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. CAREER awards are the NSF’s most prestigious awards in support of early-career faculty who have the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education and to lead advances in the mission of their department or organization. Bejger’s anticipated funding is $624,000 through 2026.

The CAREER award work will focus on developing a new class of metal-organic frameworks made up of transition metal chalcogenide (TMC) molecular clusters. The proposed frameworks are relevant to the study of high surface nanoelectronics and future charge storage devices.

The research offers a new synthetic approach, constructing porous crystalline frameworks from TMC cluster building blocks. Bejger describes the work as constructing multidimensional materials using nanoscale building blocks.

The CAREER award follows on the heels of a previous National Science Foundation award of $456,394 in April 2020.

Broadly speaking, Bejger’s various research efforts center on developing hybrid materials for energy applications and investigating new compounds for energy storage.

Bejger Research Group Drives Innovation In Renewable Energy

“We need to integrate renewable energy sources into the energy grid to transition away from fossil fuels,” Bejger says. “But because renewable energy sources are intermittent, storage devices are required to power the grid when the sun isn’t shining or the wind isn’t blowing. In my lab, we’re using organic chemistry to prepare molecules that can operate in salt water and can be used to make safe, economical, and more efficient batteries.”

To start with the basics, here’s a quick battery lesson from Bejger.

A redox flow battery uses chemicals that are dissolved in a solution. “The chemicals are pumped through a system you can charge up when you pump the chemicals one direction and then store them in a tank,” he says. “And then later, you can pump the solution back in the opposite direction, and the chemicals inside release their charge.”

While redox flow batteries have been around since the 1960s, they present significant issues. They traditionally use expensive metals, such as vanadium. The systems usually use a highly corrosive solution like sulfuric acid to dissolve the vanadium. They are usually pretty big systems, meaning space can be an issue.

“What we’re using in our research are organic molecules, consisting of only carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen,” Bejger says. “You can actually tune the molecules, so you can increase the solubility. You can change some of their properties so that you can get higher voltages or more than one electron so that you could hold more charge.”

The molecules operate at pH 7. That means they can operate in pure, or neutral, water, which has neither acidic nor basic qualities.

“There really are very few organic molecules that can work in long-term energy storage flow batteries,” Bejger says. “The majority of them still do not work at neutral pH. What we are using is just regular water. If you have a battery in water, commonly you need an electrolyte, so you have low resistance in your battery. So, ours actually work with just regular salt as that electrolyte.”

Bejger, an assistant professor in the Department of Chemistry, joined UNC Charlotte’s faculty in 2015, after a stint as a Camille and Henry Dreyfus Environmental Chemistry Postdoctoral Fellow at Columbia University. He earned a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from the University of Oregon and a doctoral degree in chemistry from the University of Texas in 2012. During his graduate studies, he was a Seaborg Graduate Fellow at Los Alamos National Laboratory from 2010-2012.

Bejger started his UNC Charlotte lab with one master’s degree student, Jessica Shott, and one undergraduate student, Matthew Freeman, who stayed with the lab through the completion of a master’s degree in chemistry.

They laid the initial foundation for the lab’s work, starting with molecular cluster research.

“They’re like little nano spheres that also have this ability to hold electrons,” Bejger says. “But what was interesting about those is that they can hold one, two or three electrons. So you’re starting to get into the position where you can put a lot of electrons into one molecule and take them out and put them back in without disturbing the molecule in any way.”

The team published their findings, but they also hit limitations because the material was just too heavy, and it would not dissolve enough in the solution to store enough energy to be practical. Nick Turner, who is a degree candidate in the master’s program in Chemistry, joined the team early on, and other students applied as research associates.

Bejger and the students tinkered with smaller and smaller molecules. They began working with a class of compounds called radialenes, which are star-shaped organic molecules. They found the molecules worked well in water, which led to the research proposal that the NSF funded in 2020. The research team has produced a number of papers, including one that was featured on the front cover of Chemistry A European Journal.

The early success working with undergraduate students led Bejger to include undergraduate components in his first project funded by the NSF in 2020. Working with faculty colleagues Mitchell Anstey of Davidson College and Todd Coolbaugh of Johnson C. Smith University, the project is focusing on research into radialene molecules.

The three-institution team is planning to build an interactive exhibit on redox flow batteries to expand awareness of grid-scale renewable energy storage. Students involved in the research will work across the institutions with faculty members and a regional industry partner. While COVID-19 restrictions have shifted some of the work, the outreach and student research are slated for this coming year.

“We decided that it would be really cool to build an actual working prototype of one of these batteries on a small scale that we could take to local schools and teach people about this type of energy storage technology,” Bejger says.

The CAREER award efforts also will include substantial involvement by students and the community. Bejger and chemistry students will work with architecture assistant professor Rachel Dickey and architecture students to design and build an interactive Nanoscale Materials Pop Up Museum to communicate chemistry and nanoscale science at community events, schools and other opportunities. Bejger and Dickey plan to work with the Charlotte Teachers Institute on a Summer Research Experience for Teachers, with a handful of teachers immersed in the work. With CTI, they plan to also co-lead a seminar for a group of Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools teachers called “Design Matters.”

Particularly as an early career faculty member, Bejger has called upon the extensive expertise and collaborative spirit at UNC Charlotte, especially in his home department.

“In a lot of ways I don’t know if this project could have worked, if I wasn’t lucky enough to start my career here,” he says. “I am more of a synthetic chemist, and I’m not an expert in energy storage or even in electrochemistry, which is the study of how molecules can be charged and discharged and how they behave electronically. But it just happens that in this department, there are a lot of faculty that are electrochemists by training.”

Another colleague, Dan Jones, has been in the department perhaps longer than any other faculty member, and is an x-ray crystallographer, which is another specialty area that has benefitted Bejger’s work.

Chemistry Master’s Degree Program Brings Talent Into Bejger’s Lab

The intensive chemistry master’s degree program has been essential to the work, Bejger says. “We are unique at UNC Charlotte, because we have a research based chemistry master’s program where students can come and really focus on research for two years and write a thesis at the end of that. That’s helped me design projects that can be completed by master’s students.”

Communicating with non-chemists and students who are not chemistry majors about his field and his research is important to Bejger. While he certainly aspires to solve world problems with applied research, he also finds time for exploration and reflection.

“In my lab, we want to kind of be nerds and look at all the weird chemistry of new materials and be fascinated and discover things serendipitously,” he says. “But we also want to solve problems. It’s important to understand that chemistry is important to solving a lot of the world’s problems.”

Yet, the architecture and design of the materials he makes inspire him, and – he hopes – others around him.

“I’ve always been fascinated by the beauty and the aesthetics of chemistry and the design aspects of synthesis,” he says. “Some people are really interested in the real difficult math and analytical nature of chemistry. But I’ve always been more attracted to the artistic and inspired design elements of chemistry. And that’s what we’re trying to do.”

Words and Images: Lynn Roberson, CLAS Communications Director

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

Read more

UNC Charlotte’s Master of Science in Mathematical Finance program has once again been named among the top-ranked programs in the nation, ranking No. 12 in the TFE Times’ 2021 Master of Financial Engineering program rankings.

Over the past six years, the M.S. in Math Finance program has increased steadily in the rankings, rising eight slots since 2016, according to TFE Times. As a STEM-designated program of the Departments of Finance and Economics in the Belk College of Business and the Mathematics and Statistics Department in the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences, the program excels in readying students for careers in an emerging field.

“The Master of Science in Mathematical Finance is intelligently designed to prepare students for finance careers that increasingly demand more math and data skills, particularly in financial institutions, investment banks, and commodities firms,” said Taufiquar Khan, chair of the Department of Mathematics and Statistics.

“These careers require proficiency in the application of highly sophisticated mathematical models to identify, measure, and manage risk,” Khan said. “The expertise of mathematics faculty, as well as that of faculty in economics and finance, offers an interdisciplinary collaboration that has delivered strong results for our students and for employers.”

The program’s responsiveness to industry’s needs for talent and insights is particularly important for Charlotte’s spot as the second-largest banking center in the United States.

Over the last three years, 95% of M.S. in Math Finance alumni are employed within three months of graduation, according to First Destination Survey data. The growth of the program’s success is a testament to exceptional faculty, combined with a customizable interdisciplinary approach, said Yufeng Han, M.S. in Math Finance program director.

CLAS faculty teaching in the M.S. in Math Finance program are Jaya Bishwal, an expert in stochastic analysis and computational finance; Aziz Issaka, an authority in mathematical finance and stochastic calculus; and Adriana Ocejo Monge, an expert in mathematical finance and actuarial science.

The TFE Times rankings are the most comprehensive for graduate financial engineering, financial mathematics, quantitative finance, computational finance and mathematical finance programs in the country. The rankings are calculated based on several components, including average test scores, starting salaries, undergraduate GPA, acceptance rates and graduate employment rates.

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.

In all, 41 researchers affiliated with UNC Charlotte are ranked. CLAS researchers from five academic departments represent almost 45 percent of the UNC Charlotte researchers on the list.

“Having so many faculty members on this list is one marker of the influence and impact that the researchers in CLAS and across UNC Charlotte are having around the world,” said CLAS Associate Dean of Research and Graduate Education Pinku Mukherjee. “Being included in this list is a sign of the respect that other researchers have for the work of our faculty, as they draw upon that research and cite it. We are proud of the outstanding researchers and educators who belong to UNC Charlotte and the CLAS academic community.”

The study, which was published in the prestigious PLOS Biology Journal, started with almost eight million scientists. The researchers created a database of 100,000 top scientists from around the world in 22 fields whose research was cited from 1965-2019. Based on a series of metrics, including the career-long citation impact of their published research, the study is among the most comprehensive global faculty-evaluation resources ever produced.

CLAS researchers included on the list are:

• Ishwar Aggarwal, Physics & Optical Science
• Vasily Astratov, Physics & Optical Science
• Steve Bertz, Chemistry
• Glenn Boreman, Physics and Optical Science
• Kenneth Bost, Biological Sciences
• Lawrence Calhoun, Emeritus, Psychological Science 
• Mark Clemens, Biological Sciences
• Patricia Fall, Geography & Earth Sciences
• Nathaniel Fried, Physics & Optical Science
• Greg Gbur, Physics & Optical Science
• Tsing Hua Her, Physics & Optical Science
• Michael Klibanov, Mathematics & Statistics
• Larry J. Leamy, Biological Sciences
• Ian Marriott, Biological Sciences
• James Oliver,  Biological Sciences
• Richard Tedeschi, Emeritus, Psychological Science
• Jean-Claude Thill, Geography & Earth Sciences
• Robert Tyson, Emeritus, Physics & Optical Science

Cell Stress Society International has inducted UNC Charlotte Biological Sciences Assistant Professor Andrew Truman as a Fellow.

Fellows distinguish themselves in a variety of ways, including path-breaking contributions to the cell stress responses and molecular chaperones field, and through service to the society.

Truman’s cancer research uses quantitative proteomics, molecular biology, systems biology and model organisms to understand the role of molecular chaperones in cancer. Chaperones are proteins that interact with, stabilize, or help other proteins to acquire their shape or structure without remaining in the final structure.

Truman joined the faculty at UNC Charlotte in 2015, after a stint as a research professional at the University of Chicago. He earned his doctoral degree in biochemistry at University College London, UK, focusing on the interplay between molecular chaperones and MAP kinase pathways in yeast. He also worked as a postdoctoral scholar at Johns Hopkins University and Boston University.

In addition to his collaborative research with colleagues worldwide, and his mentorship of emerging researchers, Truman was one of the three primary organizers of the society’s “First Virtual International Congress on Cellular and Organismal Stress Responses,” on Nov. 5 and 6.

Truman also has published a number of academic papers in Cell Stress & Chaperones, the society’s integrative journal of stress biology and medicine, as well as other journals. Most recently, he is a co-author, of a paper featured on the cover of the November issue of The FEBS Journal, along with doctoral student Nitika and colleagues. Another recent paper was published this summer in the Journal of Biological Chemistry, also with Nitika and colleagues from other institutions.

Check out Truman and his lab on Twitter: @TrumanLab

Words and Image of Lab Team: Lynn Roberson, CLAS Communications Director | Profile Image of Truman: Courtesy of Truman

Tonya Bates, a senior lecturer in the Department of Biological Sciences, is the 2020 recipient of the UNC Charlotte Award for Teaching Excellence. She and Bank of America Award for Teaching Excellence recipient Heather Coffey of the Cato College of Education were honored during a virtual ceremony Thursday, Sept. 17.

Joining them were the other finalists for the two awards – all of whom are faculty in the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences (CLAS) – Paula Connolly, professor, English; Eric Heberlig, professor, Political Science and Public Administration; Susana Cisneros, senior lecturer, Languages and Culture Studies; and Kathleen Nicolaides, teaching professor, Criminal Justice and Criminology.

The recipients and finalists have common characteristics that set them apart.

“Their classrooms are places of inclusion where free expression of ideas is encouraged and welcomed, and where students of different backgrounds find acceptance,” said Provost Joan Lorden, as she introduced the six finalists. “They are creative. No matter what discipline they teach, they find new and inspiring methods to spark their students’ desire to learn and to grow.”

The University and its students also benefit from the excellent teaching of those with a range of titles like lecturer, clinical professor and teaching professor. The UNC Charlotte Teaching Excellence Award honors faculty members who have at least five years of teaching experience at UNC Charlotte. The Bank of America Award for Teaching Excellence, first presented in 1968, is given to a full-time, tenured faculty member with at least seven years of service to UNC Charlotte.

Bates, ’97 ’01 M.S., is a senior lecturer and a pioneer and leader within the Department of Biological Sciences in incorporating active learning, inquiry-based learning and technology in the classroom. Her courses, including high-enrollment, general education classes for non-majors, are strongly student-centered and focus on real-world applications and scientific literacy in an effort to better connect students with the material.

“Since 2010, I’ve taught biology to over 5,000 students,” Bates said. “Each of these students has provided an opportunity to reflect on why I do things the way I do, inside and outside of the classroom. Despite the large class size and barriers, my teaching remains student centered. It’s my goal to lead all my courses diversely so that students have multiple opportunities and avenues for grasping the material.”

By her adoption of a flipped classroom and other active learning approaches and by using learning assistants in large classes, her students benefit from opportunities to work collaboratively and to receive individual assistance. Instead of listening to lectures, students are engaged in low-stakes formative assessments.

“Active learning is something Tonya incorporated in her classroom long before we were all talking about it. She has worked tirelessly on re-designing Biology courses for majors and non-science majors and made these courses interactive and collaborative. Her outstanding teaching and her critical changes in our curriculum have led to better student learning outcomes in our department,” wrote Pinku Mukherjee, CLAS associate dean of research and graduate education, and former chair of the Department of Biological Sciences.

Bates, who received both bachelor’s and master’s degrees from UNC Charlotte, facilitates workshops for middle and high school science teachers, serves as a judge for K-12 science fairs, volunteers with the regional Science Olympiad competition, and serves on UNC Charlotte’s Science and Technology Expo planning committee. She also has extended her impact through training and mentoring University faculty.

Words: Aimee Hawkins

Before her sudden death on April 9, 2020, UNC Charlotte mathematics alumna Marie Josee Mukamwiza ‘05 had created and was raising support for a “Women in Math and Statistics Scholarship” in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics.

Following her passing, the Actuarial Science Club has picked up the funding drive in memory of Mukamwiza through a Crowdfund UNC Charlotte effort. The club is more than halfway to its goal of $25,000 to endow the scholarship in memory of Mukamwiza, and her husband, Fred Hien, has offered a matching gift.

“She was dedicated to helping women in math and statistics succeed. In her honor, we created a crowdfunding project to endow her scholarship that will provide women financial help in their educational goals for years to come,” said Actuarial Club President Russell Mejia.

Last spring semester, $10,000 was successfully raised. Now, the goal is to raise an additional $15,000 to endow the scholarship fund at $25,000. The fund will provide an annual $500 scholarship to a UNC Charlotte junior or senior dedicated to encouraging gender equality in the field of mathematics and statistics.

The Actuarial Science Club is a student organization that creates a space for students interested in pursuing a career in actuarial science. Actuarial science is a field of applied mathematics, requiring mathematical and statistical skills to study and analyze uncertain events in the insurance and financial fields. 

Compiled by Yoniah Johnson, CLAS student assisant

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.

Here are our experts:

• 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.

Alan Rauch – Dolphins

How do the animals you research make decisions?

Rauch: Dolphin societies are predominantly matriarchal, so a good deal of the decision-making rests in the hands (flippers) of the older and more established females. The communication and social skills of dolphins are very complex and extremely subtle. Dolphins can communicate by whistles that allow them to mediate information about who they are and where they are.  Of course, we are a long way from understanding what each whistle means.  Clearly though, dolphins make precise decisions, whether it has to do with synchronous swimming or well-regulated hunting.

Aside from whistles, dolphins are also capable of very high frequency sonar,  which they may be able to share.  And so when a school of fish swim nearby, a sonar scan of what’s called the ”bait ball” is probably picked up by other dolphins in the dolphin pod. Then, individual dolphins take turns swimming through the bait ball and feeding.  How the order is established is unclear, but there is no free-for-all, so the dolphins surely have an understanding of order and priority.

What are some of the situations they face when they need to have group decision-making?

Rauch: Dolphins need to engage in group decisions while foraging for food as well as when moving locations. Given that there can be any number of dolphins in a pod, averaging around 15-25, but sometimes as many as 100-150, group coordination and communication is important. The older and more experienced dolphins must agree on the time of movement and the direction of movement.

Dolphins must also work quickly and alertly – in concert – if predators, such as sharks, are nearby. In these scenarios, it is possible that dolphins release alarm chemicals in the water to alert others – quietly and without drawing attention to themselves or their young – that danger is nearby. Sleep is a complicated process in dolphins even though they seem capable of resting half their brain at any one time. But resting still makes individuals vulnerable as they float near the surface. Thus dolphins coordinate sleeping behavior with guarding behavior and take turns keeping watch while others sleep. 

Finally, young calves are particularly vulnerable to predation, and they do swim very closely with their mothers.  But there is a clear system of “Auntie” dolphins who do not have young of their own, but swim near mothers with calves and will often guard the calves while the actual mother forages for food.

What do the animals you study do when there is conflict in their group, particularly as decisions are being made?

Rauch: Dolphins can be very “outspoken”! Disagreement is signaled by tail slaps which may simply be on the surface of the water or, if there is need, a slap directed bodily at another dolphin. Other gestures of disagreement include “raking” when one dolphin runs its teeth superficially – but firmly – against the body of another dolphin, or a person. I’ve been raked, and it doesn’t hurt, but you do feel it.

Sound communication can precipitate group movements, but it has also been observed that group movements can be initiated by side flops, often by males, and the movement is terminated by slapping the tail gently while upside down. Since dolphins are so vocal, it is hard to know if these gestures also have specific clicks or whistles associated with them, the way we might vocalize “let’s go” while also clapping our hands together.

Stanley Schneider – Honey bees

How do the animals you research make decisions?

Schneider: I study honey bees, and many decisions are made at the “colony level” through decentralized, collective decision-making processes. Examples include choosing a new nest site by a honey bee swarm, organizing the nest into brood rearing areas and food storage areas, preparing for long-distance travel, comb building, social immunity, etc.  In all cases, individual bees act on only local information using innate rules. The colony level patterns and decisions then emerge collectively.  There is no centralized control of the decision-making processes.

What are some of the situations they face when they need to have group decision-making?

Schneider: Honey bees use group decision-making when they are finding a new nest cavity and building and organizing the combs. They also need to work as a group when deciding when to raise drones (males) and how many to rear; and when to raise new queens. They decide together who inherits the nest. African bees work as a group when deciding to migrate to a new area.

What do the animals you study do when there is conflict in their group, particularly as decisions are being made?

Schneider: Honey bee societies are organized very differently from mammalian societies, in that they are not based on a dominance hierarchy, and there is little overt aggression or conflict among workers within a nest. There is not conflict and disagreement; rather, there are differences of opinion. For example, when a swarm is searching for a new nest site, scout bees individually fly out to find possible cavities, and they assess the quality of the cavity using innate rules. If they like what they find, they then return to the swarm and perform waggle dances on the swarm surface to communicate to other workers the location of the cavity they found.  The dance followers can then leave the swarm and investigate the cavity, and if they like it too they return and perform their own waggle dances for it to recruit others.

Initially, scout bees may advertise 12-20 different possible new nest cavities, but eventually all waggle dancing becomes focused on one cavity and when that happens the swarms moves to that chosen site. Thus, in essence the scout bees and their followers “vote” for which site is best. But they don’t do this through direct comparison. The majority of scouts only ever visit and dance for one nest site. They do not follow dancers for other sites, go visit those, and then switch their dancing to the other site if they like it better than the first one they found.

Each scout will dance for its site, then leave the swarm and revisit the site, then return and dance again, etc. But each time it returns to the swarm it dances less until finally it ceases dancing altogether. If it’s visiting a good quality site, then it dances longer each time it is on the swarm than do bees dancing for lower quality sites. In this way, there is more dancing and recruitment for the better sites and dancing for the poorer sites dwindles and dies away. The bees recruited by these dances follow the same rules and the end result is that eventually all bees are dancing for the same site (the best one they found), and dances for all other sites cease. 

Thus, the “voting” is based on level of excitement and interest about the “candidate”. But there is no “bad mouthing” other choices. Only the best site can sustain the interest to keep the dancing and recruitment going until it ends up the unanimous winner. Even though bees dance for different sites, there is no conflict involved. However, bees that dance for the best site will butt their heads against a dancer for a different site and produce a “stop signal” (a short beep), which essentially says “please do shut up.” This  helps to focus dancing on the best site. Then, once a site is chosen, the entire swarm must make the decision to become airborne at once and move to the new site.

Lydia Light – Gibbons

How do the animals you research make decisions?

Light: I study white-handed gibbons, a species of small apes that lives in the tops of the trees in forests throughout parts of Thailand and Malaysia. They live in small groups with one male, one female, and a few younger individuals. We used to describe gibbons as “monogamous,” but now we know they live in much more complicated social groups with some individuals living together throughout their lives, yet others might re-pair several times either because of the death of their mate or because either one of the pair deserts the group to seek other opportunities.

Based on my research and the research of other scholars, we also know now that this species of gibbon can sometimes live in groups with multiple adult males. However, the groups are very cohesive regardless of the composition. The group travels together as they range through their territory looking for food and patrolling the boundaries.

When the group moves to a new location, that decision is made by the adult female. This is thought to be based on the female’s higher nutritional needs due to pregnancy and lactation. The female will lead the group from feeding tree to feeding tree, quite deliberately, following regular pathways through the canopy of the forest and heading intentionally to the next food resource.

Since the female is focused on finding food resources, the male follows along and opportunistically looks for neighboring groups. If they come across one (usually only when they are close to the boundary of the territory), the male takes the lead in trying to scare away the other group, using loud vocalizations and swinging aggressively through the trees in sight of the other group. If the female helps, she just vocalizes from wherever she is feeding.

The female also decides when it is time to rest or socialize, usually after a big feeding bout, and when it is time to go to sleep. So put quite simply, for white-handed gibbons, the female makes the decisions, and the male follows her lead.

What are some of the situations the they face when they need to have group decision-making?

Light: For gibbons, this is almost entirely about defending the territory against other gibbons. Sometimes (probably only when there is a lot of food around and they have time for nonessential behaviors), neighboring groups might socialize together and even let the young ones play together. Gibbons are territorial, so they stay in one place and do not need to plan for moving anywhere new as a group. However, individuals might choose to leave a group and join a new one that either does not have an adult of that sex, due to death or desertion, or has a current member that can be easily displaced.

Some of my research has shown that even if the membership of the group changes, the territory stays the same. Since most gibbon populations live in areas where the suitable habitat is saturated with gibbon groups, this makes it nearly impossible for groups to move anywhere together.

The most common situations where I have observed group members working together were those in which the group came across another gibbon group and they had to defend the territorial border, which is likely always in dispute.

Besides that, gibbons also seem to work together when encountering other species that might want their food or pose a threat to their safety. I do research in a place with an impressively high amount of biodiversity, and gibbons frequently encountered langur monkeys, macaque monkeys, hornbills, and giant squirrels eating out of their food trees.

The gibbons differed by group as to how they reacted to these potential food-thieves, with some groups avoiding the macaques but coexisting with the langurs peacefully and other groups the exact opposite. There were often vocal “battles” with the giant squirrels and hornbills where several of the gibbons would call at the other animals and those animals would call in response, but there was never any physical aggression.

Besides food competition, the gibbons only ever reacted to elephants. Elephants can easily knock over even some of the largest trees the gibbons spend time in so when one comes by, whoever sees it first raises an alarm, and everyone starts calling. Interestingly, this seems to have an immediate effect on the group members themselves but then also serves to warn all the neighboring groups as well, as they continue calling until the elephants have left the area, even if they are all huddled in the same big tree and fully aware of the elephants right below them.

What do the animals you study do when there is conflict in their group, particularly as decisions are being made?

Light: Despite the description of an idyllic lifestyle swinging from fruit tree to fruit tree, there is occasional conflict in gibbon groups. This might be because the male wants to mate and the female is not interested. In this case, she just keeps turning away until he gets tired of trying. If he is really persistent, she will likely smack him with increasing intensity.

But in the groups I spend the most time observing, the extra males cause a bit of additional conflict. Interestingly, this was not about mating opportunities. One of my groups, Study Group D, had three males of breeding age. In one week, I observed the adult female (Daisy) copulate with all three males (Denison, Darwin, and Downey).

None of the males fought with one another or seemed to be upset. But after that, whenever Denison or Downey entered the same tree as Darwin was in, he made a high-pitched vocalization and ran over to them and hugged them.

Gibbon pairs sing coordinated duets that are thought to advertise their pair-bond and for the first several months I observed group D, Daisy sang with Denison. After the week of multiple copulations, Denison and Darwin took turns singing with her and I assumed Darwin would take over as the primary male.

But when the infant was born, Downey started duetting with Daisy; Denison started spending more time at greater distances from Daisy; and Darwin started this squeak-hugging behavior directed at Downey. I never saw it in any of the other three groups I observed. In the months that followed, Darwin began spending time away from the group but would sometimes go off with one of the other males.

Daisy was never left alone with the immature individuals. There is no literature to support this yet, but it seemed to me that the males were wanting to do something different from feeding and because there were so many of them, they finally had a chance to travel independently. There was no direct conflict but it does seem to me that whenever there is a “difference of opinion” on what to do or where to go, gibbons tend to choose to temporarily go their separate ways for a few hours, joining back together before the end of the day or if there is a need for teamwork, such as when a neighboring group gets too close to invading the territory.

Words: Compiled by Lynn Roberson, CLAS Communications Director | Images: Courtesy of the researchers

Spiders and their sticky webs can seem scary, but for UNC Charlotte spider researcher Dr. Sarah Stellwagen, they are always a source for scientific discovery.

“I love Halloween, and I love that spiders get their special time of the year, because people spend most of the year being afraid of them or at least acting afraid of them,” said Stellwagen, a postdoctoral fellow in biological sciences. “Then Halloween rolls around, and everyone decorates their houses with spiders, and they put giant spiders up on their porches and spiderwebs in their bushes. I like that they get their chance to be celebrated.”

Stellwagen’s fascination with spiders started in a pet store at an early age. “When I was 11, there was a big hairy tarantula for sale at the local pet store. I saw her, and for whatever reason, it clicked in my brain, and I had to have that spider,” she said.

Now, she celebrates – and studies – spiders year-round. Her research centers on spider glues, gene discovery, and sequencing technologies. Specifically, she studies the sticky substance that spiders use to trap insects in a web.

She and collaborator Rebecca Renberg achieved the first-ever complete sequences of two genes that allow spiders to produce their glue, and published their findings in Genes, Genomes, Genetics. Stellwagen started the work as a postdoctoral fellow at the U.S. Army Research Laboratory, which funded the research, and published the findings as a postdoctoral fellow at University of Maryland, Baltimore County. The sequencing was so complex that it took two years to complete.

“We don’t have very many full length spider silk sequences in general, and the glue is really just a modified silk,” she said. “It has similar genetic properties to the other silks, in that they’re these huge genes that are repetitive. For the glue in particular, applications like biodegradable pest control are really important. The glue evolved to catch insects, so that would be a great use for it. It’s water soluble, it’s non-toxic, and it’s really good at doing what it does, which is keeping insects stuck.”

While these applications are well into the future, Stellwagen envisions a manufactured glue that could be sprayed directly on crops, or used in mosquito control, or even in ventilation to capture pests.

The innovative research moves science forward, with broader implications for future gene sequencing and advances in biomaterials.

“Silk genes are difficult to sequence,” she said. “They’re huge and they are extremely repetitive, and the sequencing technology that we’ve had in the past, which was fantastic for what it could do, wasn’t great at sequencing really long, really repetitive genes. Only in the past approximately five years has new sequencing technology come out that has allowed us to sequence complicated areas of genomes and things like spider silk genes.”

While more than 45,000 known species of spiders exist, the full genetic structure of spider silk is not well known because only about 30 complete genes have been sequenced.

Stellwagen was able to develop a protocol for sequencing these long, complex genes. In the past, technologies have been more “needle in the haystack” and yielded results less reliably, she said.

“That project was the first independent project I led after completing my Ph.D.,” she said. “I had this little bit of freedom, complete control of the project, and was able to work on it from the beginning to the end with my colleague to figure it out. It was very satisfying to be able to discover something that people had not yet been able to figure out.”

Stellwagen has completed gene sequencing of orb weaving spiders, which spin the classic spiral webs that can hit you in the face when you’re walking your dog In the woods, and would like to tackle others like the house spider, which makes a tangle web with lines that drop down from the web and loosely attach to the ground.

“At the bottom of those vertical lines are little droplets of glue, so a walking insect will come along and kind of bump into those glue droplets. Because the line is so loosely tied to the ground, the strand will release from the ground, pulling the insect into the air, where it will dangle until the spider can reel it in,” she said.

She is also interested in the genes of the Bolas spider, which releases a single strand of silk with a single glob of its glue on the end, which the spider twirls around and tosses into the air to catch moths. There are other glues made by other organisms, for predatory purposes, for attaching themselves to substrates, or for defense. Glowworms that live at the top of caves in Australia and New Zealand are one example. She would like to branch into this research in the future.

Stellwagen joined UNC Charlotte Biological Sciences researcher Adam Reitzel’s lab in summer 2020, adding her genetic sequencing knowledge to the Reitzel lab team. Her advice for students, particularly undergraduates, is to find researchers to work with who are doing research that “jazzes” them. “Research progresses the most and is the most fun when you are excited about it,” she said.

Listen to an interview Stellwagen did earlier in October with National Public Radio Station WYPR with its “On The Record” program.

Words: Lynn Roberson, CLAS Communications Director | Image: Marlayna Demond for UMBC | Illustrative Treatment: Ashley Plyler, CLAS Graphic Designer

Therapeutic nucleic acids are a promising but still emerging area of biomedical treatment, with several drugs already in use and many more in trials. These are lab-created segments of DNA or RNA, designed to block or modify genes, control gene expression or regulate other cellular processes.

Nucleic acid nanoparticles (NANPs) are programmable assemblies made exclusively of nucleic acids with a number of therapeutic nucleic acid sequences embedded in their structure in a specific configuration, designed for the packaging and delivery of a number of intercellular or extracellular treatments simultaneously, to cause multiple, therapeutic actions human cells.

Perhaps predictably for a new class of drugs, this promising new form of treatment has often run into difficulties in clinical testing. Recurring problems have kept many products under development from being approved for use, and have had a discouraging effect on continuing research. The foremost of these difficulties have been adverse immune reactions in response to the delivery of NANP-based formulations.

In a paper in Nature Protocols, nanotechnology researchers Marina Dobrovolskaia from the Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research, and Kirill Afonin from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, describe the development of a reproduceable protocol that accurately assesses the qualitative and quantitative immune properties of different NANPs when used to deliver therapeutic nucleic acids.

“Ten to twenty percent of all drugs are withdrawn during clinical trials due to immunotoxicity – nucleic acid therapies are not an exception,” said Afonin, whose research, among other things, focuses on NANP development and understanding immune responses to NANP’s. “This is especially true for NANPs because therapeutic use of nucleic acids is a relatively young area.”

The protocol proposed in the paper is a detailed step-by-step process for assessing inflammatory properties of any given NANP design when administered to humans, using human peripheral blood mononuclear cells (“white blood cells”) as a test model. The in vitro experiments performed in the paper used cells freshly drawn and isolated from the blood of over 100 healthy human donors, though the paper notes that as few as three donors could be adequate to account for individual genetic diversity in immune cells.

“Aiming for a broad sample in our studies, we used more than 100 donors, and the blood was drawn over different periods of the year, so it was a very heterogeneous pool of blood cells,” Afonin noted.

“This protocol is reproduceable and it uses the most accurate model,” he said. “It’s more predictive of cytokine storms than animal models, which is, frankly, amazing. This also makes it affordable for more researchers, because they don’t have to work with animals.”

A reliable and accurate standardized protocol for assessing human immune response to different particle designs can be of great value in supporting research in NANPs, the paper argues: “In order to further advance the translation of NANPs from bench to clinic, the field is in great need of reliable experimental protocols for the assessment of both safety and efficacy of these novel nanomaterials.”

“This is important because there are hundreds of researchers working on NANPs and everyone has their own preferred formulation,” Afonin said. “The problem is that they all also use different protocols. When you read their publications, it is difficult to say which formulation is better because the conditions that they have tested them under are completely different – there is no harmony.”

While a toxic immunological response might preclude a specific NANP design from entering clinical trials, the paper notes that in some therapies, some of the specific immune responses caused by some NANPs may, in fact, be useful and desired.

The protocol measures both the quantitative nature of the cell’s immune reaction – the scale of the immune response – and the qualitative nature of it – what exact kind of chemical response(s) the immune reaction causes.

“The ‘quality’ being measured here is what kind of interferons or cytokines will be produced in reaction to the specific NANP,” he said. “Both quality and quantity are crucial questions. And sometimes the immune response is not bad or undesired – by using this protocol, we can assess the quality and quantity of the immune response of a specific NANP so it can be used – as a vaccine adjuvant, for example.”

Afonin is confident that the protocol produces highly accurate results because of the extensive experimentation that went into its design.

“The steps of this protocol have been thought through and validated for more than 60 different NANP designs, generated both by my lab and by other people in the field – a very representative sample,” Afonin emphasized. “Our goal is to harmonize testing and make something that will be a milestone for future research.”

Research reported in the article was supported by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number R01GM120487 (to K.A.A.). The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health. The study was also supported in part (to M.A.D.) by federal funds from the National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, under contract HHSN261200800001E and 75N91019D00024. The content of this publication does not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the Department of Health and Human Services, nor does mention of trade names, commercial products, or organizations imply endorsement by the U.S. Government.

Words: James Hathaway | Top Image of Kirill Afonin (left) and nanoscale science doctoral student Justin Halmn in The Afonin Lab: Lynn Roberson | Other images: Courtesy of The Afonin Lab | More about the research can be found here.