The K-Week College Meeting is where it all begins. Meet your Arts and Sciences family, grab free swag and snacks, and get ready for an unforgettable start.
Thursday, August 21, 2025
1 PM @ Gatton Student Center, Barker Plaza
Attendance will be taken
Tailgate with Arts and Sciences alumni and friends before the Cats take on the Texas Longhorns!
Join Dean Ana Franco-Watkins for tailgate food and drinks, games and A&S giveaways! All College of Arts and Sciences alumni are welcome to attend.
Saturday, October 18, 2025
Tailgate and kickoff times TBD
Gluck Equine Research Center Lawn | Corner of Nicholasville Road and Farm Road
A&S Alumni Tailgate is for alumni and friends of the College of Arts and Sciences and their guests.
Dr. Stephen Taylor, Vanderbilt University
Title: Charting the Gravitational-wave Universe At Light-year Wavelengths
Abstract: The Universe is thrumming with gravitational waves. June 2023 brought the first evidence for an all-sky background of nanohertz-frequency gravitational waves, discovered by collaborations including the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav) and groups in Europe, Australia, India, and China. This was an endeavor decades in the making, requiring painstakingly precise timing observations of scores of millisecond pulsars across the Milky Way using flagship radio telescopes. While the results from separate groups are consistent with one another—and the leading interpretation of a population of supermassive black-hole binaries as the source—the observations provoke many new questions. Do the results imply a population of binaries more massive than expected? What are the observational milestones as the first individually resolvable binary signals come into focus? Can we link these signals to their host galaxies or electromagnetic counterparts? In this talk, I will chart the path to discovery, reflect on what we have learned since our announcement, and explore the exciting opportunities and synergies ahead—including the role of next-generation radio instruments and space-borne gravitational-wave missions.
Dr. Zhoudunming (Kong) Tu, Brookhaven National Laboratory
Title: Exciting the Entangled Vacuum - A New Era in Understanding Visible Matter
Abstract: Not until quite recently was the vacuum recognized as anything more than empty space. Today, we understand it as a dynamic medium, filled with fluctuating fields and virtual particle pairs that shape the very structure of our universe. These invisible pairs break a fundamental symmetry of nature—chiral symmetry—and are thought to generate more than 99% of the mass of the visible universe. Yet, how this hidden mechanism connects to the confinement of quarks inside protons, neutrons, and other particles remains one of the deepest unsolved problems in physics.
In this talk, I will present new insights into this question using high-energy particle collisions at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC). Such collisions can briefly liberate the virtual quark–antiquark pairs of the vacuum, which then bind together into hadrons such as Λ hyperons. Recent results from these studies open an experimental window into the quantum structure of the vacuum, with far-reaching implications for our understanding of mass, matter, and the strong force described by Quantum Chromodynamics.
Dr. Nick Keiser | Keiser LabBio:
Nick Keiser is a behavioral disease ecologist interested in how behavioral trait variation can influence infectious disease dynamics. His mentees study questions at the nexus of animal behavior, parasitology and disease ecology in a variety of such (mostly invertebrate) study systems as flies, spiders, ticks, snails and their associated parasites.
Abstract:
The fields of animal behavior and infectious disease are both typified by heterogeneity. Differences among individuals, between social groups, and between populations in their behavioral trait compositions can all alter the dynamics of infectious diseases. In this seminar, I will address how animal behavior can alter host-pathogen interactions across different scales from individuals to populations in several study systems. These study systems will weave three tales on behavioral trait diversity, behavioral parasitology, and parasite manipulation of host behavior.
Bio:
Afshin Beheshti, Ph.D. is a professor of surgery and of computational and systems biology at the University of Pittsburgh. He serves as director of the newly launched Space Center for Space Biomedicine and as associate director of the McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine at Pitt​. In addition, Beheshti holds a visiting scientist appointment at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard​.
Abstract:
Human spaceflight presents significant health challenges driven by microgravity, space radiation, isolation and other environmental stressors. Recent multi-omics research has revealed that mitochondrial dysfunction is a central biological consequence of space travel, contributing to systemic impacts such as accelerated aging, cardiovascular disease, and impaired metabolic function. Data from astronaut missions and ground-based space analogs demonstrate persistent mitochondrial suppression even after returning to Earth. This talk highlights how space serves as an accelerated model for studying human diseases and aging, offering insights applicable both to space exploration and terrestrial medicine. Using advanced 3D organoid models and multi-omics analysis, we have identified promising countermeasures, including the natural flavonoid Kaempferol, which restores mitochondrial bioenergetics and reverses radiation-induced gene expression changes in multiple tissues. These findings underscore the critical role of mitochondria as both biomarkers and therapeutic targets for sustaining human health in deep space missions, while also advancing precision medicine strategies on Earth.
