Research

An automated personal knitting machine that can produce ready-to-wear clothing at the click of a button – it’s an innovative offering developed by Nona, a team of UNC Charlotte students. They are on their way to Los Angeles to compete in RECESS, a college music and ideas festival.

Turn on a TV and be bombarded by ads for new medications. Yet, new research indicates that the firms that aggressively market these drugs are less likely to produce truly pioneering ones.

In studies published by UNC Charlotte faculty members Denis Arnold and Jennifer Troyer, research shows the more pharmaceutical firms spend on marketing drugs, the less likely it is that the firm will produce breakthrough drugs that offer major advances in treatment.

InfoSense Inc., a startup company founded at UNC Charlotte, topped the Charlotte Business Journal’s 2015 Fast 50 list, which ranks Charlotte’s fastest-growing private companies based on their annual revenue growth percentages over the past three years. The company realized annual revenue growth of 464.9 percent.

A technology-driven company that uses acoustic technology to assess the condition of sewer pipes, InfoSense is a success story that illustrates how University research can have real-world impact.

The North Carolina economy will continue modest growth in 2016, UNC Charlotte economist John Connaughton reported today in the Babson Capital Management/UNC Charlotte Economic Forecast.

“Signs are pointing to a stable new year for the N.C. economy. In 2016, the North Carolina economy is expected to increase by an inflation-adjusted rate of 2.5 percent over the 2015 level,” Connaughton said. “This growth in 2016 follows four years of steady growth in North Carolina Gross State Product.”

E/Ye Design (Ellinger Yehia Architects, LLC), founded in 2002 by Associate Professor of Architecture Jefferson Ellinger and Nona Yehia, has designed one of the first vertical greenhouses in the United States. The 13,500-square foot “Vertical Harvest” greenhouse, currently under construction in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, has an innovative three-story design that will allow the production equivalent of a five-acre farm. Construction is scheduled to be complete in January 2016.

A new book edited and co-authored by College of Education faculty dives into the current state of literacy instruction and looks to the future of reading and writing in the classroom.

In “What’s New in Literacy Teaching?” Department of Reading and Elementary Education professors Karen Wood and Brian Kissel assemble a group of leading literacy scholars to cover a wide range of instructional issues.

The publication is composed of three parts: “Text, Talk and Tasks”; “Collaboration and Communications”; and “Literacy Learning With and Through Technology.”

Brian Magi, assistant professor in the Department of Geography and Earth Sciences, will be the guest on the Oct. 22 edition of “The Live Wire,” Inside UNC Charlotte’s streaming webcast. Starting at 2 p.m., Magi, an atmospheric scientist who explores the relationship between fires, climate and air quality, will discuss his long-term research goal to simulate global fires as a process that is fully coupled to the human and physical dimensions of the Earth system.

New research co-authored by College of Education scholars is illuminating the path to teaching academic vocabulary words to students with learning disabilities.

Published in the journal Teaching Exceptional Children, the study reads like an instructional manual for teachers interested in expanded in-class vocabulary training. It examines which words can do the most to help struggling readers, how to effectively teach those words and how integrate the instruction into subject-matter class discussions.

“Diversity and Design: Understanding Hidden Consequences,” being released this month by Routledge Press, features work by two professors in the UNC Charlotte School of Architecture. Edited by Assistant Professor Charles Davis II, with Beth Tauke and Korydon Smith, it includes chapters by Davis and by Associate Professor Peter Wong.

City Startup Labs (CSL) is establishing a Center of Excellence for Entrepreneurial Competency, Innovation and Leadership (CoE) at UNC Charlotte, in association with Ventureprise, a campus-based venture development organization.

The center will operate from Ventureprise offices in PORTAL. Ventureprise Inc. is a nonprofit corporation affiliated with UNC Charlotte that serves as a venture development organization for the University and the Charlotte region.