Month: July 2026

Shuai Huang: Understanding How Plants Defend Themselves

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Shuai Huang, assistant professor of molecular genetics and NSF CAREER awardee, researches how plants defend themselves. Although plants lack specialized immune cells, each cell has immune receptors and can mount responses against bacteria, fungi, oomycetes, viruses, and other pathogens. Huang’s lab identifies genes, pathways, and signaling molecules involved in plant defense and discovered that many cellular molecules rapidly cluster into membrane-free “biomolecular condensates” via liquid-liquid phase separation, assembling quickly under stress and disassembling when the job is done.

Huang aims to engineer condensates to improve resistance without reducing growth and to study roles in mechanical and abiotic stress responses relevant to climate change and food security.

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Kristen Lindquist: The Brain Didn’t Evolve for Thought

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Kristen Lindquist, professor of psychology, shares her research with host David Staley. Lindquist researches what emotions are and how the brain creates them. She challenges the common view that emotions are triggered, instinctive packages generated by dedicated brain centers like the amygdala. Lindquist summarizes neuroimaging evidence that the amygdala is neither consistent nor specific to fear and that emotions involve whole-brain patterns including regions linked to language, memory, and abstract knowledge. She argues emotions are constructed through predictive processes shaped by personal experience, social learning, and cultural narratives, with implications for treatment. Lindquist closes by describing lifespan research using daily-life sampling, physiology, brain scans, and planned longitudinal follow-up.

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Charles O. Anderson: Kinetic Storyteller and Ohio State University Artist Laureate

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Charles O. Anderson, OSU’s fourth artist laureate, professor of dance, and founder of the Afro contemporary Charles O. Anderson Dance Theater X, discusses being a “kinetic storyteller.” Anderson prefers this term because it understands movement as knowledge production, memory transmission, and meaning-making shaped. His choreography is influenced by Black church and club cultures and emphasizes how bodies carry histories somatically through gesture, rhythm, and proximity. Anderson’s choreography embodies behavior from sources like tension, social anxiety, and everyday observations . and defines “Afro contemporary” as embracing experimental identity beyond “traditional African dance.” Anderson describes Recurrent Unrest, developed amid early Black Lives Matter influences and set to Steve Reich, as a cumulative, polyrhythmic exploration of civil unrest that also included a reparations initiative to bring impacted communities into concert dance; it became a film during the pandemic. He outlines his laureate project Croatoa: Re-Singing America’s Next 250 Years, with statewide community testimony, “wailing wall” artifacts, and inclusive performance, and shares his late start in dance, career path, and current work Re-Singing From the Underspace with Dayton Contemporary Dance Company.

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Danielle Schoon: Teaching in Multiple Departments

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Danielle Schoon, assistant teaching professor of sociology, Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) fellow, and recipient of the Ohio State University’s Alumni Award for Distinguished Teaching, discusses her many areas of expertise with host David Staley.

Schoon, trained in cultural anthropology with earlier work in dance studies and Middle Eastern studies, emphasizes culture and power and explains how metacognition and transparent course design help students become partners in learning. She describes COIL, which connects OSU students with peers at international institutions for 5–8 week collaborative projects, and discusses challenges such as time zones, unequal language burdens, tool selection, accessibility, and differing definitions of success, with emphasis on learning processes over polished products.

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Replay Wednesday: Can We Avoid Repeating History?

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Christopher McKnight Nichols speaking on stage

On the 250th Anniversary of the United States, take a minute to reflect on Christopher McKnight Nichols’ question of “Can Those Who Know History Avoid Repeating It?”