said. “These are invaluable skills that prepare students for whatever the student chooses to do in their professional and personal life. Recent research has highlighted the importance of engaging in experiential learning for long-term well-being of college graduates, both personally and professionally.”

While undergraduate research is typically done in close collaboration with faculty members who are world-renowned scholars and researchers, the Double Hoo grants add another element: the involvement of a graduate student mentor, who plays a key role in defining the project and selecting the student.

“In addition to the benefits that pursuing research provides, the Double ’Hoo program also helps graduate students develop skills in mentoring, supervision and management which will be important as they take on leadership roles in industry or academia upon graduation,” Holmes said.

This year’s new Double ’Hoo recipients are:

• Olivia Baker of Lynchburg, a second-year evolutionary biology major, and Phoebe Cook of Adamant, Vermont, a second-year Ph.D. evolutionary biology student, who will examine the social networks of the forked fungus beetle between two generations, which could reveal if social network position is an adaptive trait and if the overall structure of social networks can evolve.
• Mary Brewer of Richmond, a third-year astronomy major, and Hannah Lewis of Fallston, Maryland, a third-year Ph.D. student in astronomy, who are researching the influence of the galactic environment on the properties of planets that revolve around stars outside our solar system, and their diverse hosts, throughout the Milky Way galaxy.
• Hanna Davis of Charlottesville, a second-year student in the Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy, and Maura Austin of Tokyo, a second-year Ph.D. student in social psychology, who are researching how people conceptualize goals related to climate change mitigation. Specifically, the two are testing various reasons why people reject climate change mitigation, and whether learning about geoengineering efforts either contributes to a general apathy or incites urgency for the goal.
• Julia Dressel of Centreville, a second-year student double-majoring in chemistry and environmental science, and Shelby Hooe of Mechanicsville, a third-year inorganic chemistry graduate student, who aim to synthesize a series of catalysts from Earth-abundant transition metals for the electrochemical reduction of carbon dioxide. They want to explore these catalysts’ ability to lower the amount of energy required to transform carbon dioxide into the precursors needed to produce valuable commodity chemicals and hydrocarbon fuels.
• Mike Ferguson of Virginia Beach, a second-year computer science engineering and cognitive science major with a concentration in philosophy, and Nazia Tabassum of Irmo, South Carolina, a fifth-year electrical engineering graduate student, who are using neural network architecture to automatically separate images of brain vessels from their background and to calculate their parameters, such as thickness. These computer vision-based methods for quantifying and characterizing vessel amount and shape help neuroscientists understand the function of these vessels in major autoimmune diseases, such as Alzheimer’s.
• Timothy Freeman of Warner Robins, Georgia, a second-year biochemistry major, and Megan Catterton of Severn, Maryland, a fourth-year graduate student in the chemistry Ph.D. program, who are researching a specific application for a microfluidic device Catterton designed to study fluid dynamics in live tissue slices.
• Kathryn Gimeno of Cape May Court House, New Jersey, a second-year biomedical engineering major, and Erica Hui, of Ottawa, Canada, a third-year chemical engineering graduate student, who are trying to develop biomaterials that are more reminiscent of healthy and diseased tissue, specifically for lung fibrosis. Creating a more accurate model such as this could aid in the testing the viability of therapeutics and gather more accurate information about disease progression.
• Alison Goldstein of Wall, New Jersey, a second-year neuroscience major, and Amalia McDonald, of Cranbury, New Jersey, a third-year systems and sensory neuroscience graduate student in the psychology department, who are researching how genes may affect the development of the brain and the role this has on the brain’s response to normal social situations.
• Kendall Krantz of Atlanta, a first-year student intending to double-major in Jewish studies and English, and Amy Fedeski of Solihull, England, a first-year history Ph.D. student, who are studying the effects of propaganda and the way the American Jewish Committee, the National Jewish Communities Relations Council and the Jewish Labor Committee reacted to news of the Doctors’ Plot [to assassinate Soviet leaders] between the first arrests in December 1952 and the defendants’ exoneration after the death of Stalin in March 1953.
• Katherine Lake of Dallas, a second-year student double-majoring in biology and physics, and Nicole Swope of North Branch, Michigan, a fourth-year Ph.D. candidate in biophysical chemistry, who are researching how proteins localized to cellular membranes interact with their surrounding environment. Membrane proteins represent a large majority of drug targets and are notoriously difficult to study because the membrane proteins mimic the native membrane.
• Brigitte Lieu of Leesburg, a second-year student double-majoring in biology and psychology, and Quinn Hirschi of Houston, a second-year social psychology graduate student, who are exploring people’s interpretations of conversations in an effort to help people adopt more accurate and positive views of their own conversational performances.
• Emily Lin of Charlottesville, a second-year biostatistics major, and Xinrui Shi, a second-year graduate student from Shenyang, Liaoning, China, who are investigating the function and mechanism of a fusion RNA that is expressed uniquely in female blood-rich tissues, in an effort to find the potential target for disease through understanding the crosstalk between molecular mechanisms and cellular functions.
• Abrar Majidi Idrissi of Herndon, a third-year mathematics major, and Eric R. Wengert  of Mont Alto, Pennsylvania, a third-year neuroscience graduate student, who are researching the role of inhibitory interneurons in epilepsy by looking at epileptic mouse models and comparing them to “wild-type” mice, or how the mice would appear in nature.
• Kayla Pelletz of Ashburn, a second-year student in the Curry School of Education and Human Development, and Stefen Beeler of Gatlinburg, Tennessee, a third-year developmental psychology graduate student, who are researching how identifying an individual can increase children’s prosocial behavior and prevent unkindness towards members of another group.
• Kevin Tarczon of Glen Ellyn, Illinois, a second-year engineering major, and Amalia McDonald of Cranbury New Jersey, a third-year biomedical engineering major, who are investigating how the degree of parental care received by prairie vole pups affects gene expression of the glucocorticoid receptors, which regulate genes controlling the development, metabolism and immune response.

Double Hoo recipients from 2018 who have received additional funding are:

• Patrick Beck of Ashburn, a third-year biomedical engineering student, and Jeremy Shaw of Cortland, Ohio, a fifth-year biomedical sciences graduate student in the School of Medicine, who are experimenting with a new drug as a treatment for head and neck cancer, in an effort to find how the drug works, who might be resistant, and possibly finding new drug combinations to treat cancer.
• Jeewoo Kim of McLean, a third-year neuroscience major, and Sihan Li of Shijiazhuang, Hebei Province, China, a third-year biochemistry and molecular genetics major in the School of Medicine, who are studying a hearing protein to uncover more information about hearing loss mechanisms.
• Nayoung Lee of Springfield, a third-year biochemistry major and a religious studies minor, and Kathryn LeCroy of Pleasant Grove, Alabama, a fourth-year Ph.D. candidate in environmental sciences, who are studying the diversity, health and behavior of native and exotic mason bee species in Virginia, in an effort to find why common mason bees are facing population decline.
• Neil Singh of Brockport, New York, a second-year systems engineering major, and Zhaonan Sun of Jinan, China, a fourth-year mechanical and aerospace engineering graduate student, who are researching the application of a human body model to determine the effects of traffic accidents on obese passengers, in an effort to the design of safer cars for fewer traffic injuries.
• Max Zheng of Herndon, a third-year computer science and economics major, and Zhiqiu Jiang of Ya’an, China, a third-year Ph.D. candidate in transportation planning in the School of Architecture, who will combine data gathered from social media as well as an on-site questionnaire in order to assess the public’s opinion towards driverless technology, to be used in transportation planning and policy decision-making.