Centers
Center for Family Research
Director: Steven Beach & Co-Director: Justin Lavner
Interdisciplinary teams of scientists at the Center for Family Research conduct longitudinal, epidemiological research on the causes and consequences of substance use and abuse, mental health and health outcomes for rural populations in Georgia with a particular focus on family, community, and genetic processes. Prevention scientists at the Center for Family Research use these findings to inform the design and development of prevention programs to deter the development of drug use and abuse, mental health problems, and chronic diseases among rural Georgians.
Center on Biological Embedding of Social Events and Relationships
Co-Directors: Steven Beach and Ron Simons
The Center on Biological Embedding of Social Events and Relationships brings together behavioral and biological scientists interested in understanding the intersections of genetic and environmental contributions to health, health behavior, and interpersonal outcomes. The focus of the group is on strengthening the infrastructure for collaborative research and grant proposal writing.
Center for Integrative Conservation Research
Director: Laura German
The Center for Integrative Conservation Research (CICR) was established in January 2007 with the support of a grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation for the research initiative Advancing Conservation in a Social Context: Working in a World of Trade-offs (ACSC). Since that time, CICR has dramatically raised UGA’s profile in the area of conservation, linking the University with international organizations, prestigious research universities and institutions, and international policy makers. Because conservation today necessitates an engagement with issues of energy use, water quantity and quality, land use, and urbanization, CICR has evolved a more holistic approach to its research agenda, which must now be more appropriately characterized as focusing on sustainability. In the coming years, CICR will play a leading role in advancing the frontier of sustainability science through its unique ability to bring together researchers from different disciplines, practitioners, and policy makers.
Scientists Engaged in Educational Research (SEER) center
Director: Paula Lemons
The SEER Center includes faculty, postdocs, and graduate students across the University of Georgia who perform research in collegiate STEM education. As science and technology continue to expand their relevance for life in the 21st century, and as a scientifically educated workforce is under increasingly short supply, there is a pressing need for solutions to improving science education in the United States, and specifically to transform how science is taught and learned in colleges and universities.
