Title: TBA



Advisor: Nancy Manley

"Methods for Plant-based Genome and Epigenome Profiling"



Advisor: Bob Schmitz

"Evolutionary Divergence in Natural Systems: Effects of Selection, Geography, and Genome Evolution"



Advisors: John Wares and Bud Freeman

"Exploring Recombination Landscapes at Multiple Scales in Threespine Stickleback Fish"



Advisor: Michael White

A team in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences Department of Genetics, led by Assistant Professor Kaixiong Ye and his postdoc, Jingqi Zhou, has published a long-term study of more than 500,000 participants investigating the respective contributions of genetic predisposition and environmental exposure to the development of disease.

Katie Duval, who’s earning a Ph.D. in genetics, has been named a 2020 ARCS Scholar alongside two colleagues from the Franklin College Life Sciences Division. Katie is thrilled to be able to continue her research on how chromatin, or DNA packaging, is established and regulated in early development.

Dr Michael White, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Genetics in the University of Georgia Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, has been awarded a grant from the National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development Program. The five-year CAREER awards grants, among the NSF’s most prestigious, support junior faculty who exemplify the role of teacher-scholar and the integration of education and research within the context of the mission of their organizations.

As a member of the University of Georgia’s Complex Carbohydrate Research Center, Edison’s expertise lies in metabolomics, the study of essentially all the small molecules that make up an organism, tissues, or cells. Changes in the levels of these chemicals can be markers of disease. Edison and his lab hope these markers can help identify how COVID-19 is making people sick and what can be done to stop it.

Dr. Tessa Andrews, Department of Genetics, received a Richard B. Russell Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching in 2020. Russell Awards recognize outstanding teaching by faculty early in their academic careers. Award recipients receive $10,000. The Richard B. Russell Foundation in Atlanta supports the program.

Dr. Bob Schmitz, Associate Professor in the Department of Genetics, is studying new ways to create beneficial crop traits. Genetic variation is already exploited for crop improvement, but another kind of variation—epigenetic—has yet to be efficiently implemented.