Faculty News

Butler named 2024 UMaine Distinguished Professor

A long-time educator and leader in social work, whose research and advocacy influenced state and federal policy, has been named the 2024 Distinguished Maine Professor, the University of Maine’s most prestigious faculty accolade. Sandra Butler, professor and director of the School of Social Work, will be honored at the Alumni Achievement Awards Dinner and Celebration, alongside […]

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Brain injury detection patent

This story was written by Renee Kelly for Medical Press. The University of Maine was recently issued a patent, US 10,244,977, for a device that detects brain injury by measuring sleep movement patterns. This technology will be licensed by Activas Diagnostics, a UMaine spin-off company. The invention is a fitted mattress sheet equipped with more than […]

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UMaine names 2017 Presidential Award winners

A forensics researcher on the front lines of the drug abuse crisis in Maine and nationwide, the founder of UMaine’s nationally recognized Writing Center and an international expert on El Niño will receive the University of Maine’s top annual faculty awards. Research Professor Marcella Sorg will receive the 2017 Presidential Public Service Achievement Award; Professor […]

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Anthropocene mineralogy and the dawn of a new geological epoch

There are roughly 5,200 officially recognized minerals on planet Earth according to the International Mineralogical Association (IMA). Two of which — Edgrewite and hydroxyledgrewite — are named after University of Maine mineralogist and petrologist Edward Grew. Grew, a research professor in the School of Earth and Climate Sciences, has studied and helped discover new minerals […]

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Jacquelyn Gill leaning over table with fossils

Gill examines plants encased in tar pits to reconstruct ice age ecosystem

For tens of thousands of years, the warm, sticky natural asphalt that occasionally bubbled to the Earth’s surface in the area now called Los Angeles was a death sentence for some ice age animals. Woolly mammoths, camels, rabbits, horses, bison, sloths, rodents, snails, turtles, birds and saber-toothed cats perished after becoming mired in the liquid […]

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Professor examines 100 years of rural education research

What can you learn by studying 100 years of academic writing about rural education in the United States? For Catharine Biddle, assistant professor of educational leadership at the University of Maine, it’s this: the more things change, the more they stay the same. “If you look at the case we follow, it’s like the conversations […]

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melting glaciers

NASA technology key to Boss’ exploration of polar phytoplankton dynamics

Free-floating ocean phytoplankton, often too small to be seen without a microscope, are a big deal. The tiny marine plants consume carbon dioxide and produce half of all the oxygen molecules that people and animals breathe. And, as the base of the ocean food web, they’re nourishment for zooplankton, fish, seabirds and whales. To gain […]

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Dean Astumian in front of chalkboard

Astumian named AAAS Fellow

University of Maine Professor of Physics R. Dean Astumian has been named a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). His selection brings the number of full-time UMaine faculty members named AAAS Fellows to 10. Annually, AAAS, the world’s largest scientific society, recognizes researchers who advance scientifically or socially distinguished science. […]

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