One of the field sites for Jennifer Schweitzer’s research lies in a grove of trees near Yellowstone National Park.

Sometimes a researcher can search far and wide for the perfect collaborator, only to discover the ideal person in their own academic backyard.

Such was the case for Jennifer Schweitzer, professor in ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Tennessee (UT), and Wellington Muchero, a plant geneticist in the Biosciences Division at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). They met about a year ago at a SPARKS event sponsored by UT’s Office of Research and Engagement (ORE).

Jered Sprecher, a professor in the University of Tennessee’s School of Art, describes his artwork as existing in the “sliver of space between abstraction and representation.”

“I look to the lived daily experience of the present coupled with the artifacts of the past. My work compresses time into the surface of painting, that old technology. Increasingly flora, fauna, and natural phenomena hold my attention, as I wrestle with this imagery that we daily experience through our technology,” he says.

When Jim Coder, assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical, Aerospace and Biomedical Engineering, arrived at the University of Tennessee in August 2016, he brought with him an idea for a $10 million research project currently being funded by NASA’s University Leadership Initiative (ULI).

As a clinical nurse, Sharon Davis saw women who suffered from substance use disorder vilified by their doctors. She didn’t yet know about the science of addiction, but she knew that didn’t feel right.

Davis, a clinical associate professor of nursing, and Laurie Meschke, professor of public health, are leading an effort to address opioid abuse disorder (OUD) in rural East Tennessee. Their interdisciplinary team successfully pursued funding from the US Department of Health and Human Services’ Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) twice.

Their Rural Communities Opioid Response Program-East Tennessee Consortium (RCORP-ETC), was created from a collaboration that started with a SPARKS (Seeking Partnerships for Research, Knowledge, and Science) event hosted by the Office of Research and Engagement’s research development group.