Chancellor Lee. H. Roberts speaks with research technician Georgia Straley ’25 and learns about sharks at the IMS. (Photo by Jon Gardiner/UNC-Chapel Hill)

Carolina’s presence is felt across the state, including its coastline.

As part of his second summer tour, Chancellor Lee H. Roberts took a boat tour with members of Carolina’s environment, ecology and energy program and also visited the UNC Institute of Marine Sciences, part of the UNC College of Arts and Sciences, in Morehead City, North Carolina, on June 2. The stops included marsh areas and living shorelines and featured a variety of Carolina projects that are protecting North Carolina’s environment, economy and people.

View photos from the the chancellor’s day on the coast.

Chancellor Lee. H. Roberts hears from ecology doctoral student Alexis Longmire as they walk along the shore of Shackleford Banks. Longmire studies how manmade coastal barriers affect predator movement, seagrass, and the future of waterfront communities. (Photo by Jon Gardiner/UNC-Chapel Hill)

The day on the coast was the second portion of the chancellor’s ongoing eastern North Carolina tour, which kicked off with a visit to Fort Bragg. (Photo by Jon Gardiner/UNC-Chapel Hill)

Joel Fodrie, who directs the IMS and specializes in estuarine ecology, speaks with Chancellor Lee H. Roberts. (Photo by Jon Gardiner/UNC-Chapel Hill)

Chancellor Lee H. Roberts disembarks from a boat for a tour of Shackleford Banks. (Photo by Jon Gardiner/UNC-Chapel Hill)

While walking along Shackleford Banks, Chancellor Lee H. Roberts hears from Rachel Noble, professor and director of the IMS Field Site. Noble’s laboratory conducts research on bacteria and viral pathogens in recreational waters, in shellfish and in stormwater and wastewater in estuaries. (Photo by Jon Gardiner/UNC-Chapel Hill)

Feral horses graze on Shackleford Banks. The horses provide a glimpse into how horses lived in the wild before their domestication. (Photo by Jon Gardiner/UNC-Chapel Hill)

At the IMS, Chancellor Lee H. Roberts meets with Rick Luettich, former IMS director and founding director of the UNC Center for Natural Hazards Resilience. Luettich specializes in coastal hazards and coastal physical oceanography. (Photo by Jon Gardiner/UNC-Chapel Hill)

The chancellor meets with faculty, students and staff at the IMS. (Photo by Jon Gardiner/UNC-Chapel Hill)

Chancellor Lee H. Roberts meets with Stacy Davis, IMS facilities manager and 2022 Massey Award winner. (Photo by Jon Gardiner/UNC-Chapel Hill)

By University Communications and Marketing

The post Tar Heel researchers share their work with chancellor on the coast appeared first on College of Arts and Sciences.

Submitted photo

Meet Lily Zavarella, a rising sophomore double majoring in environmental science and biology and minoring in creative writing with a concentration in nonfiction. This summer, Zavarella will be working for the Let’s Go Birding program at the Colorado National Monument.

The Let’s Go Birding program was created as a partnership between Environment for the Americas, the National Park Service, and Birdability to reduce barriers to birding faced by people with disabilities, including neurodivergence. Zavarella will be working as Birding Accessibility Intern for twelve weeks.

Zavarella’s responsibilities will include scouting out birding locations, working the front-desk at the visitor’s center, writing blog posts about her experience, and leading bird outings.

In addition to these wonderful opportunities, Zavarella shared, “I was also promised a substantial amount of time to participate in raptor research being conducted on-site, which I am ecstatic for. Ever since my Wild Kratts phase in elementary school, their episode about peregrine falcons made me obsessed with the species. Guess what lives at the Colorado National Monument?”

Initially, Zavarella struggled to accept that she had received the position:

“I’ve struggled with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) for most of my life. I was sitting in an airport on my way back from a Spring Break birding trip when I got the notification that I was accepted, and obviously my initial reaction was excitement. But on the plane ride when there was nothing better to do, I started to spiral…I think my anxiety stemmed from the fact that I’d already made a decision—it would be foolish to decline the offer—and I was scared that it would be the wrong one. My dad talked some sense into me though; He also has anxiety, and we’re both good at quieting the other’s anxious thoughts because we understand them. He said, ‘You want to think about the story you’re gonna be able to tell. At the very least, you’re gonna be able to say you spent my summer in a national park unit in a paid internship in Colorado. Bottom line. That could be your story.’ Now all I feel is excitement again. I cannot wait to be free of gen chem and tackle the summer head-on, and I especially can’t wait to write about my stories from this internship.”

Of the things she is most excited about, Zavarella shared she is ecstatic to “explore a whole new side of the continent”:

“In every direction you travel from the Colorado National Monument, you’ll run into more incredible protected lands … with new land to explore comes new species to encounter. I’ve already expressed my fondness for peregrine falcons, but the Colorado National Monument is also home to golden eagles, nighthawks (they remind me of Toothless from How to Train Your Dragon), desert big-horned sheep, ringtail cats … Even better, I can’t wait to experience these natural wonders with people who share my awe. I especially hope that I will be able to work with children with learning or developmental disabilities at some point in this internship because I’ve found that they harbor some of the greatest uninhibited curiosity toward the natural world.”

Of the courses Zavarella holds “near and dear” to her heart, she pointed to ENGL 266: “Science, Literature, and the Environment” with Professor Denise Xu and ENGL 138: “Introduction to Creative Nonfiction” with Professor Karen Tucker.

In speaking to what she has learned this semester with Prof. Tucker specifically, Zavarella said:

“Simply put, Dr. Tucker has reignited my passion for writing. I applied to UNC with the intention of majoring in English, but I feared that my writing would never be good enough. Tucker nurtures such a positive, constructive environment during our class workshops that I’ve never feared sharing my writing in that class. I’ve never felt not good enough. Her class is why I’m so enthusiastic about my blog posts this summer; I hope to implement all the incredible advice she’s given me in my quest to interpret the birds of Colorado.”

By the Department of English and Comparative Literature

The post Rising sophomore will spend summer interning with Let’s Go Birding appeared first on College of Arts and Sciences.

The next time your doctor, dentist or a security officer relies on an imaging scan, the technology they use to keep you healthy or safe may trace back to a Carolina inventor. Otto Zhou, the David Godschalk Distinguished Professor of Physics and Astronomy at UNC-Chapel Hill, has spent more than two decades pioneering carbon nanotube-based X-ray technologies for medical, dental and industrial imaging. The result is better screening, diagnostics and care.

Zhou oversees the UNC Applied Nanotechnology Lab, and his work has led to 46 issued U.S. patents, 53 foreign patents and two startup companies. NuRay Technology commercialized multi-beam X-ray source arrays for high-speed, low-dose, and high-definition 3D imaging for medical, dental and security inspection applications. Surround Medical Systems launched the first intraoral 3D tomosynthesis system. Dentists use the technology to detect tooth decay earlier and examine areas of teeth not easily visible with conventional imaging — without increasing patient radiation exposure. Zhou’s lab has also developed imaging systems for 3D mammography, stationary chest and breast tomosynthesis, and a micro-CT scanner.

In May 2026, the UNC Office of Technology Commercialization recognized Zhou as the UNC Inventor of the Year for his contributions to inventions and entrepreneurship. Innovate Carolina asked Zhou a few questions about his journey.

Q: What inspired your work developing new imaging technologies?

A: I didn’t come to UNC intending to do imaging research. My background is in materials engineering. When nanotechnology became a major research focus nationally, my lab began working with carbon nanotubes and discovered they were very good electron field emitters — and that they didn’t require heat like traditional electron sources.

During a conversation with my colleague and collaborator Jianping Lu in the physics department, we started to ask what we could do with the technology. Since X-ray systems rely on electron sources, we wondered whether carbon nanotubes could generate X-rays. After demonstrating that they could, we began working with colleagues in the medical school, particularly Dr. Yueh Lee in the radiology department, and realized that the technology had strong potential for imaging.

Q: What problems can carbon nanotube-based X-ray technologies solve?

Otto Zhou delivers a presentation at the annual UNC Celebration of Inventorship. (Photo by Brock Pierce/Innovate Carolina)

A: One advantage of working at a university is being surrounded by people from many disciplines. Through conversations with clinicians and researchers, we learned about challenges with existing imaging technologies. We began thinking about how our technology could address them.

For example, one major challenge involves 3D imaging systems like CT scanners, which rely on mechanically moving a heavy X-ray source around the body. Those systems can be large and slow. Our idea was to replace one moving source with multiple fixed sources arranged around the patient.

Another challenge is capturing images of moving organs like the heart. Because our system can electronically control exposures very quickly, it allows imaging to synchronize with breathing or heart rhythms to reduce blur. This creates clearer 3D images.

Q: What is it like turning university discoveries into real-world products?

As an engineer, that is ultimately the goal. Publishing research is important, but you also hope your work becomes useful in the world. It has been gratifying to see ideas move through the full cycle from research concepts to technologies that can actually help people. I feel fortunate to have had the opportunity to be involved throughout that process and to see these technologies become commercial products.

Q: Why is interdisciplinary collaboration essential for medical imaging innovation?

A: There’s no way we could have done this work without teaming with people in physics, radiology, medicine, dentistry, engineering and other areas. Each person’s expertise is limited to a particular area, so to do the kinds of things we do, you need a team of people working together in a very open way, for a long period of time. My colleague Jianping Lu, who sits next door to me in the physics department, is involved in every aspect of the work, especially image processing. Christy Inscoe has done a lot of the engineering system integration work.

And Dr. Yueh Lee of the medical school is involved. Because you can’t effectively develop a medical device without input from people who know what’s needed clinically. Otherwise, we’re producing a machine that is not very useful. One example came from a conversation with Dr. Enrique Platin at the dental school who suggested a new imaging application. Within a month, we had demonstrated a proof of concept. That collaboration eventually led to an FDA-cleared clinical device for 3D intraoral imaging.

Q: How could your imaging inventions improve patient care and diagnosis?

A: We have quite a few medical devices in the development pipeline. One project focuses on bedside 3D imaging for intensive care units. Today, many ICU patients receive only 2D chest X-rays because moving critically ill patients to radiology departments for CT scans is difficult and risky. We are developing a mobile 3D imaging system that could be brought directly to the patient’s bedside to improve diagnostic accuracy.

In collaboration with Dr. Donald Tyndall at the dental school, we’re also developing a new type of dental cone beam CT that provides better quantitative analysis and soft tissue imaging without increasing radiation dose or equipment size. We hope these technologies will help clinicians make more accurate diagnoses and improve treatment planning for patients. Initial experiments conducted with Drs. Amanda Stadler and Antonio Moretti of the department of periodontology of the dental school show the new technology has the  potential to improve the reliability of presurgical dental implant planning.

Kelly Parsons, director of technology commercialization at Innovate Carolina, presents Otto Zhou with the UNC Inventor of the Year award at the annual Celebration of Inventorship. (Photo by Brock Pierce/Innovate Carolina)

Q: What have you learned about commercializing university research?

A: One lesson is to stay focused on solving a well-defined problem. Identifying the right problem is half the challenge. There are many interesting problems in the world, but it’s important to focus on ones that are significant and realistically solvable. People only have limited time and energy. So, it’s better to do a few things very well rather than try to do too many things at once.

Q: What advice do you have for researchers interested in startups and commercialization?

A: First, work on something you genuinely enjoy. Commercialization is a long process. There will be setbacks, disappointments and unexpected challenges along the way.

Second, talk to people. Many experienced people have gone through this process before and can offer advice. The more you learn from others, the better prepared you’ll be. It’s also important to stay realistic and understand that good ideas alone aren’t enough without considering broader challenges.

Finally, be confident. If you’re a researcher with a strong idea that has real potential, there are people both inside and outside the university who want to help develop it.

By Brock Pierce, Innovate Carolina

The post How UNC inventor Otto Zhou helped reinvent X-ray imaging appeared first on College of Arts and Sciences.

Lloyd Kramer “saw the work of Carolina Public Humanities as a necessary service for the state that the University should provide to fulfill its mission of being of the people and for the people,” a colleague said. (UNC-Chapel HIll/Jon Gardiner)

“Lloyd Kramer was put on Earth to be a transformational leader who brings the best out of people, working with everyone in a collaborative way.” That’s the reason the professor emeritus of history is a 2026 Massey Award winner, according to a former student who became Kramer’s colleague.

Before he retired in 2024, Kramer taught and mentored students, published nine books, twice chaired the history department, directed Carolina Public Humanities in revitalizing its outreach work and served as interim chair of the faculty.

Throughout his time at Carolina, Kramer engaged with five intersecting communities: students, from whom he gained new perspectives; faculty, whose talent and commitment he deeply respects; administrators, with whom he built relationships through listening and dialogue; alumni, whose support and curiosity shaped conversations about Carolina’s future; and the public, including teachers and humanities program participants.

“Professor Kramer has dedicated the better part of his career to serving the Carolina community,” a nominator wrote. “He advocated for the importance of teaching and scholarship while also creating a collegial and collaborative climate for faculty and students alike.”

Kramer earned awards for inspiring students: the Johnston Teaching Excellence Award and the student-selected Undergraduate Teaching Award. In 2021, he received the Thomas Jefferson Award, the faculty’s highest honor, and gave a talk that emphasized Jefferson’s ideals rather than his contradictions and flaws.

As director of Carolina Public Humanities in the College of Arts and Sciences from 2014 to 2024, Kramer expanded the faculty’s humanities-centered engagement with teachers and communities across North Carolina.

“Lloyd saw the work of Carolina Public Humanities as a necessary service for the state that the University should provide to fulfill its mission of being of the people and for the people. Too often, humanities scholarship is ivory tower-ish. The public humanities say, ‘No, we have something of value that is needed in the community,’” a colleague said.

Kramer grew up in Evansville, Indiana. He graduated from Maryville College in Tennessee, where he became interested in the French and American revolutions and how people responded to political conflicts and revolutionary upheavals.

After earning a master’s degree in history from Boston College, he wanted to experience life abroad. He took a job teaching European history at a postsecondary school in Hong Kong. In summer 1975, he spent nearly three months traveling from Hong Kong to Paris and then studied French by immersing himself in Parisian history and culture.

The time abroad fed his interest in modern European history, cross-cultural exchanges and 19th-century France. He attended Cornell for a doctorate in European history, writing a doctoral dissertation on exiles in Paris in the 1830s and 1840s. He continues to examine how travel alters one’s sense of self, most recently in his book “Traveling to Unknown Places: Nineteenth-Century Journeys Toward French and American Selfhood.”

In 1986, he joined Carolina’s faculty. “I wanted to help young people understand how their lives are part of history because history is about a long pattern of events, conflicts and changing economic, social, political conditions that shape who people are,” he said.

In Kramer’s class on American writers who traveled to Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries, students read novels and letters to explore how the authors’ experiences helped them understand themselves. They also studied paintings and photographs. Kramer found it especially rewarding when students connected lessons to their lives: “Students would later write me and say, ‘Wow! I was in a cafe in France, and I remembered how Hemingway said he wrote an essay or a book sitting in a café,’ or ‘I saw a Cézanne painting and remembered our discussion about the importance of Americans encountering modern art.’

“That’s why I’m a great believer in the liberal arts,” Kramer said.

Learn more about the Massey Awards.

Read a spring 2024 Carolina Arts & Sciences magazine story on Lloyd Kramer.

By Scott Jared, University Communications and Marketing

The post Kramer champions public humanities and engaged teaching appeared first on College of Arts and Sciences.

Alan Bi is a Ph.D. student in the department of history within the UNC College of Arts and Sciences. (Photo by Megan Mendenhall/UNC Research)

Alan Bi is a Ph.D. student in the department of history within the UNC College of Arts and Sciences. He examines how the language from financial institutions influenced how investors conceptualized risk leading up to the 2008 financial crisis in the U.S.

Q: How did you discover your specific field of study?

A: For my bachelor’s degree, I double-majored in accounting and history at Furman University. I’ve always been fascinated with Buffet-style investing — buying durable businesses that will succeed in the long-term versus making short-term predictions that are usually volatile. Accounting provides the tools to analyze annual reports and determine the true financial health and value of publicly traded companies. I also wanted to diversify my skills for the job market, and it’s far easier to find employment with accounting than with history.

After graduating in 2025, I decided I wanted to try to merge my two interests, studying the history of financial disasters by relying on my experience in forensic accounting.

Q: Academics are problem-solvers. Describe a research challenge you’ve faced and how you overcame it.

A: The lack of literature on the 2008 financial crisis. I normally face a lot of skepticism when I refer to the 2008 financial crisis as “history” — it only happened 18 years ago, and it sometimes makes people mildly uncomfortable to see events they’ve lived through placed in a historical context. But whether something occurred 18 or 1,800 years ago, the true role of the historian is to analyze what happened, why it happened, how it connects to other historical ideas, and to shape how that historical reality is written in a way that is nuanced and factually accurate.

Right now, I just have access to annual reports, interviews and transcripts from CEOs. I will have to break a lot of new ground. Given the lack of literature on such a defining moment of the 21st century, I believe that thinking about the 2008 financial crisis in these terms is critical for society to understand what truly happened during the crash in a politically unbiased way. I hope that the research I produce can be used by people within the financial world to contextualize their understanding of financial risk through history.

Q: Describe your research in five words.

A: True history is about people.

Q: Who or what inspires you? Why?

A: My grandfather and my dad are my biggest inspirations. My grandfather gave everything to send my dad to be educated in the United States when he himself never received anything more than an elementary school education, and I can never thank my dad enough for enduring the hardships he faced so that I could have a better life here. I’m publishing a biography that will be released later this year about both of their journeys from China to the U.S.

Q: If you could pursue any other career, what would it be and why?

A: A jazz pianist. While history and finance are my biggest passions, Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack are another.

By UNC Research

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SERC trainees Perry Holtzclaw, Graciela Villalpando and Ben Travis (from left inside doorway) cut the ribbon at SERC’s launch event. (Photo by Jon Gardiner/University Communications and Marketing)

In front of a small crowd gathered around her research poster, chemistry Ph.D. candidate Jaeyoung Lee removes a button cell battery from a plastic case and shows how it can activate an LED light.

The prototype battery contains carbon-based materials that could be more sustainably manufactured than current lithium-ion batteries. Lee’s research on environmentally friendly batteries, conducted in the lab of assistant professor Megan Jackson, is partially supported by a seed funding award granted by Carolina’s Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and the North Carolina Collaboratory.

Jaeyoung Lee demonstrates her battery, made with help from SERC’s Battery Assembly and Testing Facility. (Photo by Jon Gardiner/UNC-Chapel Hill)

Beside Lee, postdoctoral fellow Graciela Villalpando describes Carolina’s new Battery Assembly and Testing Laboratory, which helped bring Lee’s design from theory into practice. In the facility, Villalpando and her colleagues help researchers make electrodes, build and test batteries and discover ways to improve their designs.

The facility and Creativity Hub project are both managed by the Sustainable Energy Research Consortium, based in the chemistry department within the UNC-Chapel Hill College of Arts and Sciences. The consortium recently hosted an event to celebrate the launch of these battery research activities and other initiatives.

“These projects are noteworthy because they bring together teams of investigators from across disciplines,” said Jim White, Craver Family Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, in remarks at the event. “They bridge fundamental science to applied science and engineering, and they represent new growth areas with the potential for … innovations that impact the lives of North Carolinians.”

The original iteration of SERC — called the Solar Energy Research Center — was founded in 2008 by professor emeritus Thomas Meyer (a special guest at the relaunch event). The center served as a hub for research, education and outreach related to solar energy. However, around 2020, its leaders began wondering if they could broaden their scope.

“We took a step back and said, ‘what do we want a UNC energy entity to do?’” said Alex Miller, a chemistry professor and the director of SERC since 2022. “We started germinating this idea of going bigger, going broader and covering the energy space more holistically.”

Two years of thoughtful planning led to the reincarnation of SERC under its current name, with a focus on sustainable energy. Now housed in newly renovated collaborative office space in Caudill laboratories, SERC has built an operating model based on three key pillars.

The first is the development and support of large, interdisciplinary teams. In addition to helping researchers find new collaborators across the University, SERC also helps large teams with the logistical challenges of applying for state and federal grants.

“When you’re writing a grant that involves 10 or more researchers, there are a lot of moving parts,” said Jillian Dempsey, a chemistry professor and director of the Center for Hybrid Approaches in Solar Energy and Liquid Fuels, which acts as a hub for solar energy researchers tackling complex problems in the field. “The Sustainable Energy Research Consortium lowers the barriers by providing substantial pre- and post-award support.”

SERC’s second pillar is the maintenance of shared core facilities that empower researchers to explore new avenues in sustainable energy.

The Battery Assembly and Testing Laboratory, for instance, was designed to lower the barriers to entry for scientists whose work might complement battery design research, but who don’t have the necessary tools or experience to break into the field. Instead of purchasing expensive equipment to develop their ideas, researchers can benefit from centralized tools and the expertise of facility staff.

SERC director Alex Miller (standing) shakes the hand of Thomas Meyer, who founded the original iteration of SERC in 2008. (Photo by Jon Gardiner/UNC-Chapel Hill)

“We realized we had specialists in these different aspects of chemistry that could be used to make a battery,” Miller said. “We didn’t have a place to help them build complete battery assemblies, so we built such a facility.”

The consortium’s support of bold new ideas extends beyond core facilities. They are also developing a seed grant program to fund high-risk, high-reward projects in the sustainable energy space.

SERC also seeks to advance sustainable energy field as a whole through its third pillar, connecting with the energy research community.

SERC has the resources to organize research meetings and conferences that position Carolina as a sustainable energy leader. In a state rich with natural resources such as lithium and sunlight, Miller and colleagues recognized the need to connect academic researchers with industry leaders to further new technologies.

As one example, SERC researchers partnered last year with professors in the department of economics to write an energy storage report outlining best practices, challenges and recommendations for policymakers to advance North Carolina’s energy storage landscape.

For Miller, supporting the field includes workforce development in the form of trainees like Lee and Villalpando. This year, SERC offered its first pair of fellowships to Ph.D. students, allowing them to assist with and gain experience in its core labs while pursuing energy-related thesis projects. SERC is also funding two undergraduate students this summer to undertake full-time research on sustainable energy projects.

“The consortium is intended to be a nexus where teams can come together and grow,” Miller said. “We want to empower Carolina’s energy innovators and give people what they need to do amazing things in the sustainable energy space.”

By Calley Jones

The post A new era for sustainable energy research appeared first on College of Arts and Sciences.

Hans Paerl (Submitted photo)

After a nearly 50-year career at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Hans W. Paerl, a world-renowned researcher and professor, was inducted into North Carolina’s Order of the Long Leaf Pine. As the highest honor bestowed by the governor of North Carolina, the award serves as a fitting bookend to a career recognized by peers as globally significant and defined by a transformative impact on the state’s critical ecosystems. Though Paerl retired in June 2025, his legacy will continue to make waves at Carolina and throughout the state for years to come.  

“Hans’s career generated an incredible volume of highly impactful work focused on understanding the causes, effects, and potential mitigation strategies for declining water quality and harmful algal blooms, both in North Carolina and globally. His fundamental and applied contributions to science are staggering, and his energy for translating his work to resource managers is equally remarkable,” wrote Mike Piehler, director of the UNC Institute for the Environment and chief sustainability officer at UNC-Chapel Hill, in his nomination letter.  

Paerl arrived at Carolina in 1978, just as the Clean Water Act was enacted. He dedicated the next five decades to understanding the causes, impacts and solutions for the state’s water quality issues—from headwaters to the coast. 

Two of his innovative observation programs, called ModMon and FerryMon, have underpinned the understanding of North Carolina coastal systems for more than three decades. 

ModMon monitors water quality at multiple sites along the Neuse River Estuary and supplies data for the state’s Department of Environmental Quality and in support of modeling various hydrologic scenarios. FerryMon uses North Carolina Department of Transportation ferry boats as “ships of opportunity” to collect samples to monitor water quality in the Neuse River Estuary and Pamlico Sound. FerryMon serves as an early warning system for identifying potentially harmful changes in the ecosystem and has become a model for automated monitoring of water ecosystems across the nation and internationally.  

Paerl was an early champion and member of the Carolina Environmental Program when it was formed in 1998, the CEP later became the UNC Institute for the Environment in 2007. During the early years, the CEP, in partnership with the College of Arts and Sciences, launched two degree programs for undergraduate students — a bachelor of science in environmental science and bachelor of arts in environmental studies. Paerl taught and mentored students in the CEP and through the program’s Morehead City Field Site, housed at UNC’s Institute of Marine Sciences (IMS).   

Paerl’s Atlantic Coast Environmental Indicators Consortium, funded by the U.S. EPA’s Science to Achieve Results and Estuarine and Great Lakes Program was one of CEP’s early projects—launching what would become a robust research portfolio for the organization. The consortium convened scientists from all over the East to monitor estuarine systems along the Atlantic coast and established a model for Paerl’s future large interdisciplinary programs.  

At Carolina, he earned the distinguished title of Kenan Professor of Marine and Environmental Sciences at IMS and held joint appointments in the department of earth, marine and environmental sciences in the College of Arts and Sciences and the department of environmental sciences and engineering at the Gillings School of Global Public Health.  

He authored more than 600 publications and has been cited more than 90,000 times.   

Paerl’s legacy also extends to those he mentored over his career. Many of his former students and postdocs came to Morehead City last summer to celebrate his career and share his ‘Paerls’ of wisdom, with one calling him her “science dad.”   

He spent his career at UNC-Chapel Hill teaching undergraduate and graduate students as well as numerous post-doctoral researchers, including Piehler, instilling in them the importance of protecting the world’s precious water resources, and reminding them that as a global human population, “we can survive without oil, but not safe drinking water,” Paerl said.   

Although he retired last summer, Paerl continues to be involved at IMS as a research professor, in his monitoring programs and in various advisory roles.  

The Order of the Long Leaf Pine, considered the state’s highest civilian honor, was first given in 1963 to recognize individuals who have provided extraordinary service to the state. See Paerl’s name and a full list of recipients on the website’s roster. 

By Emily Williams, Institute for the Environment

The post Paerl cements legacy in North Carolina history with Order of the Long Leaf Pine recognition appeared first on College of Arts and Sciences.

Lauren Jarvis

Lauren Jarvis, an associate professor of history in UNC-Chapel Hill’s College of Arts and Sciences, has been selected for a National Humanities Center summer residency to work on an individual humanities-related research project.

The NHC announced the appointment of 40 scholars for its summer residency program, recognizing leading humanists from universities and colleges in 19 U.S. states and India.

Jarvis, who also holds an adjunct appointment in the African, African American and diaspora studies department, studies the history of South Africa, with special interest in how people lived through and with extreme economic inequality. Her first book, A Prophet of the People (2024), explored religious change in South Africa during the country’s industrial revolution. Jarvis is also an editor of a forthcoming volume entitled Agency in African History and is completing a book about the global history of anti-apartheid, geared toward non-specialist audiences.

During her summer residency, Jarvis will be working on a book project that traces how South Africans shaped international debates about economic inequality in the 20th century.

Economic inequality is usually measured in statistics and numbers. Officials in South Africa’s government often pushed through misinformation and inaccurate data as part of their strategies of maintaining segregation and later apartheid. The book asks how South Africans worked around the absence of reliable data in a world where policymakers, government officials and international observers increasingly sought statistics to assess problems. Jarvis’ goal is to highlight South Africans’ creative contributions to international debates while considering some of the limits of metrics and measurement in our age of big data.

At Carolina, Jarvis teaches courses in South African, African and world history. She serves as the faculty director of the Lab at UNC History (LAUNCH), a digital humanities lab, and on the editorial boards of the journals Church History and Safundi.

The new scholars constitute the seventh class of summer residents since the NHC initiated the program in 2018.

“I am honored to welcome my first class of summer residents as director and president of the National Humanities Center,” said Blair LM Kelley. “Having been a summer resident myself in the past, I know well how much these scholars will gain from their time together here.”

The National Humanities Center is the world’s only independently funded institute dedicated exclusively to advanced study in the humanities.

Learn more about all of the fellows.

The post Jarvis selected for National Humanities Center summer residency appeared first on College of Arts and Sciences.

One Saturday Carter French was playing right field and scoring four runs in a 22-5 win against Duke.

A week later, the Carolina senior was taking the Medical College Admission Test on a rare Saturday off for the Diamond Heels during exam season.

No wonder his teammates on the No. 2 Carolina baseball team appreciate the senior walk-on for his on-field contributions and love calling him “doctor.”

Balancing high-level college baseball and a pre-med curriculum is the story of French’s time at UNC-Chapel Hill.

“I didn’t think that it was going to turn out the way it did,” French, a biology major and chemistry minor, said of his college experience.

For starters, he thought his playing days were over in high school. The spring of 2022, French picked Carolina over the University of Florida and University of Virginia — strictly for academics.

But after French won a high school state championship, the idea of that being his final game was unsettling. “This is going to be weird,” he thought.

French reached out to Carolina baseball head coach Scott Forbes, shared his high school stats and asked for a chance to walk on to the team.

“I’ll give you a locker for the fall. But I can’t promise you anything after that,” Forbes told French.

Four years later, French is approaching the end of a Tar Heel baseball career in which he’s contributed from start to finish.

French was a key reserve during his first season in 2023, stepping into the lineup when star center fielder Vance Honeycutt was injured. As a sophomore, he was part of a Tar Heel team that reached the 2024 College World Series.

Last season, French hit .280 and started the final 28 games in left field as Carolina became ACC champions. This year, he’s provided veteran leadership and strong defense to a Tar Heel team full of fresh faces.

Excelling athletically and academically

His first fall with the team, French quickly realized how high the level of play was. “Everyone was good,” he said.

There was a similar realization when going to class.

“People on campus in the classroom are honestly just as competitive as the athletes are here on the field,” said French, a 2025 ACC All-Academic Team member and a two-time recipient of the Bubba Cunningham Athletic Director’s Scholar-Athlete Award.

His Carolina courses have been worthwhile. French was “locked in” during each lecture in Gidi Shemer’s physiology course. This semester he enjoyed analytical chemistry with Todd Austell, who makes a tough subject “a bit more welcoming,” French said.

When French began shadowing doctors instead of focusing on summer ball, his teammates embraced the “Dr. French” nickname.

The bit has extended to the team’s X account, where a game-winning, over-the-fence catch by French against Clemson was called an “emergency extraction.”

“The ball bypasses the Cal defenders with surgical precision,” the account wrote to describe French’s first career triple.

To be clear, French knows he’s not a doctor yet. But he’s bullish on the career because it would be “challenging but very rewarding.”

Sort of like baseball.

Maybe that’s why he’s drawn to orthopedics as a potential specialty. He sees parallels between the batter’s box and the operating room, both places where you need to perform under pressure.

French and his fellow seniors made the walk from Boshamer Stadium following their May 9 win against Pittsburgh to nearby Kenan Stadium for Spring Commencement, an apt metaphor for French’s balancing act in Chapel Hill.

“The standard here is so high, whether it’s athletics or academics,” he said. “It definitely has pushed me to become a better version of myself because I’m held to a high standard by so many people here on campus.”

By Brennan Doherty, University Communications and Marketing

The post Meet Carolina baseball’s ‘doctor’ appeared first on College of Arts and Sciences.

Aristotle, once considered the father of biology, is recognized today as a central figure of Western ancient philosophy. Despite his empirical observations, Aristotle’s false claims and assumptions about women and women’s health create a complex image of the ancient philosopher.

A complicated image of Aristotle

Philosophy professor Mariska Leunissen doesn’t want to excuse or ignore these ideas, but insists on confronting them head-on. Leunissen argues that doing so will help us better understand how similar biases persists, even today.

“If we want to use Aristotle as a sort of paragon – as one of the greatest philosophers – and we want to preserve some of his theories, we ought to reckon with the dark spots as well,” said Leunissen.

Her engagement with Aristotle is not just academic, but reflective of her internal struggles. “I spend all my time trying to understand this guy who thinks that as a foreign woman, I am inferior and cannot be happy, cannot be virtuous.”

Leunissen’s most recent monograph examines Aristotle’s views on women, including the scientific falsehoods he perpetuated.

This encouraged Leunissen to think about how Aristotle learned about women. This culminated in Leunissen’s third monograph, Aristotle’s Gynecology: Facts, Evidence and Early Medicine, published last year by Oxford University Press.

Aristotle believed that women were inferior by nature and therefore could not become fully virtuous, and though many of his scientific claims and observations about women are empirically correct, his works also include several that are false, some of them obviously so. Often relying on secondhand reports of early medical texts for phenomena tied to female sex and bodies, Aristotle would not always independently verify information. This oversight led to his claims that women had fewer teeth than men, or that when menstruating women looked into a mirror, the mirror turned red.

This creates a complicated image of Aristotle. On one hand, he believed in authoritative observations to explain natural phenomena, and that when we can’t observe phenomena ourselves, that we rely on other scientific methods a credible truth. On the other hand, Aristotle himself often relied on incorrect reports from early medical writers about gynecological phenomena and accepted the contemporary view about the biological inferiority of women without scrutinizing it. This paradox is one that Leunissen also grapples with.

“I want to understand why he had these views, and then maybe I can understand better our own world,” she said.

Bringing ancient philosophy to the modern campus

Leunissen’s work in the classroom reflects her commitment to make philosophy more inclusive, accessible, and engaging. Early in her career, she taught ancient philosophy traditionally, through the lens of canonical texts and a focus on metaphysics and epistemology.

More recently, with support from the Chapman Family Teaching Award, Leunissen has redesigned her courses to revolve around themes that resonate more directly with students’ lives, including love, friendship, and family, and that include the perspectives of women and non-Greeks in the ancient world. This has allowed her to introduce more diverse voices like Sappho and treat her account of love alongside that of Empedocles, noting the evident absence of texts written by women in ancient philosophy.

These conversations invite students to connect texts of Plato and Aristotle to contemporary concerns and experiences. The ancient philosophers ask what love can do, a contrast to the hate we see in today’s political climate. “What would it cost us? What does it take for us to see other people in our community as friends or as family?”

The Chapman Award has also supported the development of a new lecture series, intended to be an interdisciplinary discussion to rethink how ancient philosophy is taught. Scholars in adjacent fields like political science and history would engage in pedagogical lectures – not only presenting their research in their respective sectors, but also how less familiar texts can be integrated into their classes, all with the goal of “expanding the canon.”

Looking ahead, Leunissen is already developing future projects. One book explores Aristotle’s “natural” concepts of love and friendship-relationships, such as those between parents and children, or enslavers and the enslaved. She also plans to continue her research on how women’s emotions, sleep, and the concept of aging have been represented in ancient philosophy.

Across her research and teaching Aristotle, one idea persists: unbridled curiosity.

“Even if you make mistakes, you should push to expand your knowledge and not settle,” said Leunissen. “You run into obstacles and you come up with creative ways to overcome them.”

By Victoria Yang, Institute for the Arts and Humanities

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