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�鶹��Ƶ researchers’ innovative techniques have unveiled surprising new details about the brain’s fertility cells that may prove useful for treating infertility disorders. After several years of research, Aleisha Moore, Lique Coolen and Michael Lehman published a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, showing groundbreaking findings identifying which cells in the brain control fertility, as well as revealing an unexpected level of complexity in their control of reproduction.

Students across the nation were challenged as the pandemic swept the world. Healing Stanzas, a collaboration between the Wick Poetry Center, the Healthy Communities Research Institute and the Brain Health Research Institute, seeks to combine the science of brain health and public health with the creative energy of the humanities to provide �鶹��Ƶ students, staff and faculty with an opportunity to improve wellness through reflective poetry.

Julie Mazzei, Ph.D., associate professor and interim director of the School of Multidisciplinary Social Sciences and Humanities, in the College of Arts and Sciences at �鶹��Ƶ, will take part in a virtual roundtable discussion with her co-authors of an edited volume "Paramilitary Groups and the State under Globalization: Political Violence, Elites and Security", edited by Jasmin Hristov, Jeb Sprague and Aaron Tauss (London: Routledge, 2022) on February 23 from 2-3:30 pm EST online via Zoom.

Intentionality to build successful academic mentoring relationships with students is what sets professors apart at �鶹��Ƶ, and each year two professors at the graduate and undergraduate level receive a student-nominated award for their ability to do so. The intent of the award is to recognize those professors exceeding in mentoring students in how to perform research in any field.  

The National Institutes of Health recently awarded a $1.86 million grant to Thorsten-Lars Schmidt to develop molecular tools that help researchers to understand membrane proteins. This is the first time a professor at �鶹��Ƶ has been awarded an R35, which provides promising researchers with a five-year funding for a broader research program, rather than funding a specific project. This gives investigators a lot of freedom to develop new research directions as opportunities arise, rather than being bound to specific aims of a more narrow study.

Congratulations to Torsten Hegmann, Ph.D., and his research group for leading an international collaboration and publishing their work in Science Advances! Their article, titled “Effects of shape and solute-solvent compatibility on the efficacy of chirality transfer: Nanoshapes in nematics” was featured on the Science Advances website.

Scott Sheridan, Ph.D., professor and chair of the Department of Geography, in the College of Arts and Sciences at �鶹��Ƶ, was recently selected to become an inaugural American Geophysical Union (AGU) LANDInG (Leadership Academy and Network for Diversity and Inclusion in the Geosciences) Academy Fellow.

Intravenous (IV) needle insertion is a practice that many medical professionals learn and need to master. A new cross-departmental �鶹��Ƶ project in the works will help nursing students improve their skills with cutting-edge technology. 

In a new study, �鶹��Ƶ Professor Hanbin Mao and other researchers report the creation of an artificial molecule with superpowers. It has the potential to revolutionize nanotechnology – and it also explains one of nature’s intriguing enigmas: Why do we have a right hand and a left hand?