As developmental scientists, our goal is to build a multidisciplinary team anchored in family and community engagement, focused on sustained partnerships in rural Georgia through engagement with middle schoolers. Through authentic relationship building rather than episodic recruitment, we will develop a long-term participant pool and incorporate community needs and priorities into future research planning, based […]
February 28, 2026
The UGA Athens campus provides many unique opportunities for learning. Our VIPR team will employ the notion of campus as a living lab to explore current issues in urban water resources and to develop a mechanistic understanding of streams traversed by decades of UGA students. The field of water resources science is intrinsically interdisciplinary and spans undergraduate […]
February 27, 2026
AI Agents for a Sustainable Food Supply
Interactive AI agents will be used to revolutionize how we develop, deploy and manage our food supply, and prepare students for a workforce prioritizing agentic AI literacy. UGA excels in developing new crop varieties and providing agronomic advice. AI agents can be used to aid key breeding decisions as well as provide advice on crop […]
February 26, 2026
Our team engineers next-generation viral vectors by repurposing high-impact plant pathogens—such as Citrus Tristeza Virus (CTV), which shares replication strategies with SARS-CoV-2—into modular tools for crop protection. The students will focus on ‘Genome Refactoring’ to streamline complex architectures into stable ‘cargo-ready’ expression platforms. By leveraging their natural movement, we enable ‘Targeted Delivery’ of therapeutic molecules, […]
February 24, 2026
Modeling Protein Structure and Function to Better Understand Disease
This research experience is designed such that you will: identify a N-glycoprotein of interest and define the role of this protein in human health, evaluate the impact of the N-glycan on protein structure, learn to utilize linux-based programs, code molecular dynamics simulations of your chosen proteins, and analyze the structural features and motion of your […]
October 28, 2025
At the frontier of stem cell biology, our team uses human pluripotent stem cells to model the peripheral nervous system and the adrenal gland. We aim to uncover the disease mechanisms underlying diseases that affect those tissues in human patients. From conditions like Familial Dysautonomia to diabetic peripheral neuropathy to adrenal gland insufficiency, our lab’s […]
October 23, 2025
GlycoCURE Discovery is an interdisciplinary VIPR team focused on harnessing drug discovery and glycobiology to develop new disease models and therapeutic approaches for treating rare disease, with particular focus on congenital disorders of glycosylation (CDGs). Approximately 30 million individuals in the United States are living with a rare disease, which by definition have a prevalence of […]
December 2, 2024
Agriculture productivity and livestock health are significantly influenced by factors such as ammonia levels, methane emissions, temperature, humidity, and soil moisture. Traditional sensing solutions often lack precision, durability, or affordability for widespread deployment, particularly in rural and underserved areas. This VIPR team will address these challenges by developing smart, affordable, and customizable sensors. The sensors […]
December 2, 2024
Project MACAW: Managing Avian Collisions At Windows
This team will identify hotspots and timing of lethal bird collisions with windows on the UGA campus. Students will: uncover the ecological and design drivers of collisions; assess knowledge and educate UGA students, staff, and faculty about the issue; develop monitoring protocols; and propose innovative solutions to prevent collisions by engaging with multiple stakeholders at […]
December 2, 2024
Metabolomics & Systems Biology VIPR Team
Systems Biology is big data in biology. It often refers to large “omics” datasets that are modeled and analyzed for biological insight. Increasingly, machine learning and AI are important tools in this analysis. The Edison lab specializes in metabolomics, which is one of the major components of systems biology. These technologies are important in many […]