Mariola Ferraro strives to make a positive impact on public health by developing therapies and preventive approaches against Gram-negative infections. Such infections resist multiple treatments, including most available antibiotics.

Tim Townsend’s solid- and hazardous waste management research has had monumental impacts on local and national policymaking. Throughout his nearly 30-year tenure at the UF, Townsend has received over $13 million in research funding from national, state and local government agencies. His research concentrates on sustainable materials management, waste treatment, recycling, and waste characterization.

Professor Jalie A. Tucker is a nationally and internationally recognized leader in the field of addiction, substance use, and applied behavioral economic research. With a distinguished career marked by more than 135 peer-reviewed publications and book chapters as well as co-authoring or editing four books, she has made significant contributions to the field. Notably, in the past five years alone, she has authored 35 impactful, peer-reviewed articles in leading journals. She has also served on the editorial board of several specialty journals in her field, including as senior advisor for the preeminent journal Addiction.

Olivier Walther has spent years studying African geopolitics with a focus on cross-border trade and the emergence of transnational political violence in West Africa. His work has had a palpable impact on the region’s people and organizations.

In Florida, growers are reeling from the extensive damage to their crop by citrus greening disease. From his lab and experimental fields at Lake Alfred – in the heart of Florida’s citrus belt – Nian Wang studies ways to prevent further harm to the state’s signature crop.

Mingyi Xie is recognized as a national and international leader in non-coding, RNA-mediated gene regulation. Since joining UF in 2016, his lab has focused on normal regulation and misregulation of microRNA levels and modifications of small nuclear RNAs.

Lily Elefteriadou has made significant contributions to advances in the transportation sector. An international leader in transportation engineering, her research focuses on groundbreaking work in critical areas such as signal control optimization, highway capacity analysis and traffic management using advanced transportation technologies. Elefteriadou’s work has contributed extensively to understanding and managing transportation systems.

Kenneth Kidd is an internationally recognized expert on children’s literature and how the books read by kids and young adults influence lives and cultures. His work delves into the intersections between children’s literature and psychology, philosophy, critical theory, environmental studies, gender and sexuality. Kidd recently began examining all of those aspects within a Floridian context. He has also explored fanfiction, digitization and the question of what makes a literary classic.

Lisa Scott is dedicated to better understanding how the human brain works. In particular, her research concentrates on how the brain and behavior develop during infancy and the ways the adult brain changes with learning.

Adrienne Strong has spent her career studying the conditions and dynamics of care in biomedical health facilities. That research interest propelled her to become a leader in the field of medical anthropology, aiming to address prominent social issues in the field of medicine.