A Pulitzer Prize-winner straight from Broadway, the world premiere of a new adaptation of a timeless classic and a tour de force musical by Stephen Sondheim will highlight the six-play 2015-2016 main-stage season from PlayMakers Repertory Company.

The theater will also present three topical, thought-provoking shows in its PRC2 second-stage season. The PRC2 series is a dynamic combination of exciting stories on stage followed by a “second act” of engaging post-show dialogue between the artists, expert panelists and the audience.

PlayMakers is the professional theater company in residence at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. All performances will be presented in UNC-Chapel Hill’s Center for Dramatic Art on Country Club Road. Main-stage productions will be in the Paul Green Theatre; PRC2 shows in the Elizabeth Price Kenan Theatre.

Subscription packages are available for purchase. Renewing subscribers can secure their current seats for the new season through May 1. Call (919) 962-7529 or visit www.playmakersrep.org for information.

For a list of 2015-2016 productions, click here.

The Burroughs Wellcome Fund has announced a $1 million gift to Morehead Planetarium and Science Center to create an endowment fund to support the North Carolina Science Festival.

“The Burroughs Wellcome Fund has supported the North Carolina Science Festival since its very beginnings,” said John Burris, president of the Burroughs Wellcome Fund. “By providing an endowment for the festival, we hope the citizens of North Carolina will continue to benefit from its work in engaging the public with science.”

The announcement took place Wednesday during a reception for event hosts who partner with the North Carolina Science Festival. Governor Pat McCrory delivered remarks and UNC system president Tom Ross accepted the gift on behalf of Morehead Planetarium.

The endowment gift will allow Morehead Planetarium to make long-term, strategic investments in the festival. Since Morehead Planetarium founded the festival in 2010, it has grown dramatically, holding events in 95 counties and reaching more than 330,000 participants in 2014. Events for 2015 will run April 10-26.

While Morehead Planetarium organizes the festival, hundreds of partner organizations including universities, schools, libraries, parks, businesses and museums host a series of festival events across the state, spanning two weeks each April. These events are designed to celebrate the cultural, educational and financial impact that science, technology, engineering and mathematics have on North Carolina. Events include hands-on activities, science talks, lab tours, nature experiences, exhibits and performances to engage a wide range of public audiences.

“We couldn’t do the North Carolina Science Festival without support from organizations like the Burroughs Wellcome Fund,” said Todd Boyette, the festival’s co-founder and director of Morehead Planetarium. “We also couldn’t do it without all of our event hosts, who constantly amaze us with the quality of their events.”

The Burroughs Wellcome Fund has also announced a $1 million gift to the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics. The fund is making both gifts in celebration of its 60^th anniversary.

Morehead Planetarium and Science Center is a constituent unit of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and is one of the largest planetariums in the United States.

Published March 5, 2015

This trio doesn’t get out of the house very often. In fact, it’s the first time they have ever appeared together in public. They are taking a short vacation at the Ackland Art Museum through March 8, and they’d love to have you visit them in the museum’s 20th century gallery.

These privately held paintings by Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) are on loan from alumnus and philanthropist Julian H. Robertson Jr., founder of the Robertson Scholars Program. Coincidentally, this year is the 60th anniversary of Robertson’s graduation from Carolina in 1955.

“When he offered the chance to show some pictures from his collection, I chose these three on purpose,” said Ackland Director Peter Nisbet, gesturing toward the installation of the three Picassos, each a painting of a human head. “I thought they would make a great trio. And they really make a good conversation about the human form.”

The paintings come from three different decades in the Spanish artist’s long, productive career and are displayed from most recent (on the left) to oldest (on the right). “It’s an installation where we try to get at the emotional power of Picasso,” Nisbet said.

The latest to be painted, in 1965, is also the one most recently acquired by Robertson. “Head of a Man” looks like a statue of a Greek god, done in shades of gray green with bright splashes of yellow and pink as highlights. The closeness of the subject, its forward-facing eyes and thickly applied paint combine to create an image that seems poised to leave its frame, Nisbet said. This is the painting’s first appearance at the Ackland.

Picasso painted the center work, “Head of a Woman,” in the winter of 1943 with a more subdued palette. At the time, he was working in Nazi-occupied Paris, and he wasn’t getting along with his subject and companion, Dora Maar.

Perhaps that accounts for the monochromatic background of ashy gray and muddy brown, its dullness emphasizing the jagged placement and black outlines of the woman’s facial features and her black hair, the Ackland director explained. This painting, Nisbet’s favorite of the three, has been shown at the Ackland before, as part of the 2011 Carolina Collects exhibit that featured works loaned by alumni collectors.

The oldest painting is also the most colorful. In “Woman with a Hairnet,” painted in 1938, Picasso combines bright reds, oranges and blues with the patterns of the hairnet and the yellow stripes radiating in the background. Even though it was done at the same time as his “Weeping Women” series, Nisbet said, this work shows Picasso’s happier side. The painting has been shown at the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh.

The Ackland has other works by Picasso in its permanent collection, but no paintings. A 1957 earthenware plate circled by centaurs is grouped with the current installation. On Feb. 18, about a dozen of the Ackland’s 24 prints by Picasso, dating from 1905 to the 1960s, will go on view in the second-floor Study Gallery.

Because of its smaller size and intimate scale, the Ackland is an ideal venue to feature work from private collections for the public to enjoy, Nisbet said. And when it does, visitors notice.

“Within a day of this installation opening,” Nisbet said, “there was a comment in our visitor book saying something like, ‘Fantastic museum. Loved the Asian art and the Picassos.’”

By Susan Hudson, University Gazette

Published March 5, 2015

Peter Higgs, professor emeritus in the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Edinburgh, was presented with an Honorary Degree of Doctor of Science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill during a ceremony at the University of Edinburgh on March 3.

The honor was presented to Higgs by Carol L. Folt, chancellor of UNC-Chapel Hill, at a ceremony hosted by Professor Richard Kenway, vice principal of high performance computing for the University of Edinburgh. After the ceremony, the Institute of Physics and Edinburgh City Council unveiled a commemorative plaque honoring Higgs at the central Edinburgh office in which he wrote his seminal papers.

“Nearly half a century ago, Professor Higgs found himself at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill conducting revolutionary work in physics and his work continues to inspire us,” Folt said. “His research had a profound impact on the field of fundamental physics, and his example motivates our faculty and students to pursue their passions and make their own significant mark on their discipline.”

Folt explained that the honorary degree was presented in recognition of Higgs’ revolutionary work in particle physics that culminated in 2012 with the identification of the Higgs boson and his subsequent honor of being jointly awarded the 2013 Nobel Prize for Physics.

Said Kenway: “It is truly historic to celebrate such a seminal theory in physics with its author, Peter Higgs, in the building where he first wrote it more than 50 years ago, and in the company of some of his colleagues from that time.”

On July 4, 2012, physicists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva, Switzerland, announced that a Higgs boson-like particle (named after Peter Higgs) had been found. This discovery proved the final piece of the standard model of elementary particle physics: a theoretical framework that describes all fundamental particles and forces except gravity. According to the theory advanced by Higgs and others, elementary particles acquire their mass from their interactions with the Higgs field that permeates all space.

As with all quantum fields, there is a particle associated with the Higgs field. Finding the Higgs boson proved the existence of the Higgs field. The theoretical paper that lies behind the CERN experiments was written by Higgs in 1965-1966 during his tenure at the Bahnson Institute of Field Physics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Higgs’ work has played a central role in physicists’ quest to unify the forces of nature.

“The UNC Department of Physics and Astronomy is honored to be associated with the work on symmetry breaking Professor Higgs conducted while a visitor to our department in 1965 and 1966,” said Department Chair Christopher J. Clemens. “We congratulate him on his many accomplishments as he receives an honorary PhD from our Chancellor Carol Folt.”

Higgs graduated from King’s College London with a first class honors degree in physics in 1950, a master’s degree in 1952 and a doctorate in 1954.

Photo by David Cheskin

Published March 3, 2015

Ebola is not the crisis it once was in Africa, especially in Liberia. There, schools shuttered since autumn reopened Feb. 16, and in the week before that, only three new Ebola cases were reported in the whole nation.

But back in August, the disease was raging and hundreds were dying each week. The Liberian Ministry of Information was working with Ken Harper, a Syracuse University associate professor, to improve the flow of information about the crisis. Harper in turn contacted Steven King, assistant professor of multimedia and interactive journalism, to come up with a website design.

The epidemic became the catalyst for a new online data-sharing model – a model created here at Carolina. A team of 10 UNC volunteer designers and developers, led by King, launched the smartphone-friendly website ebolainliberia.org (also ebolainliberia.info) only two weeks after Liberia’s call for help.

“I’m a storyteller. I’m a digital and data storyteller,” King said. “Sometimes that’s through visualization, sometimes that’s through a traditional narrative piece, but in this particular case it was through a data-driven website.”

The site uses bold, clear graphics that are easy to read on a mobile device. The first screen has the numbers of total cases and total deaths, as well as the latest tally for the week. The next screens show that information over time in area charts, with confirmed cases or deaths in teal, probable in fuchsia and suspected in yellow. Poke or click anywhere on those screens and the exact date and number pop up; same for the line charts tracking health-care workers, cases and deaths.

In addition, shaded areas on a map of Liberia show the severity of the outbreak in each county.

Building the website was the perfect real-world project for students in King’s class, “Design and Development of Mobile Apps.” The team included journalism students Clinton King, Grayson Mendenhall, Denni Hu, Daniel Lockwood and Kate Weeks as well as information and library science major Alison Blain and computer science major João Ritter. Two 2014 journalism graduates, Eric Pait and Casey Miller, also signed up.

“I was pleasantly surprised at how fast we were able to build it,” said King, who also taught two other classes that semester. “To think that you can take a bunch of undergrads and recent graduates and do something like this in less than two weeks, it’s a pretty amazing feat. And I’m very proud of them for that.”

Once the website was launched, King and his team needed the data to get the project rolling. At first they used information from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but eventually data began to come in from Ministry of Health and Ministry of Information teams in Liberia.

“That on the ground part was the most difficult piece of it,” King said, because the people the group relied on to provide the information were also dealing with caring for family members who had contracted the disease.

But when the data began to flow, the website proved very useful in the fight against Ebola. “We were able to provide things to the decision makers, to the president of Liberia and to the media around the world, to give them accurate, visualized data,” King said.

Media attention drew calls for help from other groups needing similar help. “For example, one organization wanted us to build the same thing to trace the flu epidemic. But we couldn’t take on more things,” King said.

Now that Ebola has almost disappeared in Liberia, the website has run its course. But King said the team formed valuable partnerships with business analysis software giant SAS, the World Bank, USAID and even the White House.

And the website’s open-source model, hosted on GitHub, is so flexible that it can be up and running quickly if it’s needed again. It also has backend coding for predictive models and other features not visible on the Ebola site.

“We built this in a way that we could turn this on for any data set,” King said. It doesn’t have to be a crisis situation.

By Susan Hudson, University Gazette

Published March 2, 2015

James F. Cahoon of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is among 126 scholars being awarded the 2015 Sloan Research Fellowship by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Given annually since 1955, the fellowships go to early career scientists and scholars whose achievements and potential identify them as rising stars, the next generation of scientific leaders.

This is the second prestigious award given to early-career scientists that Cahoon has received in recent months. Last October, he was awarded a Packard Fellowship for Science and Engineering, which invests in future leaders who have the freedom to take risks, explore new frontiers in their fields of study and follow uncharted paths that can lead to groundbreaking discoveries.

“These fellowship provide a well-deserved recognition of Jim’s accomplishments and will help him continue his active research program,” said Valerie Ashby, professor and chair of the chemistry department. “I have no doubt that his research efforts will be the source of major breakthroughs in the field of semiconductor nanomaterials and their exciting applications.”

Sloan fellowships are awarded in eight scientific fields: chemistry, computer science, economics, mathematics, evolutionary and computational molecular biology, neuroscience, ocean sciences, and physics.  Winners are selected through close cooperation with the scientific community.  To qualify, candidates must be nominated by their fellow scientists and subsequently selected by an independent panel of senior scholars. Each fellow receives $50,000 to be used for research.

Cahoon, an assistant professor of chemistry in UNC’s College of Arts and Sciences, focuses his research on the design of materials at the nanoscale — a size regime hundreds of times smaller than the width of a human hair. His group uses chemistry to control the shape of materials labeled semiconductors. By controlling the shape of semiconductors at the nanoscale, his group is expected to yield a new strategy for developing new technologies, ranging from solar cells and optical circuits to thermoelectric systems.

With Cahoon, UNC-Chapel Hill has had 45 Sloan and six Packard recipients since the awards were established, highlighting UNC-Chapel Hill’s strength as an innovation and research hub with some of the brightest scientists worldwide.

Cahoon received bachelor’s degrees in chemistry and philosophy from the College of William and Mary, and a doctorate degree in physical chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley. He did post-doctoral work at Harvard University before coming to UNC-Chapel Hill in 2011.

By Thania Benios, Office of Communications and Public Affairs

Published February 24, 2015

The true story of a young attorney who learned the importance of compassion in the fight for justice is UNC-Chapel Hill’s 2015 selection for the Carolina Summer Reading Program.

“Just Mercy” by Bryan Stevenson was selected by a nine-person panel consisting of 3 faculty, staff and students each. Stevenson’s book focuses on the story of his client Walter McMillian, a young man who had been sentenced to die for a murder he said he didn’t commit, and how the case transformed how Stevenson would view the legal profession and his place in it. Stevenson went on to found the Equal Justice Initiative, an organization that provides free legal representation to those who have been denied fair and just treatment in the legal system.

Frank Baumgartner, Distinguished Professor of Political Science and chair of the committee, said “Just Mercy” was selected not only for the powerful conversations it might inspire, but also for the long-lasting changes its message may bring to students’ lives.

“Bryan Stevenson has worked in Alabama defending those who no one will help: a fourteen year-old boy facing life in prison and being tried as an adult; an innocent inmate seeking release from death row. His story is one of devotion to a group of people it can be hard to love, but who have, in turn, made his life all the more remarkable,” said Baumgartner. “He has inspired people around the country, and with his new book addressing fundamental issues of race, poverty, and the harsh realities of the U.S. criminal justice system, we expect that he will inspire a generation of Carolina students.”

First-year students who will enroll next fall are expected and encouraged to read the book this summer and participate in small group discussions on the Monday before classes start in the fall. The program, now in its 17th year, aims to stimulate critical thinking outside the classroom and give new students intellectual common ground. An academic icebreaker, it encourages students to engage with the scholarly community and come to their own conclusions about the material.

Visit the Carolina Summer Reading Website at summerreading.web.unc.edu.

Published February 23, 2015

Fencing in front of family, friends and even a favorite professor, North Carolina senior Gillian Litynski claimed the first-ever Atlantic Coast Conference Women’s Sabre Championship Sunday afternoon at Carmichael Arena.

Her championship bout victory, 15-6 over Notre Dame’s Claudia Kulmacz, provided a fitting finale for UNC, which hosted the return of the ACC Fencing Championship after a 34-year hiatus. The men’s conference tournament on Saturday was the first since 1980, and Sunday’s competition was the first-ever ACC women’s championship. After claiming the team title in the morning, Notre Dame swept the other two individual competitions in the afternoon, with Litynski’s win the exception.

“That was simply amazing,” UNC coach Ron Miller said after watching his senior claim the title. “In the championship bout she was just on. It was one of those moments when an athlete gets in a zone – nobody was going to stop her.”

After trailing 8-5 in her semifinal bout against Notre Dame’s Jamie Norville, Litynski stormed back to win 15-11 and earn a spot in the final, with her fans and teammates celebrating every point. “It was loud, which is good, and it was loud on my side, which is great,” she said. “I definitely built off that energy. It’s hard in fencing to come back, so having crowd support really helps.

“I don’t think it’s my most impressive finish ever, but I think because it’s home I’m always going to remember it.”

Her parents, Susan and James, traveled in from Niskayuna, N.Y., for the first home contest of their daughter’s UNC career. Generally, the Tar Heels are on the road every weekend, so supporters took advantage of the rare opportunity to see collegiate fencing in Chapel Hill. In addition to plenty of friends in the crowd, one of Litynski’s nursing professors, Marsha Van Riper, came to watch. “She stayed for the long day,” Litynski said. “She was my longest fan other than my parents, so that was awesome.”

It was an extremely long day. The team competition began at 7 a.m., and Litynski finished her championship bout more than eight hours later. In the morning’s team competition, UNC went 1-2. The Tar Heels opened the day with a 14-13 loss to Duke.  Next up was a 17-10 win over Boston College. Carolina then fell 24-3 to eventual-champion Notre Dame, which went 3-0 to claim the title.  (The Fighting Irish also won the men’s title on Saturday.)

In the individual competition, each team fielded four fencers per weapon and the top four in each weapon advanced to the semifinals. “I knew I could do this but it was nerve-wracking because there are so many talented fencers here,” Litynski said. “I knew I had to be fencing my best if I wanted to do this.” Although she was the only Tar Heel to make the semis, she was quick to credit the support of her teammates and to share her accomplishment.

The championship was just the latest high mark in a successful career. A two-time All-America, the nursing/global studies double major was announced earlier in the week as a recipient of an ACC Postgraduate Scholarship in recognition of her academic success.

“She’s worked so hard all four years she’s been here,” Miller said.

After Sunday’s title, Litynski was looking forward to taking it easy for the evening. She planned to host dinner for her family, but as with her fencing, she’d already put in the hard work. “I prepared it yesterday, so I’m excited for that too – I can go home and be with family,” she said. On the menu: crepes, eggplant and other veggies. “I think it’s going to be good,” she said.

Those who watched her compete Sunday would expect nothing less.

Final Team Standings

1. Notre Dame (3-0)

2. Duke (2-1)

3. North Carolina (1-2)

4. Boston College (0-3)

Team Results

Round 1

Notre Dame def Boston College, 19-8 (S90/F81/E27)

Duke University def UNC Chapel Hill, 14-13 (S54/F54/E45)

Round 2

Notre Dame def Duke University, 19-8 (S72/F72/E54)

UNC Chapel Hill def Boston College, 17-10 (S72/F63/E45)

Round 3

Notre Dame def UNC Chapel Hill, 24-3 (S72/F90/E81)

Duke University def Boston College, 18-9 (S90/F54/E45)

Individual Results (top two earn All-ACC honors)

Sabre

Gold – Gill Litynski, North Carolina

Silver – Claudia Kulmacz, Notre Dame

Bronze – Jamie Norville, Notre Dame

Foil

Gold – Lee Kiefer, Notre Dame

Silver – Nicole McKee, Notre Dame

Bronze – Madison Zeiss, Notre Dame

Epée

Gold – Nicole Ameli, Notre Dame

Silver – Ashley Severson, Notre Dame

Bronze – Olivia Adragna, Boston College

Championship MVP

Lee Kiefer, Notre Dame

By Goheels.com

Published February 23, 2015.

Karen Stevenson might not have set out to blaze a trail, but she did.

Charles Waddell, too, was ahead of his time.

For the second straight year, Carolina Athletics on Saturday will honor pioneering former student-athletes with the Trailblazer Award, and this year’s honorees are memorable in a myriad of ways.

Stevenson, who competed in track and field at UNC-Chapel Hill, was the first African-American female to earn a Morehead Scholarship at Carolina. She went on to become the first woman from UNC and the first black woman in the nation to earn a Rhodes Scholarship, in 1979.

“I didn’t give the statistics a lot of thought,” Stevenson told goheels.com. “I always just did the things that I was passionate about. I pursued the things that I was interested in and I think I was a little fearless in those things and a little courageous in those things, and I didn’t think, ‘Well, I shouldn’t do that because nobody like me has ever done that before,’ and likewise I didn’t think I want to do that because I might be the first. I want to do that because that’s what I enjoy. That’s who I am.”

Waddell was a three-sport letterwinner for the Tar Heels, competing in football, basketball and track. He received the Patterson Medal, Carolina’s highest athletic award, in 1975 and went on to earn an MBA from UNC.

“I don’t know if it was anything that I was trying to do,” Waddell told goheels.com. “You just try to be somebody who builds bridges, rather than dealing with the negative side.”

The two newest Trailblazers will be honored at halftime Saturday’s men’s basketball game. Last year, in the inaugural year of the program, honorees were Courtney Bumpers, Robyn Hadley, Ricky Lanier and Charles Scott.

Read more about Stevenson.

Read more about Waddell.

Published February 19, 2015

Soon, Carolina’s public safety officers may have a new tool at their fingertips – or more precisely, on their uniforms.

At semester’s end, Chief Jeff McCracken, director of public safety, hopes to have all of Carolina’s 53 sworn officers equipped with body-worn cameras when they go on patrol. Matt Fajack, vice chancellor for finance and administration, has approved McCracken’s $60,000 request to purchase the new equipment.

Using the small cameras to record actions and dialogue between police officers and the people they encounter is a growing national trend. It gained more attention in the wake of the shooting of unarmed teenager Michael Brown Jr. by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, sparking protests across the country. And President Barack Obama at the end of the year asked Congress for $75 million to help purchase 50,000 body cameras for officers nationwide and provide training in how to use them.

The University began exploring use of the body cameras in spring 2013, McCracken said. Police cruisers have had dashboard cameras for years, and in a sense the body cameras are an extension of that record-keeping capability.

“Using the cameras promotes accountability and transparency all the way around,” he said. “They are effective in preserving evidence in criminal cases and can help provide answers to any follow-up questions on both sides. In addition, footage taken can be a valuable training tool.”

Departments that have used the body-worn cameras have seen a significant drop in complaints against officers, McCracken said. “Behaviors improve across the board when people know they
are being recorded,” he explained.

In fact, a recent report released by the U.S. Department of Justice Office of Community Oriented Policing Services and the Police Executive Research Forum supports this observation. The evidence suggests that body-worn cameras help strengthen accountability and transparency and that behavior from both officers and civilians is more positive when they know a camera is present, the report said.

“We see the body-worn cameras as another means to help our public safety officers keep the University community safe. That’s our primary objective,” Fajack said.

“Police departments in the towns of Chapel Hill and Carrboro are considering the use of body cameras as well, and this would provide another opportunity for our three police departments to employ similar tools and resources as we work together.”

Much work is still required, though, before Carolina’s public safety officers can hit the roads, walkways and bicycle paths with the new cameras.

Besides deciding which devices to purchase among the growing options available, McCracken said, the Department of Public Safety has to examine data storage issues – not only capability, but also when and how data should be downloaded and how long it should be preserved.

Then, there are procedural issues to fine-tune – when the cameras should and should not be used – and an overall University policy governing use of the body-worn cameras has to be developed, McCracken said.

A public safety team is field-testing the devices and working toward answers to these questions, he said.

“We have a cadre of good officers at Carolina, and being able to have this new tool available is an opportunity to help the campus community feel even more confident in how we respond to people’s concerns,” McCracken said. “It really is about being more transparent in all that we do.”

By Patty Courtright, University Gazette

Published February 16, 2015