Research and Discovery

With more than 520,000 acres in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, UT professors and students have a one-of-a-kind classroom right in their own backyard.

Senior Grant Rigney has joined an elite class since being named UT’s eighth Rhodes Scholar.

Lindsey Owen, a graduate student in the College of Communication and Information, recounts her experience working with UT’s Land Grant Films on a documentary about the 100 millionth book being given away by Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library. Owen learned not only about filmmaking but also how the program changes lives.

For the 150 children ages seven through 21 who have various disabilities and the 200 UT students who spend a week as counselors, Camp Koinonia is an experience that lasts a lifetime.

Maker’s Club turns student idea into a prosthetic limb.

Increasingly, faculty and students are crossing the silos of academic disciplines. Interdisciplinary collaborations are key to solving some of society’s greatest challenges. Here are a few of the Volunteers striving to make a difference through unique and sometimes surprising partnerships.

For most people, murder, arson, and violent crime are the stuff news stories and urban legend. But UT researchers who specialize in forensic work stare down death and sift through the ashes every day to help law enforcement solve mysteries and bring justice to victims. In this collection of stories, you’ll learn about the beginnings of the Body Farm, catch up on Forensic Anthropology Center research, and meet an alumnus who is the world’s leading expert on fire investigations.

Bill Bass had an idea. A big idea. One that would change the face of forensics forever.

When Bass came to UT’s anthropology department in 1971, that idea had already taken root in his mind. His goal was to have the means and resources to estimate the time since death for deceased individuals—something on which very little research was available.

For more than 35 years, the Forensic Anthropology Center has been accepting donations of bodies to be placed at the outdoor research facility. More than 100 donations are received every year, the remains of which become part of the William M. Bass Donated Skeletal Collection.

As the world’s first outdoor forensic anthropology research center, it’s only natural that the Body Farm has produced pioneering research, and researchers, in the forensics field. Forensic Clock Arpad Vass…