In a significant contribution to research, teaching and engagement at UNC Charlotte, faculty in the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences in 2015 published 30 scholarly and creative books that represented subjects as diverse as the College itself.

Most of the books are intended primarily for classroom use or as resources for further research, while several of the books are intended for general audiences.

Faculty published books containing collections of essays and research findings on a variety of topics including bioethics and biopolitics, the science of meetings, religion in a post-sacred society, second language learning, Spanish for the professions, medieval romance, and reading and teaching early modern English texts.

Other books faculty wrote or edited included:

• Textbooks covering global gender studies, scattered field imaging, understanding psychology, and French language films.
• A collection of short stories focused on home, set in urban and rural Arizona.
• A poetry collection.
• A study of pop music, feminism and neoliberalism.
• A narrative on the cultural elements and theoretical foundations of human evolution.
• A book about the importance of recycling to the British war effort during World War II.
• Two books about India, with one examining how railways shaped colonial India and the second considering imperialism in New Delhi in the early 20th century.
• A publication addressing Walt Disney’s literary inspirations.
• A co-edited book on desegregation and resegregation in Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools.
• A co-edited publication covering spatial analysis in health geography.

Faculty in the Department of English had six books on the list, while the Departments of History and Philosophy had five books each. The Departments of Religious Studies and Languages & Culture Studies each had three books and the Departments of Psychology and Sociology had two books each.

Additionally, 90 CLAS faculty participated as a Principal Investigator or Co-PI on one or more research awards received by the College in Fiscal Year 2015. CLAS grant awards of over $10.5 million accounted for over 20 percent of the total external award funding received by the University in FY 2015. Awards were received from 73 different external sponsors. National Science Foundation remains the College’s leading funder with 14 awards, with the U.S. Department of Defense agencies second with 12 awards, and the National Institutes of Health third with nine awards.

The College hosted a reception honoring the faculty in December 2015.

UNC Charlotte’s Master of Science in Mathematical Finance program has been ranked No. 20 in the nation in the 2016 Master of Financial Engineering Program Rankings.

This is the third national ranking for the Mathematical Finance program, marking an improvement from last year’s ranking at No. 25. The rankings by The Financial Engineer are calculated based on a series of factors, including average GRE scores, starting salaries and bonuses, undergraduate GPA, acceptance rates, and the number of employed graduates.

UNC Charlotte’s Mathematical Finance program was developed in collaboration between the Departments of Finance and Economics in the Belk College of Business and the Department of Mathematics and Statistics in the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences. Located in the second largest financial center in the U.S., the program is designed to prepare students with the quantitative skills to pursue careers in finance.

“The Mathematical Finance program continues to earn recognition as an outstanding program that is competitive at the national level,” said Yuanan Diao, chair of the Department of Mathematics and Statistics. “Students learn from faculty in the three departments and also benefit from strong partnerships with leading companies and alumni in the region.”

The program is designed to prepare students to pursue careers in finance. Increasingly, financial institutions, investment banks, and commodities firms rely upon highly sophisticated mathematical models to identify, measure, and manage risk. These models require professionals with extensive skills in both finance and mathematics. Students take courses from all three departments in an integrated curriculum and may use electives to tailor the program to their specific interests.

The Financial Engineer publishes the most comprehensive rankings for financial engineering, financial mathematics, quantitative finance, computational finance, and mathematical finance graduate programs in the United States.

UNC Charlotte’s Master of Science in Mathematical Finance program ranked No. 24 in the QuantNet 2015 Rankings of Best Financial Engineering Program.

This is the second national ranking for the Mathematical Finance program, which currently enrolls more than 100 students.  The rankings are calculated based on a series of factors, including placement success, student selectivity, an employer survey score, as well as as a peer assessment score.

Located in the second largest financial center in the U.S., UNC Charlotte’s Mathematical Finance program is a joint program of the Departments of Finance and Economics in the Belk College of Business and the Department of Mathematics and Statistics in the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences.

The 2015 QuantNet ranking is the most comprehensive ranking to date of master programs in Financial Engineering (MFE), Mathematical Finance in North America. With 30 programs selected for the 2015 rankings, QuantNet surveyed program administrators, hiring managers and quantitative finance professionals from financial institutions around the world for statistics reflecting student selectivity and graduate employment.

The Master of Science in Mathematical Finance program is designed to prepare students to pursue careers in finance. Increasingly, financial institutions, investment banks, and commodities firms rely upon highly sophisticated mathematical models to identify, measure, and manage risk. These models require professionals with extensive skills in both finance and mathematics.

Students take courses from all three departments in an integrated curriculum and may use electives to tailor the program to their specific interests.

The two colleges began collaborating on the program in 2003. Together, the two colleges have designed this program to develop a highly specialized focus in response to the increasingly complex financial series industry. Industry leaders have been actively involved in ensuring that the curriculum provides students with the essential knowledge needed to success in the fast-paced financial arena.

Dust motes drift in a shaft of sunshine, tumbling through the air in a seemingly aimless way. Yet, these apparently insignificant specks hold fundamental meaning for UNC Charlotte optical scientist Michael Fiddy.

Fiddy conducts complex research in super-resolution imaging – or optical imaging beyond the diffraction limit of light, and in metamaterial design – or the precise design of composite materials with properties not found in nature.  

Even a small speck of dust might be composed of different materials and have a shape that makes it an interesting resonant scattering object over some part of the electromagnetic spectrum. Resonant electromagnetic responses are the key to engineering new materials with unusual optical properties. As Fiddy works to advance these revolutionary fields, he finds himself reconnecting with the basics.

 “I can’t look at a speck of dust without thinking about it being an electrical circuit,” says Fiddy, a professor of physics and optical science and of electrical and mechanical engineering. 

“It’s a resonant circuit at some frequency, as even a speck of dust will have some distinct electromagnetic scattering properties,” he says. “Now, how do I shape and organize properties like these to make better or fundamentally new materials that I need for next generation applications? More importantly, how to I design and fabricate these small structures to have exactly the properties I want?”

The engineered metamaterials with which Fiddy works show extraordinary optical or acoustical properties, including negative index of refraction, ability to harvesting  or trap light, reciprocal properties and anomalous transmission. 

 “There’s a pretty large cohort of scientists globally now in this space recognizing that by digging a bit deeper into the fundamentals, we can understand light-matter interactions more profoundly and in a more useful way that will enable us to design new generations of man-made materials for future technology development that will have a major impact,” Fiddy says.

Fiddy’s research at UNC Charlotte initially centered on the imaging side, aligned with his service as the founding director of UNC Charlotte’s Center for Optoelectronics and Optical Communications from 2002 to 2010. 

He and colleagues developed algorithms they found had implications for metamaterial research. “One of the projects we focused a lot of attention on was developing new materials to help you image things with higher resolution, such as a superlens that allows imaging with greater precision,” he says. “That’s what led to me getting involved in these artificial or engineered materials.”

The ongoing theme of most of the work now centers on understanding how to better code information onto light waves and then decode it using these engineered materials, to see objects or transform how they appear, he says.

“We’ve worked on modeling how microwaves or light interact with structures to try to determine what those structures are,” he says. “Some of the work has led to us realizing that if we can make measurements from some object that let us figure out what that object was, then we can design objects that lead to certain scattering  measurements, that lead to certain observations that we want.”

As they engineer the materials, the researchers determine how the material behaves when they illuminate it. They use that data to refine the engineering design process to further modify the material’s properties.

“We’re continually going through this loop of modeling how light interacts with and propagates through engineered structures and then figuring out from how it responds and how to engineer or make something better that does what I want it to more effectively,” Fiddy says.

With the metamaterial design process, scientists can create artificial materials that at optical frequencies rather than lower frequency microwaves necessarily includes engineering structures with features on the nanoscale.

Fiddy received $542,662 in funding from the DOD DA Army Research Office for a Nanoscribe 3D printer for the fabrication of nano structures, especially those designed as metamaterials for use in the Infrared range. This fabrication tool will assist with developing inverse methods for improved metamaterial designs and will also be used to experiment with low refractive index polymers as the printing medium.

In his four decades of research, Fiddy has published two books, 14 book chapters, over 150 articles and 360 conference papers.  He has been editor-in-chief of the journal Waves in Random and Complex Media since Jan 1996 (Taylor and Francis Publisher).  He is a Fellow of the OSA, IOP and SPIE and Deputy Editor of OSA’s Photonics Research Journal, and is on the OSA’s Board of Directors. He also has been awarded millions in research dollars.

As his research interests broadened, Fiddy stepped down as director of the Center for Optoelectronics and Optical Communications and in 2011 became the founding site director for the National Science Foundation-funded Industry/University Center for Metamaterials. This center also includes Clarkson University and industry and government partners who work together on projects of common interest.

The center, and Fiddy’s lab, involve a range of students in the work. He also brings insights from his research into the classroom. 

“Professor Fiddy’s work is a synthesis of advanced theoretical concepts and practical fabrication of three-dimensional structures and represents the cutting edge of the field of metamaterials,” says Glenn Boreman, chair of the Department of Physics and Optical Science. “A very significant aspect of his research is that it energizes his classroom teaching, continually bringing in fresh examples to motivate and illustrate the concepts presented.”

While Fiddy sees that some people feel unsettled by the creation of materials that do not occur in the natural world, he feels no such discomfort.

“We are at a point where we certainly are going to continue to develop increasingly impressive technology,” he says. “We’re going to be able to do more and more.  For example, if I want a kind of Star Trek handheld viewer that I can wave over me, and that allows me to see inside my body, I can imagine a way to do that with these wave imaging algorithms and these new materials.”

“We are rethinking the most basic concepts and the most fundamental concepts we learned as students. By revisiting them and understanding them in a more profound way, we gain new insights.” he says. “When you get down into this region of light-matter interactions with features that are at the nanoscale, there is a lot we don’t yet understand. It’s very exciting.”

NOTE: This story first appeared in the print edition of the College’s magazine Exchange in 2015.

Words and Images: Lynn Roberson | Top Image: Michael Fiddy creates metamaterials, which do not occur in the natural world.

Honeybee colonies continue to disappear because of a mysterious condition called Colony Collapse Disorder, which threatens pollination and influences the world’s food supply.

The decline has stimulated an enormous body of research to understand the reasons behind the decline of bee populations. UNC Charlotte’s Stan Schneider and colleagues are exploring how honeybees communicate, with potential implications for honeybee health.

“I’ve always been interested in the evolution of social behavior and how solitary animals have evolved to live in social groups and especially the very complex societies like honeybees and human societies,” said Schneider, a professor in the Department of Biological Sciences.

“Initially I was more focused on individual communication signals that were used to coordinate specific activities, and now I’m more interested in the global process of decision making in insect colonies and how hundreds or thousands of individuals interact to generate a group level response that’s adaptive,” he said.

“In other words, I am looking at how a group makes a decision and how interactions among individuals generate this group level decision in an adaptive manner. Of course, what natural selection will act upon is the consequence of those decisions. And so, selection is acting at the level of the colony, not just the level of the individual.”

His lab researches the communication signals that regulate and adjust colony activities in response to changing conditions. He explores something called the waggle dance to determine how it is used to regulate colony-level foraging activity and movement.

The lab also studies the role of the vibration signal in regulating cooperative activities within colonies. The research has determined that the signal functions as a type of modulatory communication signal that causes a non-specific increase in activity. It enhances many different behaviors, including foraging, brood care, food processing, nest maintenance, swarming and house hunting.

“It’s a way of fine-tuning responses,” Schneider said. “It helps to coordinate what many individuals are doing by up-regulating or down-regulating the likelihood that they’ll pay attention to other things in a similar manner. It’s like music. Music has a modulating influence on our behavior. We use music to set moods to change motivational state and also to coordinate activities.”

Schneider and colleagues have published numerous papers and articles on their work. He most published an article in Laboratory Animal Science Professional.

In one publication, Schneider and colleagues published some of their latest findings in the journal Animal Behavior, in an article titled “The possible role of ritualized aggression in the vibration signal of the honeybee, Apis mellifera.” Other authors are R. Skaggs, J.C. Jackson and A.L. Toth.

“The complex social networks from which these group decisions emerge are based on communication,” Schneider said. “Something I’m very interested in is how did these communication signals evolve? It’s logical to assume communication signals in social species evolved from interactions in solitary ancestors;, that those interactions laid the groundwork for the evolution of these complex communication signals we see today in highly social species.”

The research team looked at gene expression patterns associated with the performance of the communication signal called the vibration signal. “Honeybees use this signal to help coordinate many of the collective activities they engage in, including the raising of new queens and interacting with new queens,” Schneider said.

“We compared gene expression patterns from workers that are performing that vibration signal, for genes that are known to be associated with aggression in primitively social species,” he said. “The data suggest the vibration signal is a form of ritualized aggression and that this signal, which is now used in the context of cooperation evolved from interactions that in the ancestors were aggressive.”

This suggests that these genes associated with aggression in ancestors in primitive species were co-opted in more advanced cooperative societies. The process set in place the genetic underpinning for communication signals that now are associated with cooperation in the complex societies.

Schneider’s research holds significance in the quest to understand honeybee health.

“Central to honeybee health is the behavior and reproduction of the queen,” he said. “One thing I’ve become interested in in the last decade or so are worker-queen interactions and how these contribute to colony health by contributing to a healthy successful queen and thus a healthy, successful colony.”

One aspect of the research looks at how workers interact with virgin queens when colonies are raising replacement queens to see how workers influence the outcome of the queen replacement process and how they contribute to higher quality queens becoming the new queens of the colony.

“The more we understand about colony reproduction and the collective decision making that governs reproductive output, the more we may be able to maintain colony health,” he said. “Related to that, we’ve also started looking at how workers interact with drones – the males – which has been largely ignored. Of course, the health and mating status of males is the flip side of colony reproductive success and colony health.”

Through the decades of research in his lab, Schneider has engaged numerous undergraduate and graduate students in the work. He has seen many of them go on to become doctors, researchers, veterinarians and published authors.

Schneider with Chancellor Philip Dubois and BOG Member Pearl Burris-Floyd

At the May 14, 2016 College of Liberal Arts & Sciences’ commencement ceremony, Schneider received a 2016 UNC Board of Governors Award for Excellence in Teaching.

This annual honor recognizes one professor at each of North Carolina’s public institutions. The 17 recipients are nominated by individual campus committees and selected by the Board of Governors’ Committee on Personnel and Tenure. Each award winner receives a $12,500 cash prize and a commemorative bronze medallion. Pearl Burris-Floyd, a member of the UNC Board of Governors, presented the award.

In fall 2015, Schneider was named the recipient of UNC Charlotte’s top teaching award, the Bank of America Award for Teaching Excellence.

In 2014, he received the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences’ Award for the Integration of Undergraduate Teaching and Research. He has served as principal investigator or co-principal investigator on grants totaling over $1 million, including funding to support undergraduate research.

“I think it’s very important to take students through the entire process to completion, and completion is having the results published in a peer-reviewed journal,” he said. “They understand the importance of communicating your findings with the larger audience. That benefits them, and it benefits us and the university.”

Close to 60 percent of the Biological Sciences Honors students working with Schneider have published with him, some with multiple publications. Because of the finite time period during which undergraduates work with him, obtaining enough data to publish can at times prove difficult. This remains a goal for him, however.

“In a university, teaching and research are inextricably interlinked,” he said. “Lectures give people the background information necessary to train them to start applying it. Research training trains them to generate that knowledge themselves. So, you can’t separate the two. The interaction of those two is what moves education forward and what moves human understanding forward.”

Schneider also takes time to present on the topic to community groups, such as a talk to the Cabarrus County Beekeepers in 2019.

Professor Emeritus of Biology David Bashor died on August 16. He joined the faculty in 1971 and retired from the University in 2003.  He was also an adjunct professor in the University of Manitoba Medical School and a member of the Spinal Cord Research Centre there.

Bashor’s memorial service will be held on Monday, August 24 at 4 p.m. at Providence United Methodist Church in Charlotte.  A reception will follow. The funeral home coordinating services and information is Hankins & Whittington. His wife Pam and his daughter Melissa will also be at home for visitors on Saturday and Sunday, at 429  Lyttleton Drive in Charlotte.

In the column “Careers and Recruitment” in the August 2015 issue of the journal Lab Animal, Biological Sciences faculty member Shan Yan shared his growth and accomplishments as a researcher and teacher at UNC Charlotte, working with Xenopus egg extracts as a model system to explore genomic instability and tumorigenesis.

To promote career development of scientists using lab animals, this column features scholars who share their insights with more than 10,000 professionals in the academic world and applied research industries. Lab Animal is a peer-reviewed journal publishing timely and informative editorial material emphasizing proper management and care of laboratory animals.

As the new director of the UNC Charlotte Botanical Gardens, Jeff Gillman sees his mission as engaging the public with the gardens and with nature.

“My goal is to bring the gardens to the public,” Gillman said. “The gardens have had a wonderful base over the years, and I hope we can bring it to a wider audience and help more people to experience not only the gardens, but also plants in general. That is something I’ve worked on for my whole career – public engagement and getting people to appreciate plants and the environment.”

Gillman assumed his role on August 1, following in the footsteps of Larry Mellichamp, who retired at the end of 2014 after almost four decades with the Botanical Gardens and with UNC Charlotte.

“I’m looking forward to working in this absolutely gorgeous environment,” Gillman said. “Larry Mellichamp and the staff here, along with many supporters, have built these gardens into one of the most diverse and magnificent gardens that I’ve ever had the opportunity to walk through. The opportunity to direct these gardens feels like one I’ve been waiting for all my life.”

He and his family moved to Charlotte from Minnesota in 2013 to be closer to extended family. He most recently was an instructor for the Department of Horticulture Technology at Central Piedmont Community College. Prior to that, he was an associate professor in the Department of Horticulture Science at the University of Minnesota. His work focused on urban and consumer horticulture, particularly sharing research information with the public.

At the University of Minnesota, Gillman directed the activities of the Teaching, Research and Extension Nursery, with its 8-acre nursery devoted to research and the education of university students and the general public.

“While at the University of Minnesota as a professor, I began to see how better education related to gardens and plant material would benefit the public,” Gillman said. “Early on in my career, I realized how important it was to help people learn more about plants. My first book, The Truth About Garden Remedies, was actually in direct response to bad information people were getting.”

He wrote four additional books, including How the Government Got in Your Backyard, with co-author UNC Charlotte professor Eric Heberlig; Decoding Gardening Advice; The Truth About Organic Gardening; and How Trees Die.

“This type of work got me more engaged with the public and led to a position as contributing editor to Fine Gardening magazine,” he said. “It led to monthly newspaper columns for the Star Tribune newspaper in Minnesota and led to a lot of public engagement across the country. I’ve had the opportunity to speak in a variety of venues, including the two largest flower shows in the United States and at Epcot Center in Orlando.”

Gillman also has appeared on television on The Martha Stewart Show, presenting on garden remedies, and twice on Growing a Greener World.

He is a founding member of The Garden Professors, a group of professors from throughout the United States who distribute sound, research-based information to the public. The group provides information through its Facebook site and blog.

Gillman has taught public certificate programs including the Extension Master Gardener programs in Minnesota, and programs on plant propagation and pruning and organic pest control since moving to North Carolina. He has written a training book for practitioners titled Pruning Young Elms; chapters in two books; and 22 papers in refereed journals. He earned his master’s degree in entomology and his doctorate in horticulture, both from the University of Georgia.

Words: Skye Allan, CLAS Student Communications Assistant
Image: Lynn Roberson, CLAS Communications Director

In a rare botanical event, a Titan Arum nicknamed Odie bloomed at UNC Charlotte’s Botanical Gardens in its McMillan Greenhouse in mid-July 2015. This time-lapse film made up of images taken by a web camera shows Odie blooming and a pollination attempt. Odie began unfurling at approximately 12:30 p.m. Friday July 17, and was open by 8 p.m. and filling the greenhouse with a pungent odor of dead animal mixed with burnt sugar. By 11 p.m., the spathe opened even wider and flattened out. This is when John Denti attempted pollination. Saturday morning, the spathe began to draw back in, displaying a beautiful form. This short-lived bloom is as expected and part of the allure of this plant – years worth of energy go into a gigantic display designed for one night only.

More images can be seen on the Botanical Gardens Facebook site, the College’s Facebook site and the College’s Flickr account.

Odie, the rare Titan Arum tropical plant at UNC Charlotte Botanical Gardens, began unfurling around 12:30 p.m. on Friday, July 17, 2015. The McMillan Greenhouse will be open to visitors who want to see — and smell — this botanical rarity on Friday until 7:30 p.m., on Saturday from 8:30 a.m. until 7:30 p.m. and on Sunday from 11 a.m. until 6 pm. The bloom likely will close on Sunday, as it stays open for a very short time. Parking is free, as is admission to the Botanical Gardens and McMillan Greenhouse, located on the main UNC Charlotte campus at 9090 Craver Road, Charlotte, NC 28262.

Bella, the University’s initial Titan Arum, bloomed in 2007, a first for the Carolinas. It bloomed a second time in 2010 before it died. The Botanical Gardens purchased two new plants in 2008.

The Titan Arum produces the largest unbranched flowering structure of any known plant. Few gardens can grow the plant, because it needs such specialized attention to temperature, humidity, fertilization and water. The plant is native to Indonesia, where it grows in the rain forests of Sumatra. Its blooms smell so close to the aroma of carrion that its name means corpse flower. Some describe it as the worst smelling flower in the world.

When the Botanical Gardens’ first Titan Arum flowered, more than 4,000 people visited the campus.

“Bella” blooming in 2010

“Odie” Ready to Bloom

“In captivity, Titan Arums usually bloom two or three times, and this bloom will definitely attract lots of people to the Botanical Gardens, as happened with Bella,” said Paula Gross, Botanical Gardens’ acting director.

To stay up-to-date on the bloom’s status, keep an eye on the Botanical Gardens’ Facebook site and its website. A live cam is tracking Odie’s progress on the Botanical Gardens website.

More about the Titan Arum

Used to the wilds of Sumatra in Indonesia, the plant is so sensitive to cold weather that if the temperature falls below fifty degrees Fahrenheit, it will not survive. Even in the Sumatran jungle the flower rarely blooms, and the event is even rarer in cultivation.

The flowering structure, with an opening of up to four feet in diameter, holds thousands of tiny flowers hidden inside the central column, or spadix. The day the flower opens, its scent of rotting flesh can be detected for up to half a mile away – a feature to attract flies, carrion beetles, wasps, and other insects that normally feed on dead animals. The attracted insects will carry pollen inside the flower from one plant to another, pollinating the flowers.

The first day of bloom offers the flower’s most stunning presentation. After the first day, the smell fades and the petals begin to droop. Within a few days, the flower’s bloom dies.

Words: Stewart Shelton, CLAS Communications Student Assistant
Images: Lynn Roberson and Courtesy of UNC Charlotte Botanical Gardens