Maurice Cox, Architect

SEE MORE Click here to read a recent article on Maurice Cox in C-VILLE’s ABODE.   Maurice Cox has mastered several fields in his career: architect, professor, planner, politician and urban designer.  When Cox served as mayor of the City of Charlottesville for two years—from 2002 to 2004—he promoted democracy in design, the idea that all residents in […]

Francesca Conte, Ultramarathon Runner

SEE MORE Click here to watch the pilot episode of "Run For Your Lives," a reality show starring Francesca Conte and Russell Gill.  Success, says Francesca Conte, is having a job where running isn’t restricted only to the lunch hour. It’s no wonder then that, while the 37-year-old has logged more than 2,000 miles running in ultramarathons […]

Jack Fisk, Production Designer

SEE MORE Click here to see footage of the tree from Tree of Life being relocated. “Nobody makes canvas tents anymore,” says Jack Fisk, but that’s not exactly true. The Academy Award-nominated production designer is in Los Angeles—at work on a new film titled Water For Elephants, starring Robert Pattinson and Reese Witherspoon—creating a circa-1931 big top. A […]

Kevin Crowe, Large-scale Potter

 It’s uncommon enough to be really good at throwing ceramics on a potter’s wheel. How does a person become an expert in throwing pots that are the size of a first-grader? In Kevin Crowe’s case, it was a simple matter of economics.  Kevin Crowe says it took a lot of trial and error to learn […]

Sudhanva Gurumurthi, Assistant Professor of Computer Science

Sudhanva Gurumurthi, UVA Computer Science professor, received a million-dollar research award from Google this February.  During the first round of Google’s $5.7 million Focused Research Awards, split among 31 professors at 10 universities, Sudhanva Gurumurthi won a bit of green for his green-mindedness. Gurumurthi, an assistant professor in UVA’s Department of Computer Science who teaches […]

Emily Hodson Pelton, Winemaker [with video!]

“My first thought when I realized we were doing pretty good with this wine,” Pelton says of the 2009 Veritas Viognier that has earned her heaps of praise, “is ‘Thank goodness I have a lot of it!’” If, when she was studying infectious diseases in the far reaches of India, Emily Pelton couldn’t imagine becoming […]

Brad Wilcox, Sociologist

As if marriage and money weren’t complicated enough, Brad Wilcox will tell you that a recession can cut to the heart of a couple’s stability. That’s because money, apparently, leads to happiness.  HEAR MORE Click here to listen to an NPR interview with Brad Wilcox on postponing parenthood. Wilcox is the Director of the National Marriage Project. […]

Debbie Stockton, Farmer Advocate

For years, Debbie Stockton has been a visible part of the local movement for farmers’ rights. As an active member of Virginia Independent Consumer and Farmers Association (VICFA), she’s fought in the legislative trenches against what she sees as overzealous government regulation of small farms. In 2007, though, she went national with her message when […]

Scott Ransom, Astronomer at National Radio Astronomy Observatory

HEAR MORE Click here to hear the sound of a pulsar, spinning 600 times per second, as heard at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory.   As a kid, Scott Ransom played with toy telescopes and visited space camp. He thought he wanted to be one thing: an astronaut. It wasn’t long before bad vision swept that dream from […]