GSAS News

When the challenges of life as a graduate student got to be too much, Phoebe Cook, who studies the social lives of insects, set out to build a better support network for herself and for others.

Emily Spindler and Kelsey Schoenemann, graduate students in the University of Virginia’s environmental science department, developed Bee Grounds UVA, a working group within the environmental stewardship subcommittee of UVA Sustainability. They also established a committee drawn from people with a range of expertise and skills to aid them.

The Caribbean islands are, for many, an idealized vacation spot. For scholars who study the region, it is a place of important history and flourishing arts that has much to show its neighbors and past conquerors, as well as a region that has often been misunderstood because of its struggles.

On the eve the 40th anniversary of the Carter G. Woodson Institute for African-American and African Studies, its graduate fellows are bringing international prestige to the arts and sciences.

Leif Fredrickson's study of lead poisoning in Baltimore combines geographic information system mapping, demographic data and public health records to examine the relationship between social inequalities and environmental exposure.

After completing his master’s in English literature, James Perla launched a podcast series that explores environmental and cultural conservation in the Amazon and is now working on a digital archive of the Civil Rights Movement.

Environmental Sciences PhD candidate Ariel Firebaugh studies the negative impact of light pollution on fireflies’ mojo at UVA’s Blandy Farm.

A team led by Astronomy PhD candidate Nicholas Troup has used a UVA-developed instrument to quadruple the number of known “brown dwarfs” in close proximity to stars – a blind spot in astronomical observation that has baffled theoreticians for years.