Tag: faculty


UA Book Helps Solve 87-Year-Old Fossil Mystery

From the March 2018 Desktop News | In the world of paleontology, mysteries abound. Apart from questions about their makers, fossils sometimes create their own mysteries after they are collected. The 2016 University of Alabama Press book, Footprints in Stone: Fossil Traces of Coal-Age Tetrapods, recently helped solve a mystery at the American Museum of Natural History, AMNH, in New York City. The book was co-written by Dr.  Ronald J. Buta, UA professor of astronomy, and Dr. David C. Kopaska-Merkel, section chief […]

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Civil War Opera Lands National Recognition

From the March 2018 Desktop News | The University of Alabama’s Opera Theatre won second place in the National Opera Association’s Opera Production Competition for its earlier world-premiere chamber opera production “Freedom and Fire! A Civil War Story.” The NOA is an organization that promotes excellence in opera education and pedagogy through its support of a diverse community of opera educators and professionals, according to its website. Dr. Paul Houghtaling, an associate professor of voice and director of opera at UA, […]

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UA Chemistry Professor to Receive Honorary Doctorate from Russian Academy of Sciences

From the March 2018 Desktop News | UA chemistry professor Dr. Michael Bowman is being honored for his leading-edge work at the N.N. Vorozhtsov Novosibirsk Institute of Organic Chemistry in Russia with an honorary doctorate. The doctorate comes from Bowman’s ground-breaking work in pulsed electron paramagnetic resonance spectroscopy and its applications to triarylmethyl, or trityl, radicals, which can be used to enhance the identification of tumors. “EPR, or electron paramagnetic resonance, basically looks at unpaired electrons,” said Molly Lockhart, a chemistry PhD […]

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Professor Publishes Book on WWI with Oxford University Press

From the March 2018 Desktop News | Dr. Andrew J. Huebner, an associate professor of history, recently published a book with Oxford University Press titled Love and Death in the Great War. Through the use of real stories and letters exchanged between loved ones, the book delves into the intricate relationship between World War I propaganda and the lived experience of the war itself. “I’ve been interested for as long as I can remember in the study of what we call ‘war […]

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UA Professor Publishes Book to Advance Earthquake Research

From the March 2018 Desktop News |Dr. Ibrahim Çemen, a UA professor of geology, recently published a book, Neotectonics and Earthquake Potential of the Eastern Mediterranean Region, detailing his research on earthquakes in the Eastern Mediterranean Region. Çemen, who specializes in structural and earthquake geology, said that the book grew out of a research symposium organized as part of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) annual meeting in San Francisco in 2013. Because of the high interest in the symposium, Dr. Çemen […]

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UA Opera Director Named President of National Opera Association

Dr. Paul Houghtaling

From the February 2018 Desktop News | Dr. Paul Houghtaling, director of the School of Music’s opera program, was recently named the 2018 president of the National Opera Association, or NOA. The association, which was founded in 1955, supports opera educators and their students through workshops, panels, performance opportunities, collaborations, and competitions. “As educators, we are in the trenches, training the next generation of opera professionals,” Houghtaling said. “It takes a village, and we are the foundation builders.” As president, previously serving […]

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UA Professor Receives Book Award

From the February 2018 Desktop News | Dr. Lucy Curzon, an associate professor in the Department of Art and Art History, has received a national award for her book, Mass-Observation and Visual Culture: Depicting Everyday Lives in Britain. Curzon’s book won the Historians of British Art Book Prize for best book published in 2016, receiving the top prize in the category for single-authored books with a subject after 1800. The winning publication was chosen from a selection of over 100 books submitted […]

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New Mothers, Affluent Areas Drive ‘Anti-Vaccine’ Sentiment on Twitter

From the February 2018 Desktop News | The anti-vaccination crowd is thriving on Twitter, where the negative sentiment clusters geographically across the United States, according to a recent study by an autism researcher at The University of Alabama. Dr. Theodore S. Tomeny, UA assistant professor of psychology, and colleagues used a machine-learning algorithm to examine nearly a half-million tweets over a five-year span that included mentions of “autism” and “vaccines.” Tomeny and co-author Chris Vargo, assistant professor of communication at the University […]

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Solving Galactic Mysteries a Few Minutes at a Time

William Keel

  From the February 2018 Desktop News | A project led by an astronomer at The University of Alabama will use 12-25 minute gaps in the regular imaging schedule of the Hubble Space Telescope to get a better look at oddities found in the sky. Dr. William C. Keel, a professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, led an effort to use Hubble to investigate unusual objects found by volunteer astronomers in a crowd-sourced astronomy project, Galaxy Zoo, and its companion Radio Galaxy […]

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Team of UA Students Competes in National Cybersecurity “Capture the Flag” Competition

From the January 2018 Desktop News | The University of Alabama’s new undergraduate cybersecurity team competed in their first national cyber “capture the flag” competition involving virtual security simulations at financial firms. The competition, which occurred in October, brought ten teams from different areas around the United States to St. Petersberg, Florida. Each team competed in multiple rounds, which involved different IT scenarios that companies face daily. “The competition consisted of over four hours of non-stop team-based student hacking,” Dr. Matthew […]

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