A sampling of outstanding research by faculty

Because the College of Arts and Sciences is so comprehensive and diverse, the research conducted by its faculty is wide-ranging, whether in the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, or mathematical sciences.

Below we offer some examples of outstanding current research and scholarship; the examples here are merely representative of the breadth of outstanding research being performed. To do greater justice to the range and diversity of Arts and Sciences research, we have asked faculty members to list some of their accomplishments. Links to the faculty accomplishments in the various disciplines are listed below.

UNL, Madonna to collaborate on research on rehabilitation methods, May 2007
UNL psychology professor Will Spaulding has received a grant from the National Institutes of Health to collaborate with Madonna Rehabilitation Center and a number of other partners in research on the links between psychiatric and physical rehabilitation methods. The three-year, $877,652 project will bring together researchers in psychiatric rehabilitation, experts in mathematical modeling, computer science and psychology, a psychologist researcher in physical rehabilitation, an experimental psychologist, and an expert in consumer interests and perspectives. Collaborators hail from UNL, Madonna, the University of Southern California, Yale, and the Mental Health Center of Lancaster County, which will enable researchers to study clinical decision making in a community setting, as well as in hospital settings.

Family donates hundreds of Willa Cather letters to UNL, January 2007
A new collection containing a large amount of Willa Cather's personal correspondence was recently donated to UNL. The collection of more than 350 letters is the largest ever donated and triples the University Archives' collection of Cather letters. The correspondence also opens new doors to Cather's life.

"The letters and other materials donated are previously unknown resources for Cather scholars to study. I firmly believe that the Roscoe and Meta Cather Collection will change the face of Cather scholarship, and the University Libraries are honored to be entrusted with the materials," said Katherine Walter, chair of Digital Initiatives and Special Collections and co-chair of the Center for Digital Research in the Humanities at UNL.

ANDRILL project breaks Antarctic drilling record, December 2006
The Antarctic Geological Drilling (ANDRILL) Program drilled to a new record depth of 1,000 meters below the seafloor from the site on the Ross Ice Shelf near Scott Base in Antarctica Dec. 16. The depth made ANDRILL the most successful Antarctic drilling program in terms of depth and rock core recovered, breaking the previous record of 999.1 meters set in 2000 by the Ocean Drilling Program's drill ship, the Joides Resolution.

Self-assembling nano-ice discovered at UNL; structure resembles DNA, December 2006
Working at the frontier between chemistry and physics, UNL's Xiao Cheng Zeng and his colleagues regularly find new and often unanticipated behaviors of matter in extreme environments, and those discoveries have been published several times in major international scientific journals. Their findings, though, have been so far ahead of existing technology that their immediate practical impact was essentially nil -- until now.

Zeng and two members of his UNL team recently found double helixes of ice molecules that resemble the structure of DNA and self-assemble under high pressure inside carbon nanotubes. This discovery could have major implications for scientists in other fields who study the protein structures that cause diseases such as Alzheimer's and bovine spongiform encephalitis (mad cow disease). It could also help guide those searching for ways to target or direct self-assembly in nanomaterials and predict the kind of ice future astronauts will find on Mars and moons in the solar system. Zeng, post-doctoral student Jaeil Bai and doctoral candidate Jun Wang reported their findings in the Dec. 11-15 online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

UNL research funding increased to $98.3 million in 2005
External funding for University of Nebraska-Lincoln research has doubled since 2000. UNL's total external research funding, which includes all funds awarded for university research projects, totaled $98.3 million for the fiscal year that ended in June. Of that, $70.7 million came from federal sources, including the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, U.S. Department of Agriculture, U.S. Department of Education and other agencies. Total sponsored programs funding, which includes funding for research and other activities such as instruction, public service, administration, and student services, increased to $157.8 million in the same period.

Computing resources to be tapped for physics research
UNL will assume a major role in the most important particle physics experiment of the decade when it becomes a “Tier 2” computing site for the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) project. In a collaborative effort, the Department of Computer Science and Engineering and the Department of Physics and Astronomy have secured funding for a major expansion of the Research Computing Facility. The expanded computing power of the facility will be directed primarily towards research in high-energy particle physics, but researchers throughout UNL will benefit from the increased capabilities.

Grant to aid program in drought research
More than $7 million in new federal funding will finance further refinement of UNL-based Web tools to help agricultural producers and others nationwide to monitor drought impacts and manage its risks. The three-year partnership agreements are between the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Risk Management Agency, UNL's Department of Computer Science and Engineering and the UNL-based National Drought Mitigation Center.

Nebraska Center for Virology studies HIV
One of Nebraska's premier research centers has received a second multi-million dollar grant from the National Institutes of Health. The Nebraska Center for Virology has received $10.6 million, which will support the center over the next five years.

The new grant allows the center's researchers to further studies in how pathogens, especially HIV, human herpes viruses, human papilloma virus and prions (microscopic protein particles similar to viruses), cause disease, interact with hosts and are transmitted. The goal is to find ways to treat and prevent infections.

NSF grant to join math, biology students in research projects
A four-year National Science Foundation grant of $710,970 will enable the creation of interdisciplinary teams of select students in mathematics and biology to conduct research into projects of interest to both fields of study. The project will focus on field research and mathematical modeling in ecology and population dynamics. The project will build on progress already made at UNL in creating courses that integrate math and biology subjects.

Whitman Archive work boosted by humanities grant
The National Endowment for the Humanities awarded a $500,000 "We the People Challenge Grant" to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln to support the Walt Whitman Archive. Kenneth Price, Hillegass Chair of 19th Century American Literature and professor of English at UNL and co-director of the Whitman Archive, is principal investigator on the challenge grant. The Whitman Archive is an electronic research and teaching tool that makes Whitman's huge body of work easily and conveniently accessible to scholars, students, and general readers.