Learn more about RicardoHaving grown up surrounded by fields in southeastern North Carolina, Ricardo Crespo is training to practice medicine in the same kinds of rural communities. He’s starting that mission with Carolina’s Student Health Action Coalition.
Celebrating our graduate and professional students
Carolina’s nearly 12,000 graduate and professional students aren’t just in the classroom to learn.
These Tar Heels, who make up 37% of our student body, are an essential part of our Carolina community. While they spend hours in the classroom becoming masters in their field, they also teach courses, serve as mentors who inspire our undergraduates every day, make life-changing discoveries through their research and build a campus community stronger for all students.
The entire Carolina community celebrates those contributions this week with Graduate and Professional Student Appreciation Week.
Every day, graduate students perform vital work in our classrooms, our research labs and our public service projects. They mentor and train our undergraduate students, and they bring energy and creativity to their work with our faculty.
Chancellor Kevin M. Guskiewicz
Serving the state and world
Our graduate and professional students are a driving force behind the University's mission to address some of the greatest challenges of our time.
They are making a difference wherever they go, including here on Carolina’s campus and in communities across the state and around the world. They’re helping protect our coastline and fishing industry, closing health care gaps that affect many North Carolinians, making discoveries to treat diseases and inventing new technologies.
Read more about Sally's researchGraduate student Sally Dowd is working toward a better understanding of how ocean warming affects fish populations in our state's coastal regions and the broader implications of these changes.
Learn more about GabrielA native of Sao Paulo, Brazil, Gabriel Bernardo da Silva has followed his passion for service to Chapel Hill. He is working to earn a master’s degree in global studies from Carolina to learn how to better support migrants and refugees.
Researchers and teachers
Rhianna Lee
After watching her brother struggle with cystic fibrosis, Rhianna Lee has dedicated her life to studying the disease. She works on developing therapies for people with CF and creates cell lines to test therapies that could minimize symptoms for those with rare types of the disease.
Adam Robinson
The patient needed dentures, but he couldn’t afford them. So dental student Adam Robinson created a virtual 3D model of the man’s mouth. He then uploaded the file to a dental fabrication lab, which used a 3D printer to produce a set of dentures for the patient. The process saved time and money while improving the man’s life and health.
Jamshaid Shahir
Jamshaid Shahir’s area of research — a better understanding of the intricacies of how embryonic stem cells divide and the ramifications for what cells they turn into — is positioning him for a role in the sciences at the frontier of his discipline and for a career in computational biology.
Jack Sundberg
Time and cost are huge considerations when chemists are looking for new materials to use in their experiments. Jack Sundberg has created a software to help chemists uncover the best materials for their experiments — a potential game-changer for minimizing time and costs.
Anne Smiley
As a Ph.D. candidate within the Piehler Lab at IMS, Anna Smiley’s work centers on using geographic information systems to track the changes in land cover in coastal regions. By calculating the nitrogen removal by soils across coastal landscapes, Smiley can measure water quality regulation.
Tanner Award winners
When they're not working on their own research, graduate students are helping our undergraduates begin their own academic and research journeys. As teaching assistants, they're preparing the next generation of Tar Heels. Meet the winners of this year's graduate teaching assistant award.
Community builders
Carolina Women in Business
Carolina Women in Business, open to MBA students at UNC Kenan-Flagler, provides professional and personal development opportunities for women and their allies preparing to be leaders in the business world.
Kevin Ortiz
After leaving Mexico as a child for a new life in the U.S., MBA student Kevin Ortiz is inspiring the next generation of Hispanic and Latin American business leaders.
Rebekah Lim
Rebekah Lim, a master of public health student in the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health’s maternal and child health department, is using her time with the Diversity and Student Success program to build a stronger network and community for graduate students who identify as Asian Pacific Islander Desi American.
Science in the Stacks
More than a dozen Tar Heels are working to bring the wonders of science to children in the community through the graduate student-run organization Science in the Stacks. The group partners with North Carolina libraries to teach science lessons through a mix of in-person and virtual demonstrations.