UConn’s Office of Undergraduate Research each year provides Summer Undergraduate Research Fund (SURF) awards to support full-time undergraduate students in summer research or creative projects. SURF awards are available to students in all majors at all UConn campuses. The students’ project proposals are reviewed by a faculty committee representing various schools and colleges, and SURF award recipients are chosen through a competitive process. Each SURF award winner is supervised by a UConn faculty member. This summer, UConn Today is looking at various SURF scholars and their work. Name: Christian Connors Year: Rising Senior Major: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Summer research project: Connors is collecting caterpillars from three different predominant types of trees in Connecticut – red maple, witch hazel, and musclewood or American hornbeam. His main interest is the parasitoids (a type of parasite) that are found in the caterpillars. These are insects that live as larvae in a host but eventually kill the host to remove themselves and live independently. A native of East Haddam, Connecticut, and a graduate of New London High School, Connors has been engaged in research since his freshman year. The SURF grant is enabling him to continue his work this summer. He is mentored by Robert Bagchi, an assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, …

Read More »

State Archaeologist Brian Jones ’98 Ph.D., associate extension professor of anthropology in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, passed away this month. Jones led the Connecticut Office of the State Archaeologist since 2014, and received his Ph.D. in anthropology from UConn in 1998. Jones’s passion for Connecticut history and archaeology made him a beloved mentor and educator. “Brian was a scholar, a teacher, and a very thoughtful, kind man,” said Pamela Erickson, professor and head of the Department of Anthropology. “He was such an asset to Anthropology, to UConn, and to Connecticut. He will be missed.” “Brian was (and will always be) a true archaeologist passionate about his work, happily sifting through the earth and finding some new clue about our shared history,” said Gary Aronsen, a research associate in the Department of Anthropology. “His enthusiasm was evident and infectious.” In lieu of flowers, the family requests contributions to the American Indian College Fund. A celebration of Jones’s life will be held August 4, 2019 at 1:00 p.m. in the upstairs hall at the Irish American Home Society in Glastonbury. Read Jones’s full obituary and memoriam in the Hartford Courant.

Read More »

The green belt of tropical rainforests that covers equatorial regions of the Americas, Africa, Indonesia and Southeast Asia is turning brown. Since 1990, Indonesia has lost 50% of its original forest, the Amazon 30% and Central Africa 14%. Fires, logging, hunting, road building and fragmentation have heavily damaged more than 30% of those that remain. These forests provide many benefits: They store large amounts of carbon, are home to numerous wild species, provide food and fuel for local people, purify water supplies and improve air quality. Replenishing them is an urgent global imperative. A newly published study in the journal Science by European authors finds that there is room for an extra 3.4 million square miles (0.9 billion hectares) of canopy cover around the world, and that replenishing tree cover at this full potential would contribute significantly to reducing the risk of harmful climate change But there aren’t enough resources to restore all tropical forests that have been lost or damaged. And restoration can conflict with other activities, such as farming and forestry. As a tropical forest ecologist, I am interested in developing better tools for assessing where these efforts will be most cost-effective and beneficial. Over the past four years, tropical forestry professor Pedro Brancalionand I have led a …

Read More »

UConn’s Office of Undergraduate Research each year provides Summer Undergraduate Research Fund (SURF) awards to support full-time undergraduate students in summer research or creative projects. SURF awards are available to students in all majors at all UConn campuses. The students’ project proposals are reviewed by a faculty committee representing various schools and colleges, and SURF award recipients are chosen through a competitive process. Each SURF award winner is supervised by a UConn faculty member. This summer, UConn Today is taking a look at various SURF scholars and their work. Name: Sarah Baker Year: Rising Senior Major: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Summer research project: Baker is researching the impact of distance from a stream on the color distribution of Plethodon cinereus, commonly known as the eastern red-backed salamander. This research is happening right in Mansfield at such areas as UConn’s Fenton Tract, Moss Tract, and Spring Hill Tract, as well as on town land, such as Dunhamtown Forest and Schoolhouse Brook Park. Her faculty mentor is Elizabeth Jockusch, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Baker, a native of Northfield, Connecticut, and a graduate of Litchfield High School, hopes to earn her master’s degree and doctorate in the future, and become a college professor in …

Read More »

We’ve come to think of computers as remarkable tools of calculation which have contributed to major scientific advances, like helping astronauts reach the moon or determining more than 31 trillion digits of Pi. But computers are not infallible; there are some functions that are simply not “computable.” This perplexing aspect of mathematics is the topic of a new grant for University of Connecticut assistant professor of mathematics, Damir Dzhafarov. Dzhafarov has received $379,450 from the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Division of Mathematical Sciences to study and strengthen the connections between two prominent branches of theoretical mathematics: computability theory and combinatorics. The grant Dzhafarov has received is a Focused Research Group (FRG) grant. These grants support collaborative groups that work to solve specific, major research challenges in the field of mathematics. The NSF website defines a major research challenge as: “an outstanding problem of significant importance that requires the focused and synergistic efforts of a collaborative group to solve, and whose solution will have wide impacts in the mathematical sciences and potentially in other areas.” These grants are relatively rare and the competition is steep; there are only 34 current separate FRG projects. Dzhafarov’s grant is part of a multi-institutional project that involves researchers from UC Berkeley, …

Read More »

Researchers have limited access to information about how people use popular ridesharing services like Uber and Lyft. But recent analysis of aggregate data about ridesharing trips in New York City, conducted by researchers at UConn and published last month in Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, sheds new light on use of the service by people in the city’s outer borough neighborhoods. Analyzing available data from New York City’s Taxi and Limousine Commission, a local regulator that requires some limited reporting from ridesharing companies about the trips they provide within the city, the researchers found that for-hire trips in New York’s five boroughs increased by 46 percent – 82 million rides annually – from 2014 to 2017. What surprised the researchers, however, was that, even within the limits of available data, the surge in rideshare trips that originated outside of Manhattan was apparent and significant. Rideshare trips starting in the outer boroughs have exploded, increasing to 56 percent of the market in neighborhoods that are typically home to minority and low-income households that do not own vehicles of their own. “These are really important things that are happening, and they’re changing the city,” said Carol Atkinson-Palombo, a professor in UConn’s Department of …

Read More »

Toggling between viewing entertainment and social media lessens a person’s ability to escape reality and enjoy a show, according to a new University of Connecticut study. Researchers studied an experience that has become increasingly common: More than half of television viewers aged 18 to 24 use a second screen web-connected device for engaging on social media to discuss what they are watching, according to previous research. The new study, conducted by a team in the Department of Communication and published in the Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, found the most significant impact of two-screen experience was on viewers’ ability to “transport” into the narrative and become immersed in the televised story. “Despite its popularity, live-tweeting has potential pitfalls on audience experience,” says Saraswathi Bellur, assistant professor in communication, who collaborated on the study with Suji Park, UConn Ph.D., and Xiaowen Xu and Brenda Rourke, doctoral candidates. For the study, researchers separated 230 college students into two groups. One group watched the television show “Friends” while tweeting; the other group watched the same show without tweeting. Those tweeting were asked to send at least five messages during the half-hour broadcast. Afterward, both groups completed a survey about the experience. Compared to those engaged in media multitasking, …

Read More »

The Casualty Actuarial Society has awarded the UConn Actuarial Science Program the 2019 CAS University Award, recognizing the innovative and exemplary ways it is preparing students for a career in the property and casualty insurance industry. The Actuarial Science program, which serves more than 500 actuarial undergraduate and graduate students, is housed in the Department of Mathematics in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. This is the second time the program has won the award; it was a 2016 winner and, after a three-year ineligibility period, has returned as the 2019 winner. The program’s recent advances include expansions not only in the actuarial courses required, but in increasing requirements for programming and writing proficiency. In one course, students identify a publicly-traded company to follow over the course of the semester, and through instructor-moderated discussions, they gain a deeper understanding of the role that property and casualty insurance can play in managing risk. Starting their sophomore year, actuarial students gain real-life experience through focused research and case studies that hone critical thinking and communication skills with the context of real-world business issues.  Industry partners contribute reality-based case studies that are incorporated into an actuarial science case studies course. The program also sponsors an internship program …

Read More »

In some parts of Kosovo, scattered right on the surface of the soil are numerous artifacts, some of which date back as far as 8,000 years. Local archaeologists know there are dozens of archaeological sites somewhere in the area, but no one is sure exactly where they are. For the past two summers, UConn graduate student Elic Weitzel has traveled to Kosovo to survey for ancient artifacts to help pinpoint the locations of these sites, so that more can be learned about the area’s rich – and oftentimes fraught – history. The region is thought to have been inhabited for nearly 10,000 years. Weitzel says the archaeological records of Kosovo and other Balkan countries reflect conflict and conquests – with unrest continuing even after the recent wars and Kosovo’s declaration of independence in 2008 – but the region was also an area that the first people to introduce farming to Europe would have traveled through. As a scholar of early farming, this research will expand his expertise in the field, as well as hone his research skills as he helps to identify, date, and reconstruct the past. The UConn graduate student is part of a team led by Mike and Sylvia Galaty from …

Read More »

A recent UConn study, funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), has found that a supportive housing intervention keeps more at-risk families together than “business-as-usual” child welfare services and costs about the same. What’s more, a national study of five demonstration sites across the U.S. found that the Connecticut program produced the strongest child welfare outcomes across the country. Preston Britner, professor of human development and family sciences, co-led the study, which was funded by a $5 million grant in 2012 from the Children’s Bureau of the U.S. DHHS. “We had very strong findings for Connecticut families,” says Britner. “There are people in Connecticut that really need help, and they are really benefiting from this program.”The study, a collaboration among UConn, Chapin Hall, the Connecticut Department of Children and Families (DCF), and the non-profit housing group The Connection Inc., published its five-year findings in April. The Supportive Housing for Families initiative (SHF) began in 1998 in Middletown, Connecticut. State funds supported the non-profit social service agency The Connection Inc. in developing an intervention for parents newly involved with the child welfare system based on histories of mental health issues, substance abuse, criminal activity, or other factors. The program’s premise is a “housing first” approach, says Britner, which …

Read More »