Today I had the privilege of sitting down with our new head football coach and gaining some important insight into how he plans to run the Golden Eagle football team. Ellis Johnson, who spent some time with the Golden Eagles as a defensive coordinator, comes to Southern Miss from South Carolina.

In our conversation, new head coach Johnson shares his football philosophy, what made him decide to return to the university, what Golden Eagle fans can expect and where he plans to lead his new team.

I am excited to see his passion for Southern Miss take our Golden Eagles to new heights.

Click here to read the full story about Ellis Johnson on Southern Miss Now.

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If you want to see research in action at Southern Miss, one of the best places to look is the School of Polymers and High Performance Materials.

From its labs come solutions for real-world problems like dispersing oil spills – from the massive scale of Deepwater Horizon to smaller, more common incidents that occur every day.

The school’s director, Dr. Robert Lochhead, emphasizes that its dispersants are plant-based and biodegradable, and will disperse all oils. These polymer dispersants love water and stick to oily surfaces, where microbes then break down both the oil and the dispersants themselves.

One of keys to commercializing the product is the delivery system. “How do you make a kit you put on every oil rig, every tanker and you put next to every pipeline so that in the event of a spill, you can apply that?” he says. “If you were the person there at the spill, what’s the best way to apply … depending on the size of the spill … and the equipment you have?”

A broader goal for Lochhead, and the university, is to “educate the 21st century scientific work force. We want to develop a cadre and expertise here that will attract companies and give us jobs at Southern Mississippi.”

Lochead says, despite the serious nature of the crises his researchers are addressing, that the task is a fun one.

Sustainable solutions, the promise of job creation and an enjoyable work environment. That’s research, Southern Miss-style.

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