To celebrate their graduation from UVA, student producers Katie Nichols and Reeya Verma interviewed four exceptional Hoos in STEM. They welcome astrophysicist, historian, and Rhodes Scholar Sam Crowe; neuroscientist and President of the Raven Society, Campbell Coleman; mathematician and Marshall Scholar Catherine Cossaboom; and computational biologist and Davis Prize for Peace awardee Deniz Olgun. Congratulations to these fantastic four and to all of UVA’s accomplished Class of 2025!

This Spring, UVA welcomed the Story Collider team back to Charlottesville for the third year running. During a special recording at Carr's Hill, four UVA STEM leaders told personal stories about their lives, their careers, and how personal stories and scientific inquiry intertwine.

We hope you'll head over to Story Collider to hear from Scott Acton, Chair of UVA's Chair of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, and Stephanie Rowley, Dean of the School of Education and Human Development; and Hoos in STEM is very excited to share the other two stories from some the event. Here's Bill Petri, the Chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases and International Health at UVA, and Kathryn Thornton a retired astronaut and Professor Emerita at UVA in the School of Engineering and Applied Science.

The Story Collider's mission is to reveal the vibrant role that science plays in all of our lives through the art of personal storytelling.

Check out all the Story Collider episodes: https://www.storycollider.org/podcast

In this episode, we’re diving into the groundbreaking research of UVA’s 2024 Edlich-Henderson Innovators of the Year: Professors Silvia Blemker and Craig Meyer from the Department of Biomedical Engineering. Their award-winning work is revolutionizing the way we analyze MRI data, creating 3D visualizations of musculature and providing insights that could transform athletic recovery. Whether you’re recovering from injury or optimizing performance, their work offers a new path to maximize recovery for all.

Three faculty members of the UVA School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, James (Jimmy) Burns, Coleen Carrigan, and Liheng Cai, join the show to discuss their research and the path that led them to become honorees of the Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers. The PECASE Award is the highest honor bestowed by the U.S. government on outstanding scientists and engineers beginning their independent careers. From studying the culture within engineering, redefining our understanding of biomaterials, to assessing the integrity of space stations, it all has a home at the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

How can we ensure that the AI we build is trustworthy? Responsible? An agent of the great and good, even as their rapidly increasing capabilities continue to astonish us? Thanks to the generous support of UVA Darden alum David LaCross, the LaCross Institute for Ethical AI in Business at Darden has been created to address these very concerns. We invited the Institute’s co-directors, Professors of Business Administration Yael Grushka-Cockayne and Rajkumar Venkatesan, to discuss the future of this inspiring new initiative, and how they came from unconventional backgrounds to bear the torch of ethical considerations amidst rapid technological innovation.

Scientists have begun to leverage the power of AI to help us better understand the formation and dynamics of the universe. Paul Torrey is a computational astrophysicist with a research focus on the formation and evolution of our cosmos. Torrey’s research group builds, runs, and analyzes large-scale cosmological simulations that allow us to examine in a new way our assumption of the universe.

Only about a decade ago did scientists discover the immense potential of leveraging the immune system to combat neurodegenerative diseases. Professor of Neuroscience John Lukens played an integral part in that movement, and he continues to push the field forward today as the inaugural director of UVA’s Harrison Family Translational Research Center in Alzheimer’s and Neurodegenerative Diseases.