BIOLOGY - Proteins on the surface of cells act as sentries — and microbes hoping to invade will evolve tricks to evade these front-line defenses. But the host cell’s proteins don’t sit back helplessly. They, too, can evolve in ways that makes it harder for microbes to get through.

BIOLOGY - Prithiviraj Fernando, MS ’93, PhD ’98 (biology), and Herve Memiaghe, a landscape architecture PhD student, use research to save elephant populations in Sri Lanka and Gabon, Africa.

BIOLOGY - Two-time winner of the prestigious Udall Scholarship and 2018 Stamps Scholar Temerity Bauer didn’t always feel at home at the University of Oregon. One of few Native students pursuing a biology degree at UO and in the Clark Honors College, she said she felt lonely during her first few weeks of her freshman year — until she attended a potluck with the Native American Student Union.

HISTORY, COMPUTER SCIENCE, RELIGIOUS STUDIES - Open Oregon Educational Resources has awarded four grants, totaling more than $101,000, to University of Oregon faculty members who proposed innovative ideas for textbook and resource solutions.

ANTHROPOLOGY, BIOLOGY, CHEMISTRY AND BIOCHEMISTRY - Four UO faculty members have been named as 2021 fellows by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, joining 564 other newly elected members whose work has distinguished them in the science community and beyond.

GEOGRAPHY - Three UO geography students have formed a new group to develop networking opportunities and spur discussion with professionals in the field.

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.