From left, Julie Carrier, head of UTIA’s biosystems engineering and soil science; Taylor Eighmy, vice chancellor for research and engagement; Sindhu Jagadamma; UT Chancellor Beverly Davenport; Rachel Patton McCord; Dan Roberts, head of the Department of Biochemistry and Cellular and Molecular Biology; and Theresa Lee, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences.

UT’s Sindhu Jagadamma and Rachel Patton McCord are recipients of the 2017 Ralph E. Powe Junior Faculty Enhancement Award from Oak Ridge Associated Universities (ORAU).

Chancellor Beverly Davenport recently presented plaques to Jagadamma, assistant professor of biosystems engineering and soil science in the UT Institute of Agriculture, and McCord, assistant professor of biochemistry and cellular and molecular biology, in recognition of the honor.

“Often funding agencies require extensive preliminary data, effectively asking that a project be halfway done before funding it,” said McCord. “This can make things difficult for junior faculty who are just getting projects off the ground, but early support like this Powe Award can give projects momentum to be more competitive for extensive funding later.”
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Izabella Nill Gomez, Taryn Lester, and Ashlee Tannehill are working in the lab of Keerthi Krishnan, assistant professor of biochemistry and cellular and molecular biology.

They are among more than 1,400 UT undergraduates involved in research. Between 2015 and 2016 the number of UT undergraduates doing research more than doubled and the number of faculty mentors increased 87 percent.

Rett syndrome is an autism-associated disorder that primarily affects girls and women. It is not inherited but results from a random, spontaneous gene mutation. It leads to several impairments that impact nearly every aspect of life, including the ability to speak, walk, eat, and breathe easily.

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As departments around campus began wrapping up the spring semester and preparing for finals, the Office of Undergraduate Research made some special surprise deliveries to a few faculty members. The first Undergraduate Research Faculty Mentor of the Year Awards were hand delivered to University of Tennessee, Knoxville faculty members that demonstrated an outstanding commitment to mentoring undergraduate researchers during the 2015-2016 academic year.
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Maitreyi Das, an assistant professor in UT’s Department of Biochemistry and Cellular and Molecular Biology.

Scientists and clinicians often encounter road blocks in designing specific treatments for diseases like cancer or developmental disorders because proteins that regulate cell functions through complex mechanisms are misunderstood.

A researcher at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, has discovered a novel aspect of a fundamental cellular process that could be a key to overcoming that barrier.
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Supercomputing simulations led by a joint UT-Oak Ridge National Laboratory team could change how researchers understand the internal motions of proteins that play functional, structural and regulatory roles in all living organisms. The team’s results are featured in Nature Physics.
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