Awards and Recognition

Receiving a patent is an intellectual achievement for any researcher and a key commercialization milestone. A patent allows a discovery to be shared with the rest of the world and advances innovation in and across important fields and industries, including health care, the environment, education, and food production.

Congratulations to U of M researchers who were awarded patents for their discoveries in 2022. U of M researchers were issued 103 U.S. patents (foreign patents not included) during the year.

The Office of the Vice President for Research has announced the awardees of the 2023 Social Justice Impact Grants, including Ji Youn Shin (College of Design), Sophia Vinogradov (Medical School), and Elizabeth Wrigley-Field (College of Liberal Arts). All three submitted compelling proposals for solution-oriented research projects focusing on healthcare in marginalized communities. 

Andrew Oxenham received an NIH R01 Renewal with an award amount of $3,225,137 over 5 years for the project titled, “Complex pitch perception in complex environments.” Oxenham’s project combines behavioral and neuroimaging studies in infants and adults with normal and impaired hearing to better understand how our sense of pitch in music and speech is extracted from the acoustic information within the ear. Through a subcontract, researchers at the University of Washington will study infants, as part of a focus on how the perception and neural coding of pitch change throughout one's lifespan. The outcomes of the study will help to improve technology like hearing aids and cochlear implants.

Emily Allen has received a three-year Early Career Research (ECR) R21 grant through NIH’s National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, totaling $581,250. The study titled “Functional and structural characterization of the human auditory cortex using high-resolution MRI” aims to develop a reliable and precise method for defining and parcellating auditory cortex in humans, and to provide the auditory neuroimaging community with a state-of-the-art multimodal structure-function characterization of the primary auditory cortex.

The Institute of Mental Chronometry has awarded James Lee (PI) and Emily Willoughby (Co-PI) with a grant ($530,129) to study the “Foundations and Implications of Human Cognitive Ability.” The research includes the biological basis of reaction time, the existence and effects of selective placement in adoption studies, and drawing ability and visuomotor task performance."

Melisa López Franzen will serve as the University's new executive director of Government and Community Relations, advancing the interests of the entire University of Minnesota System at the capitol in Saint Paul, in Washington, D.C., and among community partners and neighbors. In this critical leadership role, López Franzen will report directly to the president and serve as a key member of the University’s senior leadership team. She and her team are responsible for advancing the University System’s work in partnership with local, state, and federal officials, while also building and strengthening relationships with stakeholders and supporters throughout the state and beyond. López Franzen has deep and varied experience in nonprofit, corporate, government, and community engagement, including a decade of experience in the Minnesota Senate. She is currently the president of NewPublica, a multicultural communications consulting firm she co-founded, as well as an adjunct professor at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs.

William Jones spoke with Minnesota Public Radio about the promise and possibility of a 4-day workweek; Thomas Naselaris is quoted in WIRED about how your brain tells the difference between what is real and imagined; Stevie Chancellor is interviewed in Mpls. St. Paul Magazine about U of M study examining TikTok’s impact on mental health; Mani Subramani is quoted in the Twin Cities Business story, “What's Next for QR Codes in Restaurants?”; Walter Low and Wei Chen are interviewed in a Fox 9 about a University of Minnesota medical breakthrough in treating childhood genetic disorder; Katie Pekel is interviewed in a KARE 11 story about falling literacy scores in Minnesota; Christopher Terry is quoted in a WCCO story, “Black-Owned Business Month: Is progress keeping up with demographic reality”; Ed Usset is quoted in the Star Tribune about Minnesota wheat growers’ dismay over low crop prices.

Executive Vice President and Provost Rachel T. A. Croson has announced the awardees of the Imagine Fund, which was established in 2007 through a grant from the McKnight Foundation to support research and scholarship in the arts, design, and humanities at the University of Minnesota. The awards include the Arts, Humanities, and Design Chair Award, the Special Events Grant Program, and the Annual Faculty Research Grants. Learn more about the awardees and their projects.

Two proposed projects affiliated with the University of Minnesota were chosen as finalists for the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Regional Innovation Engines competition. The Midwest Sustainable Plastics Innovation Regional Engine (M-SPIRE), a U of M-led effort to drive the global transition to sustainable plastics, and Great Lakes ReNEW, a Chicago-based effort with significant U of M partnership to create a decarbonized circular blue economy in the Great Lakes region, were among 16 finalists announced by NSF. Each of these initiatives have the potential for $160 million in NSF funding over 10 years. The new Regional Innovation Engines program offers the largest investments in NSF history and was created under the federal CHIPS and Science Act to boost innovation capacity, create sustainable innovation ecosystems and demonstrate inclusive growth across regions and demographics.

The University of Minnesota has been recognized as a Forbes Best Employer for Women 2023. To identify the top-rated 400 companies, Forbes conducted an independent survey of 60,000 employees in the U.S. working for U.S. companies with at least 1,000 employees.