It takes a lot of energy to do the hands-on teaching, learning, research, and collaboration that we do at UNO. The holiday season is the perfect opportunity to celebrate all the breakthroughs we’ve made, bonds we’ve built, and lives we’ve changed while also recharging our batteries.
In this month’s update you will see just a handful of the many ways we are building connections in our community and across our state that will make a lasting impact.
I also invite you to relive some of the sights and sounds from our December 2021 Commencement ceremonies, explore inspiring stories from some of our graduates, and support our Maverick Food Pantry as the holiday season approaches.
I hope you and everyone in our extended Maverick Family has a restful holiday.
Joanne Li, Ph.D., CFA UNO Chancellor
Out of Office with Chancellor Li:
Season 1, Episode 4 | Nebraska Medical Orchestra and Choir
Music is powerful. It soothes us, it helps us focus, it motivates. But did you know music can help us heal? This is one of the central ideas behind Medical Humanities, an innovative collaboration between UNO and the University of Nebraska Medical Center that explores the intersection of medicine and the arts, culture, psychology, and much more. I recently had an opportunity to see this collaboration in action during a recent Nebraska Medical Orchestra & Choir rehearsal at our beautiful Strauss Performing Arts Center.
Service learning is central to our identity as a leading urban institution. Nothing fills me with more pride than when our learners go out into our Omaha community and live out our mission to make a lasting, positive impact. A group of Mavericks in a religion and human rights course did just that through a recent collaboration with the Tri-Faith Initiative Garden and Orchard.
Eighty years later, the attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, still weighs heavy on the hearts and minds of all Americans, and many families of the fallen seek closure. After the U.S.S. Oklahoma sank, nearly 400 of the victims were unidentifiable. For the past five years, faculty and students in the College of Information Science and Technology have worked to identify 90 percent of the of servicemen who perished in the attacks. It’s a story that underscores the fact that what we do here at UNO touches lives across the nation and around the world.
The Maverick journey doesn’t end at graduation. If you are a lifelong learner, your adventure truly beings when you receive your diploma. New Alumni Association Director Anthony Flott will play a critical role to ensure our Maverick alums stay engaged with their alma mater and lift this institution up as they achieve their own successes. Please join me in congratulating Tony – a UNO graduate and longtime association employee – and send him your well-wishes as he takes on this role.
If you have any experience interacting with virtual/augmented reality platforms or used a virtual assistant like Apple’s Siri or Amazon’s Alexa, you understand the incredible potential these technologies possess. These next-generation devices and technologies can push the limits of data and bandwidth, but a researcher at UNO is working to find ways to speed up the process.
Spyridon Mastorakis, Ph.D., an assistant professor of computer science at UNO, is researching how to speed up augmented reality (AR) processing by cutting down the number of frames of video processed to those that are necessary for high similarity processing. His work could lead to artificial intelligence (AI) platforms having up to 21 times their current processing speed. This would lead to greater efficiency of future AR and virtual assistant devices and technologies.
“This project is a non-traditional approach to enable the widespread use of next-generation applications in our everyday lives,” Mastorakis said. “I am very excited about this project, since our research could definitely have an impact on our lives, if successful, and could also spur a new research direction that the broader scientific community could investigate in the future.”
When the next era of AI-supported devices and technologies are moving at the speed of light, you may have UNO to thank.
The Washington Post published an article on how Muslims view the investigation and prosecutions tied to the Jan. 6 rioting at the U.S. Capitol. Gina Ligon, Ph.D., director of NCITE at UNO, is quoted in the article discussing whether those arrested would be put on watch lists and treated like Muslims were treated following 9/11.
The Lincoln Journal Star reported on Luke Moberly and UNO student Harrison Martindale who formed a team to develop an app they call Bumper. The app is focused on high school students and geared towards making it easier for them to learn about and start investing.
NOISE Omaha published a feature on Carrie Banks, head coach of UNO women's basketball, touching on her experiences as the only Black NCAA D-I Head Coach in Nebraska, her role in DEAI efforts at UNO, and how she got to where she is today.
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