Zhenli He, professor and associate director at the UF Indian River Research and Education Center in southeastern Florida, studies the impact of industrial agriculture on soil quality and the environment and how new fertilizing practices can help farmers grow crops more sustainably.

William Hogan is the director of the biomedical informatics division at the College of Medicine. He specializes in medical informatics, a field focused on making medical data accessible to clinicians and scientists to improve patient care.

Brian Hoh, professor in the UF College of Medicine and chair of the Lillian S. Wells Department of Neurosurgery, is a surgeon-scientist specializing in the study and treatment of strokes – especially brain aneurysms, which are weak spots on blood vessels whose rupture leads to deadly bleeding in the brain.

Corinne Huggins-Manley is a psychometrician – in other words, a testing expert. Her research focuses on developing new methods to help educators account for nuanced data points that can’t be directly measured through observations, such as a student’s level of engagement or motivation to learn. The tools she develops can help instructors meet students’ individual needs and improve long-term learning outcomes.

Lea Johnston, professor at UF’s Fredric G. Levin College of Law, specializes in the relationship between mental illness and crime. Johnston’s work challenges the idea that mental illness causes crime, and instead points to networks of associated risk factors, such as unemployment and substance abuse, that have been scientifically linked to criminal behavior.

Peter B. Kang, a professor of pediatrics at UF’s College of Medicine, studies genetic “mystery mutations” that underlie inherited neuromuscular diseases, a group of rare illnesses that target the spinal cord, nerves and muscles and often begin in childhood. His findings help solve genetically undiagnosed cases, resulting in more effective treatment plans for patients. Also the chief of UF’s Division of Pediatric Neurology, Kang is a physician-scientist whose expertise spans medical research and clinical work.

W. Robert Knechel, Frederick E. Fisher Eminent Scholar in Accounting at UF’s Warrington College of Business and certified public accountant, specializes in accuracy. After graduating from the University of Delaware in 1977, curiosity led Knechel to pursue a Ph.D. in accounting from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. When he arrived at UF in 1981, researchers had been seriously studying financial accountability for little more than a decade.

Jatinder Lamba, professor in the College of Pharmacy’s Department of Pharmacotherapy and Translational Research, studies how variations in a cancer patient’s genome influence their response to different treatments. Understanding why certain drugs work for some patients but not others requires close examination of the “molecular landscape” of leukemic cells, Lamba said, which can help clinicians hone in on precise targets for chemotherapies and predict how a patient will respond to them.

David Leavitt, professor and internationally acclaimed novelist, was first published in the New Yorker a year before graduating with a bachelor’s degree in English from Yale University. Since then, Leavitt – also co-director of UF’s creative writing program – has published nearly 20 books, and his work has been translated into 22 languages. Leavitt’s next novel, Shelter in Place, is about the months after the 2016 election and will be available in the U.S. in October 2020.

George Michailidis, professor of statistics at the University of Florida, specializes in developing methods to accurately model data across scientific disciplines. His expertise enables scientists to perform complex analyses of vast datasets to gain insights and draw new conclusions. Michailidis’ collaborators specialize in a variety of disciplines and include biologists, economists, epidemiologists and engineers.