Awards and Recognition

The NIH has awarded $2.5 million to fund the Minnesota Precision Medicine CKD & Resilient Diabetes Recruiting Site: Engagement, Enrollment & Ethics (Minn-KPMP), a recruitment site for the Kidney Precision Medicine Project. Minn-KPMP is led by Patrick Nachman, (University of Minnesota) and Luiza Caramori, (Cleveland Clinic). Minn-KPMP co-investigators Susan Wolf, (Consortium on Law and Values), and Jerica Berge, (Department of Medicine), will lead research on ethical issues raised by KPMP.

For the seventh consecutive year, the University of Minnesota School of Nursing received the Health Professions Higher Education Excellence in Diversity (HEED) Award from INSIGHT Into Diversity Magazine. The school was one of only 16 nursing schools to receive the HEED Award, which honors U.S. nursing, public health, medical, dental, pharmacy, osteopathic, veterinary, and other health schools and centers that demonstrate an outstanding commitment to diversity and inclusion.

U of M startup BKB Floral Foam took first place at the 2022 MN Cup startup competition, beating out 90 semifinalists to be crowned Grand Prize Winner and receive $50,000 in funding. BKB Floral Foam produces compostable floral foams as a sustainable alternative to traditional foams, which are widely used and petroleum-based. U of M startup Q-rounds was recognized as the life science/health IT division winner, and Refr Sports, co-founded by recent U of M graduate Wyatt Gustafson, won the student division.

Joseph Gaugler is quoted in The Wall Street Journal about tracking a loved one with dementia using Apple’s AirTags; Richard Graves and Patrick Huelman are quoted in a Star Tribune story about the monumental task of making Minnesota’s buildings greener; Michael Pitt is quoted in the Post-Bulletin about a study showing that doctors and families avoid saying the word “death”; David Boulware is quoted in NBC News about promising results from an updated Covid booster from Pfizer and BioNTech; David Perry writes in the New York Times piece, “Why That John Fetterman Interview Caused a Furor”; Christopher De Jonge is quoted in a Newsweek story about a man allergic to his own semen who gets sick every time he orgasms; Karen Mary Davalos is quoted in the Minnesota Public Radio story, “Art Hounds: Art explores the earthly and spiritual”; Howard Lavine is quoted in Newsweek about election anxiety being a key midterm motivator for marginalized voters.

A University of Minnesota-led team of researchers received the first round of funding from a $10 million grant awarded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to follow up on their work with VitisGen2, a multi-disciplinary, collaborative project focused on cultivating disease-resistant grapes that can be grown sustainably with reduced pesticide and fossil fuel use. The team is made up of researchers from 13 different institutions across the country and is led by Matthew Clark, an associate professor in the Department of Horticultural Science in the College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences and an Extension horticulture specialist.

Associate Professor Lars Hansen is one of only five scientists nationwide to win a 2022 American Geophysical Union James B. Macelwane Medal. The award honors the recipients’ contributions to the earth and space science fields based on their depth and breadth of research, impact, creativity as well as service, outreach, and diversity. Hansen is a faculty member in the University’s N.H. Winchell School of Earth & Environmental Sciences. This marks the first time in the school’s 60-year history that an active faculty member has won the medal. 

The University of Minnesota Twin Cities has been recognized as an Achieve Twin Cities 2022 Community Partner, which honors the University’s outstanding support of Achieve Twin Cities and the young people served during the 2021-22 fiscal year. The University was recognized for providing 27 paid internships for Minneapolis youth through Step Up, which connects young people with valuable workplace skills, mentors, and professional support and networks. 

Achieve Twin Cities programs have a significant, proven impact: BIPOC and low-income youth who work with Achieve Twin Cities enroll in postsecondary programs at 69 percent and 79 percent higher rates respectively than those who do not. Additionally, Step Up interns are more likely to be graduation ready, with nearly 95 percent reporting that their internships provided valuable learning experiences.

Chris Lenhart is quoted at Minnesota Public Radio about Minnesota’s peat as an underappreciated climate superhero; Lucy Mkandawire-Valhmu is quoted in the CBS 58 story, “Women of color are twice as likely to die from domestic violence”; Jason Hill is quoted in Knowable Magazine about how green biofuels really are; Eli Coleman and Brad Miller are quoted in the Reuters story, “As more transgender children seek medical care, families confront many unknowns”; Larry Jacobs is quoted in a Washington Post article about a majority of GOP nominees being election deniers; John Kammeyer-Mueller is quoted in the TIME magazine story, “Ambition Is Out”; Alan Rozenshtein is quoted in CyberScoop about a Supreme Court case that is poised to rewrite how social media confronts disinformation; Melanie Buford and Michael Stebleton are interviewed in an EdSurge Podcast feature about what colleges can do to help students find jobs.

The University of Minnesota is playing a key role in an upcoming study of Alzheimer’s Disease and related dementias (ADRD) that will re-contact more than 14,000 Americans from the high school class of 1972 to study how education affects ADRD risk and racial/ethnic differences in that risk. The $50.3 million grant brings together experts from eight universities, including sociologist John Robert Warren from the University of Minnesota’s Institute for Social Research and Data Innovation. The study is supported by the National Institute on Aging, which is part of the National Institutes of Health. 

Simon Rosser, Tetyana Shippee, and Nidhi Kohli have received a $2.5M+ National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant for their project, “Training the Long-Term Services and Supports Dementia Care Workforce in Provision of Care to Sexual and Gender Minority Residents.” 

Rosser, professor in the School of Public Health (SPH) Division of Epidemiology and Community Health, is the principal investigator, and Tetyana Shippee, associate professor in SPH’s Division of Health Policy and Management, is co-principal investigator on the project. Nidhi Kohli, John P. Yackel Professor of Educational Measurement and Assessment in the Department of Educational Psychology’s quantitative methods in education program, will lead the quantitative methodology for the study.