When Caitlyn Edwards checked her email in July and learned she received a prestigious award, her first thought was to call her sister, Ashley. But, she wasn’t so much hoping her sister would offer congratulations, as she was eager for Ashley to check her own email.

Language is a fundamental part of the human experience. It’s what separates humans from other animals. But since the 1950s, computer scientists have been trying to make computers capable of understanding language as well.

Actress and philanthropist Audrey Hepburn made famous the quote, “As you grow older, you will discover that you have two hands. One for helping yourself, the other for helping others.” When it comes to Florida State University biology major Alexis Cox, her extensive list of volunteer work suggests she has about a dozen extra hands at the ready.

Turn on your TV in Tallahassee any weekday around 6 p.m. and you’ll likely see meteorology students from Florida State University’s Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Science hard at work in front of the greenscreen. The “FSU Weather” show, which broadcasts live on 4FSU and also streams on YouTube, gives students interested in broadcast meteorology a chance to put their on-air skills to the test.

In 2016, Sam McLoughlin experienced a political awakening. While McLoughlin, a Lake Mary, Fla., native, had cycled through a selection of dream jobs growing up — being a veterinarian, a chef, or a journalist all held appeal — none of them stuck. Political science, however, was a different story.

"When I was battling homelessness, I felt like Atlas, the ancient Greek Titan, carrying the world on his shoulders, as I tried to hold myself and my family together,” said Isaac Parfait. Thanks to the Florida State University Unconquered Scholars Program and his own determination to succeed, Parfait, a 2020 alumnus of the Program in Interdisciplinary Humanities, now works in Chicago for Three Point Media, a digital production firm for state and national political ads.

What can a water bug tell us about the human heart? The answer could one day save your life. Physics doctoral candidate and interdisciplinary researcher Hamidreza Rahmani is analyzing flight muscle contractions of a Thai giant water bug, Lethocerus indicus, because of its similarities to human heart muscles.

2020, the year that saw COVID-19 become a global pandemic has officially drawn to a close. Although we’re not sure what 2021 will hold, a new chapter is certainly a welcome one. Despite difficult circumstances, the Florida State University community rose to 2020’s biggest challenges.

Triplet Alexis Kidd was learning Spanish in high school when she noticed a big difference in how easy learning a new language was for her and how challenging the experience of learning that same language was for her brother.

Nearly 15 years ago, Florida State University senior Tetiana Panina and her family emigrated from Ukraine to the U.S. to pursue a better life.

When Florida State’s Presidential Scholars program admitted its first class in Fall 2014, just 25 students were selected from the 800 promising scholars who applied. Known thereafter as the Scholars Class of 2018, this elite group was the vanguard of a recruitment strategy to attract pre-eminent scholars to FSU — a strategy in which the College of Arts and Sciences continues to be a formidable presence.

Tara Skipton was already engaged in studying past civilizations when she arrived at Florida State University in 2019.