The Mississippi Theatre Association renamed two of its annual DramaFest awards in honor of longtime Mississippi State faculty members Wayne “Dur” Durst and Betty “Jo” Durst, recognizing their decades of service and lasting impact on theater education in Mississippi.

Kimiko Hahn, New York state poet and acclaimed author of nearly a dozen collections of poetry, will join Mississippi State University as a visiting writer on Tuesday, Feb. 17 for a special night of selected readings and celebration of the written word.

Jaspreet Singh Randhawa, a Mississippi State assistant professor of physics, has received a prestigious CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation to support a $700,000 research project on the nuclear reactions that power stellar explosions and other extreme cosmic events. Using advanced detection systems, researchers will gather data that has never been measured directly in a terrestrial laboratory, helping scientists understand how elements are formed and how these processes shape the universe.