Research

The North Carolina economy continues to grow, but at a lackluster pace, UNC Charlotte economist John Connaughton reported today in the Babson Capital Management/UNC Charlotte Economic Forecast.

An unfolding partnership between an interdisciplinary team at UNC Charlotte and the Camino Community Center is helping to address the mental health needs of Charlotte’s Latino community.

 Lixia Yao, an assistant professor in the College of Computing and Informatics Department of Software and Information Systems, has received a Career Development Award in Biomedical Informatics from the National Library of Medicine at the National Institutes of Health.

This highly competitive award is designed to provide junior faculty the support and “protected time” for an intensive career development in biomedical informatics leading to research independence. 

Animals can adapt to their environment through changes to their DNA, but more recently, research has shown that non-genetic components may be important, too. Two central non-genetic contributors to individual variation are chemical modifications of the DNA, epigenetics, and associations with different bacterial species or microbial symbioses.

UNC Charlotte biological sciences professor Adam Reitzel is leading an international team to investigate how epigenetic regulations and microbial communities are influencing the adaptation of coastal marine species to climate change.

Yong Ge, an assistant professor in the College of Computing and Informatics Department of Computer Science, has developed a tool that leverages social media data to help analyze use patterns of illegal drugs by young adults across the country. The National Institute of Health funded his work.

Nationally, one in four women have reported being assaulted during their time in college, impacting their emotional and physical health and academic success.

UNC Charlotte is collaborating with the University of Kentucky to implement a campus climate survey to all undergraduate students aged 18-24.

Annelise Mennicke, a faculty member in the School of Social Work, is principal investigator at UNC Charlotte working with researchers at the University of Kentucky to conduct the online survey of University students.

For the majority of girls born into poverty in the Charlotte region, they will have a harder time breaking out of that economic state. UNC Charlotte’s Women + Girls Research Alliance (W+GRA) is bringing researchers and the community together to explore improving economic mobility opportunities for women as the focus of its 2016 W+GRA Summit.

A day-and-a-half event, the 2016 W+GRA Summit will be Thursday and Friday, April 14-15. Registration is through April 8; space is limited.

South Africa is relying upon the expertise of College of Education faculty member David Test to develop and implement an ambitious plan to revamp that nation’s special education system.

Test, a professor of special education, recently returned stateside after traveling to South Africa as part of an envoy to assess how the country educates its special needs students.

Needing multiple units of an expensive piece of equipment to complete his doctoral project, mechanical engineering student Sajad Kafashi decided to invent and build his own. Now, in addition to finishing his Ph.D., he is commercializing his invention, which he calls the Saji Waveform Generator.

Two researchers from Brazil are working with Daniel Janies, the Carol Grotnes Belk Distinguished Professor of Bioinformatics and Genomics, to better understand the genes that allow amphibians to generate and resist the poisons they use for defense.