News

INDIGENOUS, RACE & ETHNIC STUDIES, GEOGRAPHY - Laura Pulido, professor of Indigenous, Race and Ethnic studies and geography, has been awarded two prestigious awards for her work in the field of geography.

ENGLISH, CREATIVE WRITING - Nathan Harris graduated with a B.A. in English from the UO, and is now a New York Times best-selling author. His book, The Sweetness of Water, has been a smash hit.

PHILOSOPHY, DATA SCIENCE - A member of the University of Oregon Presidential Initiative in Data Science, Alvarado studies computers and how people use them. He recalls, in graduate school, how the emerging field of complexity science led him to observe that breakthroughs in various areas were made possible only through computer programming. He’s been grappling with technology’s role in knowledge creation ever since.

SOCIOLOGY - Shortly after AK Ikwuakor launched a fashion company in 2020—and just as he was preparing to leave to conduct an international motivational speaking tour—all US flights were grounded due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Ikwuakor, BS ’07 (sociology), a serial entrepreneur and three-time All-American Ducks hurdler, found himself grounded in more ways than one.

CREATIVE WRITING - Kirstin Valdez Quade was a graduate student in the creative writing program when Professor Ehud Havazelet offered that advice. Today Quade, MFA ’09 (creative writing), is an award-winning novelist and creative writing professor at Princeton University who is, she says, “profoundly grateful” for the program and Havazelet, who died in 2015.

CHEMISTRY & BIOCHEMISTRY - A new kind of tiny particle is a big deal in UO chemist Carl Brozek’s lab.He and his team have made a versatile kind of porous material called a metal-organic framework, or MOF, into nanocrystals—a form that’s easier to use beyond the lab.

PSYCHOLOGY - Paul Slovic, professor of psychology at the University of Oregon and one of the founders of the Decision Science Research Institute, has been awarded the 2022 Bower Award and Prize for Achievement in Science by the Franklin Institute.

ECONOMICS - There’s been a lot of talk about problems with the supply chain during the pandemic, but the factors for its logjam were in place well before COVID-19 hit, according to UO economist Keaton Miller.

NEUROSCIENCE - If behavior is a language, UO neuroscientist Luca Mazzucato is decoding its grammar. Distinct, coordinated activity in large sets of neurons can predict a rat’s future behavior, he and his team showed in a new study.

CINEMA STUDIES - Live and in-person (once again!) in December ’21, the UO Hip Hop Jam celebrates diverse communities and hip-hop culture—while teaching first-year students the business of events planning.