Tag: University of Vermont

The University of Vermont’s free, weekly historic tour of campus will extend into the fall season. The tours, which began in July, will take place every Saturday from 10 a.m. to noon through October 13.

The tour begins at the statue of Ira Allen, just to the south of the fountain on the UVM Green. There is no tour on September 29.

UVM was founded in 1791, the fifth oldest university in New England, and it features an array of historic buildings, including more than a dozen on the National Register of Historic Places, and a host of fascinating personalities.

The architectural highlights of the tour include Old Mill, completed in 1829, whose cornerstone was laid by the Marquis de Lafayette; Billings Library, designed by leading 19th century architect H.H. Richardson in 1885, which has undergone a recent renovation; and Grasse Mount, a brick Federal style mansion built in 1804 by a local merchant, which later served as the residence of Vermont governor Cornelius P. Van Ness.

Tour guide Bill Averyt also brings to life the interesting personalities who’ve been a part of UVM’s long history.

Founder Ira Allen, for instance, was both a revolutionary war hero and sometimes slippery real estate speculator. UVM’s third president, James Marsh, influenced Emerson and other transcendentalists and made innovations leading to the modern university curriculum. Royall Tyler, a member of Vermont’s Supreme Court in the early 19th century, taught jurisprudence at the university and is said to be one of the models for the villain of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s House of the Seven Gables, Judge Pyncheon. And 1879 alumnus John Dewey, whose grave is on campus, is considered one of America’s greatest philosophers.

“UVM’s history is a great story to be sure, but it also resonates with significance,” said Averyt. “Through figures like Marsh and Dewey, the university played an important role in shaping modern America.”

Read more about the tour and register.

Source: UVM News

Crop losses for critical food grains will increase substantially with global warming, as rising temperatures boost the metabolism and population growth of insect pests, new research says.

“Climate change will have a negative impact on crops,” said Scott Merrill of the University of Vermont, a co-author of the study published in Science. “We are going to see increased pest pressure from climate change.”

Researchers looked at how the insect pests that attack three staple crops – rice, maize and wheat – would respond under a variety of climate scenarios. They found that rising global temperatures would lead to an increase in crop losses from insects, especially in temperate regions. Losses are projected to rise by 10 to 25% per degree of warming.

Just a 2-degree rise in global average temperature will result in total crop losses of approximately 213 million tons for the three grains, the researchers say.

Insects like it hotter – up to a point

The losses will come from an increase in insect metabolism, and from faster insect population growth rates. The link with metabolism is straightforward. “When the temperature increases, the insects’ metabolism increases so they have to eat more,” said Merrill, a researcher in UVM’s Dept. of Plant and Soil Science and Gund Institute for Environment. “That’s not good for crops.”

The link with population growth, however, is more complex. Insects have an optimal temperature where their population grows best. If the temperature is too cold or too hot, the population will grow more slowly. That is why the losses will be greatest in temperate regions, but less severe in the tropics.

“Temperate regions are not at that optimal temperature, so if the temperature increases there, populations will grow faster,” said Merrill, an ecologist who studies plant-crop interactions. “But insects in the tropics are already close to their optimal temperature, so the populations will actually grow slower. It’s just too hot for them.”

Key grain crops to take a hit

According to the study, wheat, which is typically grown in cool climates, will suffer the most, as increased temperatures will lead to greater insect metabolism, as well as increased pest populations and survival rates over the winter. Maize, which is grown in some areas where population rates will increase and others where they will decline, will face a more uneven future.

In rice, which is mostly grown in warm tropical environments, crop losses will actually stabilize if average temperatures rise above 3^oC, as population growth drops, counteracting the effect of increased metabolism in the pests. “Rice losses will taper off as the temperature rises above a certain point,” said Merrill.

That means that the most substantial yield declines will happen in some of the world’s most productive agricultural regions. “The overall picture is, if you’re growing a lot of food in a temperate region, you’re going to be hit hardest,” said Merrill.

“I hope our results demonstrate the importance of collecting more data on how pests will impact crop losses in a warming world — because collectively, our choice now is not whether or not we will allow warming to occur, but how much warming we’re willing to tolerate,” said Curtis Deutsch of the University of Washington, who co-led the study with Joshua Tewksbury, director of Future Earth at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

France, China and the United States, which produce most of the world’s maize, are among the countries that are expected to experience the largest increases in crop losses from insect pests. France and China, as major producers of wheat and rice, respectively, are also expected to face large increases in losses of those grains as well. “The areas that produce the most grain, especially wheat and corn – the US, France and China – are going to be hit hardest,” said Merrill.

Reduced yields in these three staple crops are a particular concern, because so many people around the world rely on them. Together they account for 42% of direct calories consumed by humans worldwide. Increased crop losses will result in a rise in food insecurity, especially in those parts of the world where it is already rife, and could lead to conflict.

As farmers adapt to a changing climate by shifting planting dates or switching to new cultivars, they will also have to find ways to deal with pests, by introducing new crop rotations, or using more pesticides. But not all of these strategies will be available to all farmers.

“There are a lot of things richer countries can do to reduce the effect, by increasing pesticide use or expanding integrated pest management strategies,” said Merrill. “But poorer countries that rely on these crops as staple grains will have a harder time.”

In addition to Deutsch, Tewksbury and Merrill, study co-authors include Michelle Tigchelaar, David Battisti, Raymond Huey from University of Washington, and Rosamond Naylor of Stanford University. The research was funded by the National Science Foundation and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. DOI: 10.1126/science.aat3466

Source: UVM News

The Manton Foundation has awarded $450,000 to the University of Vermont to fund essential renovations at the UVM Morgan Horse Farm, the University’s historic, 200-acre breeding farm, teaching facility and tourist destination in Weybridge, VT.  

Recognized on the National Register of Historic Places, the farm has been an official breeding site for the Morgan horse, Vermont’s official state animal, since 1878 and is believed to be the oldest, continuous Morgan horse breeding program in the world. Today, the facilities house approximately 30 horses, student apprentices, a breeding lab, as well as a public exhibit area and gift shop.

“What makes the farm unique is our dual mission of undergraduate teaching and public education, while also upholding the historical significance of the farm,” said Thomas Vogelmann, dean of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at UVM. “Improving our infrastructure is the first step to enable expanded educational opportunities and improve the tourist experience. We are grateful to the Manton Foundation for this catalytic investment.”

The farm provides invaluable hands-on learning opportunities for students of all ages, as well as farm apprentices who spend 12-months fully immersed in the day-to-day operations of the farm working alongside faculty and staff. Each year, approximately 10,000 visitors arrive by bike, bus or automobile to see the horses, tour the farm and learn about the historic site.

The new funding will support facility upgrades in the iconic, three-story main barn, which houses the majority of the horses for public viewing, an indoor arena, a classroom, historical exhibit and gift shop. The focal point of the farm, the towering Victorian-style barn totals 14,530 square feet with several distinctive features, including a 19^th-century cupola and weather vane on the center of the roof.   

The renovations are part of a three-phased approach to renovating and restoring the farm’s facilities and grounds, and represent the latest development in a new chapter unfolding in the farm’s 140-year history.

Kim Demars was named farm manager in 2017 after the retirement of longtime director Steve Davis ’72. Together with equine specialist Sarah Fauver ’16 and farm operations coordinator Margot Smithson, the team is focused on continuing the farm’s legacy and building a strategic plan for the future.

“It’s an honor to be spearheading the farm during this transformative time,” said Demars. “We have some big ideas and are excited to put them in motion.”

In collaboration with the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, the University launched a strategic action plan process for the UVM Morgan Horse Farm in April 2018, which included more than 40 volunteers, staff and MHF advisory board members. Throughout the spring and summer, participant working groups met to formulate action plans that will serve as a living document to guide investments and decision-making.

A three-year capital campaign is currently underway to boost the principal of existing endowments, raise funds for one-time capital expenses and engage loyal supporters to invest in this American treasure.

About the UVM Morgan Horse Farm

The University of Vermont Morgan Horse Farm has been a proud steward of the U.S. Government Morgan Horse bloodline since 1951, when the United States Department of Agriculture first bestowed the farm to the State of Vermont, who in turn entrusted it to the University. Since then, with the University as its caretaker, the farm has successfully raised over 850 UVM Morgans, educated over 220 student apprentices and welcomed hundreds of thousands of visitors to the Weybridge campus. The farm is open to the public for tours from May to October each year and is a favorite destination of several regional touring companies. 

Source: UVM News

Today, the Gund Institute for Environment announced its inaugural research themes – focusing on interactions among four global environmental challenges.

The University of Vermont-wide institute will target environmental issues at the interface of four research themes: climate solutions, health and well-being, sustainable agriculture, and resilient communities.

“Global environmental challenges are deeply connected,” says Taylor Ricketts, Director of the Gund Institute for Environment. “By focusing on interactions among these grand challenges, the Gund Institute will generate powerful research questions, drive innovation, and accelerate solutions for the planet and for people.”

Connecting to global priorities

By design, the new themes echo several Sustainable Development Goals agreed on by the United Nations. This will connect UVM and Gund scholars to a global set of priorities, increasing opportunities for research to impact policy. 

All major Gund activities will reflect the themes, including Gund Catalyst Awards (seed grants), Fellows’ and Affiliates’ membership, student and researcher recruitment, and events. For example, the Institute currently seeks 2018 Catalyst Awards proposals for environmental research addressing at least two of the new themes.

Leveraging UVM strengths

Today’s announcement follows a year of campus-wide consultations. More than 250 UVM faculty, leaders, students and staff participated, including the Gund Steering Committee and nearly all Gund Fellows and UVM Affiliates. Consultations involved surveys, events and meetings to identify the strengths and interests of UVM scholars pursuing collaborative research on environmental issues. 

“These themes quickly emerged as worldwide challenges that match UVM strengths and can harness the talents of scholars across campus,” says UVM Provost and Senior Vice President David Rosowsky. “Focusing on interactions among urgent issues is central to the Gund Institute’s DNA, and positions UVM to make novel and powerful contributions to global efforts.”

To tackle these themes, Institute scholars will deploy a range of internationally recognized Gund strengths, including ecological economics, ecosystem services, complex systems, remote sensing, renewable energy systems, agroecology, and others.

Achievements and opportunities

Thanks to a $6-million gift, the Gund Institute was re-launched in 2017 with a mandate to select strategic research themes by Year Three to focus its efforts. With today’s announcement, only one year after launch, the Institute has reached that key milestone.

Since last year, the Institute has distributed nearly $250,000 in Catalyst Awards seeds grants to UVM research teams, doubled the number of Fellows and Affiliates – which now hail from six UVM colleges and 14 departments, as well as institutions such as Harvard, Stanford, Cambridge and WWF – and published major studies in top journals.

Gund 2018-19 highlights will include: new Gund Fellows and Affiliates (Sept. 5), Catalyst Award seed grants (Oct. 11 deadline), recruiting for PhD and Postdoctoral positions, the new Leadership for Ecozoic PhD program, and events including The Feverish World symposium (Oct. 20-22), and the 4^th annual Gund Research Slam.

The Gund Institute seeks to catalyze environmental research, connect UVM with society’s leaders, and develop real-world solutions to critical issues. 

Source: UVM News

Sanjay Sharma, dean of the University of Vermont’s Grossman School of Business, has been named the 2018 Fetner Sustainable Enterprise Fellow. 

The prestigious research fellowship is made annually to a leading international academic scholar in sustainable enterprise. The fellowship program is a joint initiative of the Sustainable Enterprise Partnership of the Syracuse University Whitman School of Management, Syracuse University’s L.C. Smith College of Engineering and Computer Sciences, the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry and the Syracuse University Center of Excellence in Environmental and Energy Systems.

Fetner Fellows participate in a three-day residency, delivering a series of research lectures to faculty and graduate students at the Whitman School, L.C. Smith College and the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry.

A Fulbright Scholar with extensive experience in the private sector, Sharma has expertise in corporate environmental strategy, corporate sustainability, competitive strategy, stakeholder engagement and organizational innovation. He has written and co-edited nine books on corporate sustainability and has won several prestigious awards for his research, including the Academy of Management ONE Division’s Distinguished Scholar Lifetime Achievement Award in 2016.

His latest books include “Competing for a Sustainable World: Building Capacity for Sustainable Innovation,” written for scholars and practitioners, which was the runner-up for the best book at the 2015 annual awards of the ONE division of the Academy of Management, and “Patient Capital: The Role of Family Business in Sustainability,” a research monograph in publication with the Cambridge University Press and due for release in 2019.

His research has been widely published in top management journals including the Academy of Management Review, Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Executive, Strategic Management Journal and Journal of Marketing.

A year after coming to UVM in 2011, Sharma and his leadership team launched a new MBA program focused on sustainable enterprise now called the Sustainable Innovation MBA. The program was ranked the #1 Green MBA program by the Princeton Review in 2017 and #8 in the world in Corporate Knights Better World’s MBA rankings in 2017. He has also led the revamping of the Grossman School’s undergraduate curriculum, adding sustainable business as a theme, and has overseen a 23 percent improvement in selectivity while substantially increasing enrollments and academic quality. He raised donor funding for the privately funded Ifshin Hall expansion that opened in July 2018 and will be formally dedicated on October 4.

Sharma’s residency will take place September 26-29. 

Source: UVM News

The University of Vermont’s supercomputer is about to get faster. A lot faster.

The National Science Foundation has awarded the university a $1 million grant to significantly upgrade its Vermont Advanced Computing Core (VACC).

Over the next few months, 72 high performance graphics processing units, or GPUs, will be added to the current VACC, housed in UVM’s primary datacenter in South Burlington, to create a new high performance cluster.

Working together in a “massively parallel” system, the new cluster – dubbed DeepGreen – will be up to 3,000 times faster than the current VACC. At its peak, DeepGreen will be able to achieve a speed of over 1 petaflop, or one thousand million million computations per second, the equivalent of 20,000 laptop computers working in tandem. 

Research advances today are increasingly dependent on finding meaning and patterns within massive amounts of information, or big data, Del Maestro said.

“The new processing power will allow us to take all that data and find the things that are important in it – the needles in the haystack,” Del Maestro said.

“We’re in a new scientific era that’s mainly about two things: data and computational power,” said Safwan Wshah, an assistant professor in UVM’s Computer Science department who studies computer vision, a research area that will benefit greatly from the VACC’s enhanced capability.

The upgraded VACC is a “major leap and a necessary leap,” he said.

The increase in processing speed, combined with a “big pipe,” a hyper-fast connection the university will install from campus to the VACC, will enable faculty to take on new types of research projects they did not have the computational power to explore in the past, Del Maestro said.  

He cited three examples. “Josh Bongard in Computer Science will use DeepGreen to analyze a gigantic crowd sourced data set to produce safer human-robot interactions,” he said. “Hugh Garavan in Psychiatry will use the new machine learning cores on the cluster to determine the impact of substance use on developing adolescent brains using brain imaging. And Yolanda Chen in Plant and Soil Science can massively speed up the genome re-sequencing of the Colorado Potato Beetle to better combat emerging threats to our food supply in a changing climate.”

A competitive process

UVM won the competitive grant – NSF awards between 10 and 15 like it every two years – because the grant application demonstrated that faculty use of the upgraded VACC would be widespread and multi-disciplinary and showed that the center could be a regional resource for schools like Middlebury College and Norwich University.

NSF was also swayed by the UVM administration’s support of the project.   

“UVM faculty scholars across the university, in all of our colleges and schools, are engaged in research and discovery that today requires extremely powerful computational tools,” said David V. Rosowsky, UVM provost and senior vice president. “Immense data sets, computationally-intensive modeling and analysis, predictive analytics, and advanced visualization all require our faculty and students to have access to state-of-the-art, high-performance computing. The Office of the Provost was very happy to support this important initiative for our campus and our state.”

The new graphics processing units in the VACC upgrade will augment more conventional CPU’s, or central processing units, in the current cluster.

Known by computer gamers for their ability to quickly render data-heavy graphics, GPU’s are also “excellent for AI and machine learning,” whose algorithms need high performance computing to function and “learn,” Del Maestro said.

The upgraded VACC will also be a great asset in undergraduate education, said Wshah, who teaches machine learning and deep learning to about 80 students a year.

“The upgrade will enable them to take on more and bigger projects,” he said. “They are very excited to be entering this new age of discovery.”

The DeepGreen cluster at the VACC will be in place by early 2019. Training sessions, geared to faculty with varying levels of experience with high performance computing, will be held in the spring. 

UVM’s Enterprise Technology Services group will be doing the design, construction and support for the new cluster.

Source: UVM News

U.S. News & World Report has again ranked the University of Vermont a top-50 public university in its 2019 College Guide. UVM was ranked 42th among 132 public universities in the guide.

The university was ranked 96th among 312 national universities. Last year it was ranked 97th.

“We’re very pleased to be again ranked among the top public universities in the nation by U.S. News and in the top 30 percent of all national universities,” said Stacey Kostell, vice president for enrollment management. “Our mission at UVM is to provide a high caliber academic and student life experience. It’s rewarding when the work we do to achieve those goals is validated with a national ranking like this one.”

For the fourth year in a row, UVM’s incoming class has achieved the highest academic credentials in the university’s history. The class of 2022, an estimated 2,500 students, has earned an average SAT score of 1264 and an average ACT of 28.1, record highs for any incoming class.

Source: UVM News

Tilden Remerleitch, a recent geography graduate at UVM, spent two years of her childhood living in Ecuador—her family moved there to pursue the dream of living and working abroad while exposing their daughter to a second language.  Since that experience, she’s travelled to many places and relishes communicating with the people she meets in their native language—she’s already fluent in Spanish and Mandarin. 

There will be many more destinations in store for Remerleitch, but her life has already come full circle. This month she heads back to Ecuador, this time as a recipient of the National Geographic Society’s Early Career Grant. 

The grant funds her community-based research on how natural disasters, climate change and resource extraction in Ecuador alter the complex relationships between people and place. At the same time she will be contributing her GIS mapping skills for Ecuadorian NGOs working with internally displaced populations in three eco-zones: the highlands, the Pacific coast and the Amazon River basin.

A 2016 earthquake of 7.8 magnitude on Ecuador’s coast affected 240,000 people, many of whom still do not have permanent housing, according to Remerleitch. Climate change is speeding glacial melt in the highlands and threatening water shortages in major cities including Quito. Extractive industries in the Amazon region are displacing indigenous populations from their ancestral lands. 

“In this era of forced migration and displacement globally, Ecuador is a really compelling microcosm of these global trends,” Remerleitch said.

Her research uses the cultural geography lens to examine two primary research questions: how is home and livelihood imagined and re-imagined? And, what is displacement’s effect on people’s emotional, economic and spiritual relationship to the environment?

Given climate irregularity, fresh water shortages and the predicted rise in forced migration, she hopes this research can help inform a plan to lessen the conflicts, contribute to prevention efforts and document solutions.

Meeting the People Behind the Maps

As a high school student in southern Vermont, Remerleitch knew she wanted to learn more about the world. She beat a path to the door of Pablo Bose, professor of geography and director of the Global Studies Program at UVM.

“I reached out to Pablo the summer before my freshman year, on the heels of a gap year learning Chinese in Shanghai on the National Security Language Initiative-Youth program,” she said. “I was looking for a mentor for a small research grant opportunity from the State Department using my Chinese, so I sent him an email. Incredibly, he wrote me back and invited me for a visit to campus. With his help and expertise on global megacities, I landed the grant and set about researching the impact of Mega-cities in China by interviewing UVM students from China my freshman year.”

That began a four-year collaboration during which Remerleitch worked as Bose’s research assistant studying refugee resettlement in small and mid-sized cities including Burlington.

Remerleitch created GIS maps and compiled statistics about Vermont refugees—she was gratified to apply skills she was learning in the classroom to real-world research. But by her senior year, she had developed a deep curiosity about the untold personal stories of displaced people who lived in her backyard. “I wanted to meet the people behind the maps,” she said.

Although she had little experience as a journalist, she produced a six-episode podcast called “Grounded” for her senior honors thesis project. The program features stories of resettlement in the state, with interviews of local refugees, people who serve the needs of refugees through agencies like the Vermont Refugee Resettlement Program, and fellow UVM students interested in making a difference in the lives of newcomers who often live “hidden in plain sight.”

“Immigrants are people who choose to come here. Refugees come here because they have nowhere else to go,” Remerleitch explains. “Only 1% of displaced people are actually considered for refugee status in US. It’s a very lengthy process and it’s not easy. Applicants have to prove that returning to their home country will be dangerous for them.”

Back to Ecuador

After graduation, Remerleitch was determined to get back to Ecuador, and she began writing to NGOs and applying for grants. The National Geographic Society Early Career Grant funds her activities for the next academic year, and utilizes all the skills she sharpened at UVM. She’ll be using innovative Participatory Action Research (PAR) methods including diagramming, mapping, and Photo-voice to produce a new podcast that she plans to make available next year in English and Spanish.  

While Remerleitch’s own travels have stemmed from her natural curiosity and sense of adventure, she understands refugees are on the move because they are fleeing political or natural catastrophe. Her work is driven by gaining a deeper understanding of the refugee crisis around the globe (she says that 65.6 million people around the world have been forced from home in 2016, according to UNHCR statistics) while faithfully recording the testimony of people affected by catastrophe. 

“My plan in Ecuador is to host workshops for participants to develop their own stories and help them share their experiences with a wider audience,” Remerleitch explained. “I don’t want to lose sight of individual lives that are impacted.”

Finding Mentors, Finding Funding

Remerleitch found a faculty member, Dr. Pablo Bose, as a mentor and research supervisor early in her academic career. Bose and UVM professors in the geography, anthropology and Chinese departments wrote recommendation letters for her grant applications under tight deadlines. She also found her way to the UVM Office of Fellowships, Opportunities, and Undergraduate Research (FOUR). 

“I really became best friends with them,” said Tilden. “I would advise any student to connect with FOUR because they have so many resources, information sessions, and talks with past students who come back to campus to talk about their experiences.” 

Staff at FOUR are dedicated to helping students develop a background in research at UVM, a key credential for success in graduate school and the working world. They also help students and alumni work through the process of identifying and applying for nationally competitive fellowships from the Carnegie Endowment, the National Science Foundation and the Fulbright U.S. Student Program, among many other options.

These fellowships often provide thousands of dollars in funding along with a priceless educational opportunity that provides stimulating intellectual challenge. Remerleitch used most facets of the FOUR offerings; she received funding for her undergraduate research, presented at the UVM Student Research Conference, and worked with the office to transition her thesis research into fellowships applications.

FOUR also helped Remerleitch secure the National Geographic Grant to help fund her research in Ecuador. Remerleitch was surprised to get a call from Katie Alexander, fellowships advisor at FOUR, offering support on future fellowship applications.

“I had just graduated so I was mentally putting my UVM experience in the rear-view mirror,” Remerleitch said. “But FOUR helps you out even after you graduate. I’m applying for a graduate school scholarship they brought to my attention, which would happen after my National Geographic Society Explorer year.”

“We’re available to help students brainstorm new opportunities,” said Alexander. “Very often their interests and aspirations change, even after graduation. We’re there for current students, but also for graduates looking for new challenges.”

Source: UVM News

There are many reasons why a young person might dream of becoming a doctor. In 2011, Haya and Yara Alshaabi—both UVM class of 2019—were Syrian kids going to high school in Damascus. Their father was a dentist for the United Nations, their mother taught English. “But then—the war,” says Haya. As the fighting grew fiercer, they were in danger. The family went to the U.S. embassy in Lebanon, and in October 2013, they got a visa to move to the United States.

“It was not scary. It was lonely,” says Haya, now twenty-two.

“We had to leave our friends. We were starting a new life,” says Yara, twenty-one.

Cellular sense

The two sisters excelled at Burlington High School, were admitted to the UVM Honors College, and both have pursued independent research projects in biological science, “with the drive and resilience of full-blown graduate students,” says scientist Brian Cunniff, a professor in Pathology and Laboratory Medicine. This past summer—with a $5,000 Honors College summer research fellowship—Haya continued her work in Cunniff’s lab to better understand how the positioning of mitochondria influences the migration and signaling of cells. It’s basic science that aims toward new treatments to block the spread of cancer and other diseases.

In the nearby UVM Center for Biomedical Imaging, Yara Alshaabi points into the low light of a room with a large MRI machine. “The volunteers will be in here, and we’ll be asking them to do challenging tasks while we scan their brains,” she explains. She’s developing an independent study—supervised by professor Julie Dumas in the Department of Psychiatry, and with funding from the UVM Office of Fellowships, Opportunities, and Undergraduate Research—of two groups of older women who have survived breast cancer. One group completed their treatment within the last three years; the other group is about a decade past treatment. “I’m studying how age and time since cancer treatment influence the function and structure of the brain,” she says. “Chemotherapy and hormone therapy are working very well to help women survive, but we know the treatments can have side effects on brains and memory.”

Help and hope

In April, after years of effort and waiting, the Alshaabi family (including Haya and Yara’s older brother, Thayer, a graduate student in data science and complex systems at UVM) received permanent U.S. residency. Now the sisters are free to apply to medical school.

“I hope to do research and be a surgeon,” says Haya.

“Maybe I’ll be a psychiatrist,” says Yara. “Medicine is my passion. I love helping people.”

“I lost hope when I was in Syria during the war,” she says. “I’d like to help people who lose hope.”

Some college students are proud of having two skateboards. “I have two cell lines of my own,” says Haya of the cells she maintains for experiments at the UVM lab. And some college students see moving away from their hometown and siblings as freedom. But the Alshaabi sisters keep in close contact with friends in Syria and love living together in their hard-earned Vermont home.

“She’s been my roommate since I was one,” says Haya.

“I love living with my parents, more than living in a dorm,” says Yara. “You feel safe with your family.” But they do squabble sometimes. “Over t-shirts,” says Haya. 

“She’s kind of messy,” says Yara, “She has piles of books everywhere.”

Source: UVM News