News Archive - 2026

Stock image of someone using a laptop
AI agents have a memory problem. Franklin researchers are working to fix it.

Researchers in Franklin College of Arts and Science have built a new memory architecture for AI agents that improves response accuracy on complex tasks up to 23 percent.   The system, called Synapse (Synergistic Associative Processing and Semantic Encoding), addresses the current struggle for large-language models and agents to recall past conversations. This “contextual isolation” often results in weak and conflicting responses.…

Adam stands in front of the geology building
‘Geologists are part of a solution’: How Adam Milewski went from aspiring lawyer to science advocate

For most of his early life, Adam Milewski was convinced he was going to be a lawyer. He didn’t feel particularly drawn to pursue a legal career, but everyone else told him he should pursue it. “As the youngest of five kids, I felt like I had to have a voice,” he said. “I never really accepted the answer ‘no’ very well, and I always sort of had ideas and proposals.” But underneath the argumentative streak was something that didn’t quite fit that…

Flatworms
Study from Franklin professor identifies genes that help flatworms regenerate their brains

Findings could help scientists design better therapies for humans with TBI, brain diseases The human brain is terrible at healing itself from injury or disease. But some animals can harness their own cellular abilities to not only repair injuries but also to regrow their brains entirely. Researchers from the University of Georgia have pinpointed several of the genes that make brain regeneration possible in one type of flatworm. “Big picture: We…

Nick Foukal in Antarctica
UGA Marine Sciences professor studies how currents affect the climate

Nick Foukal educates the next generation of oceanographers Nick Foukal’s fascination with the ocean began decades ago, on the waters off the coast of Nahant, Massachusetts, a 3,000-resident beach town 13 miles north of Boston. He remembers spending summers taking the family’s rowboat out with his brother, fishing and setting lobster traps.  But beyond catching crustaceans, Foukal was never particularly interested in the biological side of…

Jane Odum on stage receiving award
Franklin Ph.D. student’s summer pivot wins $100,000 prize for AI startup MyFixam

Jane Odum developed MyFixam through the inaugural Franklin CREATE! Summer Startup Academy  Three months after Jane Odum earned just $9 from the first product she tried to sell, the University of Georgia computer science Ph.D. candidate stood on a Los Angeles stage to accept a $100,000 prize.  Odum won third prize in the Google XPRIZE Build with Gemini Competition for MyFixam, a marketplace where people in Nigeria can find verified…

Statue of Athena
What ancient literature remembers about the weather

A weather expert's “humanities-atmospheric sciences rabbit hole” raises new questions about how early writers observed the natural world. This story is part of Humanities in Practice, a Franklin College of Arts and Sciences series exploring the value of the humanities in work and everyday life. Marshall Shepherd calls it a “humanities-atmospheric sciences rabbit hole.” The atmospheric scientist entered it after watching the 2026 film…

Adam Milewski with a drone
2026 Game Changer: Adam Milewski shakes up Sanford Stadium

As head of UGA’s Department of Geology, Adam Milewski says people are often surprised that his work focuses on water. But Milewski, a hydrogeologist who studies the water found beneath earth’s surface, will be the first to tell you that geology includes more than rocks. Milewski is also a huge football fan with an office just steps away from Sanford Stadium. During one game, he looked around at the thousands of fans cheering and jumping and…

Lars Peter Hansen
Department of Statistics hosts Nobel laureate for Bradley Lecture

Students, faculty, and alumni from across the university gathered in Brooks Hall on Tuesday to hear from economist Lars Peter Hansen, a 2013 recipient of the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in memory of Alfred Nobel and this year’s Bradley Lecturer.   Hansen, the David Rockefeller Distinguished Service Professor in the University of Chicago Departments of Economics, Statistics, and the Booth School of Business,…

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