Research

Corals are keystone species for reef and marine ecosystems, but coral bleaching due to climate change and ocean warming is killing them. A new open access study led by researchers at UNC Charlotte and the University of California, Riverside aims to shed light on how to reverse the damage and save corals. Tingting Xiang, an assistant professor of biological sciences at UNC Charlotte, also is faculty with the university’s CIPHER research center.

The National Cancer Institute (NCI) is showcasing nanotechnology particles designed and produced by leading UNC Charlotte researcher Kirill Afonin’s lab on the cover of a document presented to the U.S. House and Senate appropriations committees. NCI is the principal federal agency for cancer research and training.

For UNC Charlotte biochemist Andrew Truman, a quest for new and better treatments for cancers and neurological diseases drives his research into protein folding and the DNA damage response, along with his desire to advance science broadly. To fund his work, he has received three significant National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants expected to total $2M. “These are real things that affect real people. They are not theoretical,” Truman says.

For over a decade, researchers and students in UNC Charlotte’s Center for Metamaterials have studied and created materials that can bend, absorb, transmit, and otherwise manipulate light and sound waves that pass through them. The center has joined a select group of such centers to earn a third phase of National Science Foundation (NSF) funding.

Chemistry undergraduate Terawit Kongruengkit and political science alumnus Anthony Lindsay each will receive a Graduate Research Fellowship from the National Science Foundation. They are among just 12 percent of applicants selected nationwide this year for the highly competitive honor.

UNC Charlotte researcher Rosario Porras-Aguilar is fascinated by light, inspired by its beauty and its usefulness. Specifically, she focuses her pioneering research on how light can enable more accurate quantitative data in fields ranging from microbiology to high-tech manufacturing. To support her research, Porras-Aguilar this spring received a coveted National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) Award.

With demand growing for renewable energy and for novel energy storage options, UNC Charlotte chemist Christopher Bejger is conducting innovative research that holds promise for new solutions. To support his research, Bejger this spring received a National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) award.

Nontraditional student Megan Mitchem is changing the face of research inside and outside the lab. Read more

Eighteen researchers in UNC Charlotte’s College of Liberal Arts & Sciences (CLAS) are among the top 2% percent of the world’s most cited researchers, detailed in a Stanford University study. CLAS researchers from five academic departments represent almost 45 percent of the UNC Charlotte researchers on the list.

As people react to the 2020 U.S. presidential election results, we have turned to the animal kingdom to see how animal societies make decisions and resolve conflict. We asked CLAS researchers to consider what we can learn from animal societies. Alan Rauch, an English professor, earned degrees in zoology and literature, and he studies and writes about dolphins. Stanley Schneider, a biologist, studies honey bees and their hive behavior. Anthropologist Lydia Light researches gibbons and other primates.