Awards and Recognition

Jill Hasday talked with KSTP about the future of abortion rights in Minnesota; Tim Johnson was interviewed by KARE 11 about the magnitude of Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision; Ingrid Polcari was interviewed by Minnesota Public Radio about skin care and skin protection in summer; Dorothy Hatsukami is quoted in the New York Times about the FDA plan to cut down on smoking by slashing nicotine levels in cigarettes; Stefan Liess is quoted in the Star Tribune about Minnesota’s increasingly more humid heat waves; Minnesota Monthly quoted Lisa Vecoli about the Tretter Collection and Twin Cities Pride; Sri Zaheer and Angela Spranger are quoted in Twin Cities Business about diversity in the workplace in Minnesota; Matthew Yousefzadeh is quoted in a New York Times story about a study finding that stress might age the immune system; Jonathan Borowsky is mentioned in the Los Angeles Times story, “U.S. child-care aid would supercharge moms' employment”; Alyssa Meuwissen is quoted in a USA Today story about how to help children play well with others and overcome pandemic awkwardness; Murray Frank is interviewed at CBS News about where the fight against inflation will hit your finances first; Tiffany Sprague is quoted in the Star Tribune story, “Ten years after catastrophic flood of 2012, is Duluth ready for the next one?”; retiring Chancellor Lendley Black writes in the Duluth News Tribune that “In 12 years at UMD, we faced our challenges head-on”; Mary Jo Kane is quoted in the Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder story, “Title IX’s impact on women athletes of color.”

The Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust announced an $18.8 million grant to the University of Minnesota Medical School. The grant aims to provide law enforcement officers and first responders across Minnesota with more than 8,300 automated external defibrillators (AEDs) to improve cardiac arrest survival rates. 

The Minnesota Invasive Terrestrial Pests and Plants Center (MITPPC) has been granted $6.23 million over five years through the Environment and Natural Resources Trust Fund (ENRTF). The funding will allow MITPPC to continue vital research addressing invasive terrestrial (land-based) species across the state. MITPPC relies on biennial requests to the ENRTF to discover new technologies and strategies for invasive species management, preparation, and early detection. Funding from ENRTF provides the center with the ability to support multi-year research projects and dozens of researchers, graduate students, and postdoctoral associates with broad academic backgrounds, bringing fresh ideas and new perspectives to the field.

The Institute on Community Integration and University of Massachusetts Boston received a $3 million grant from the Minnesota Department of Human Services to design and implement a statewide strategy for connecting Minnesotans with disabilities to better jobs and higher pay. Designed to help organizations move away from supporting employment that pays subminimum wages, the Minnesota Transformation Initiative Technical Assistance Center will design and implement plans to assist nearly two dozen service providers as they expand their customized, integrated employment services.

A University of Minnesota School of Nursing-led effort to create cutting-edge, immersive virtual reality simulation (IVRS) learning coordinated with a structured clinical preceptorship to provide real world experiences for nursing students was awarded $1.3 million from the American Nurses Foundation Reimagining Nursing Initiative. In partnership with the University of Michigan School of Nursing, Purdue University School of Nursing, and two other schools, the Big 10 Practice-Ready Nursing Initiative will use IVRS for learning and assessment in tandem with precepted clinical experiences and theory-based debriefing to teach quality care for multiple and diverse patients with complex needs.

The Office of the Vice President for Research has announced the recipients of this year’s Minnesota Futures Grant Program, an annual funding opportunity for research that addresses societal challenges and creates a meaningful impact on the world. This year OVPR granted nearly $500,000 to two projects: one led by Emilie Snell-Rood, associate professor of Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior in the College of Biological Sciences, whose team is studying ways to mitigate lead pollution in Minnesota soil and water; and another led by Yasu Kawakami, associate professor of Genetics, Cell Biology, and Development in the Medical School, who wants to build models to better understand the development of rare but deadly tumors.

To advance diverse ideas towards a shared vision of a future where people and planet prosper together, the Institute on the Environment (IonE) has announced seven 2022 Impact Goal grant projects, which have received up to $100,000 in funding. These projects represent a range of partnerships between University of Minnesota staff and faculty from across the system and partners in higher education, K12 education, government, and nonprofit organizations.

Assistant Professor Diti Bhadra has been awarded a five-year National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER grant for her project, Theory, Fieldwork, and Typology: A Semantic/Pragmatic Triad in Underrepresented Linguistic Systems. Her NSF CAREER grant project will bring together formal semantics and pragmatics research, semantic fieldwork in understudied languages, and investigation of semantic typologies, isoglosses and variation, in the large linguistic area of South Asia. 

Rachel Hardeman is quoted in the New York Times story, “COVID and Race”; George John is quoted in a KFGO story about companies reducing package sizes, but not prices, to mask inflation; Jonathan Oliver is quoted in a KARE 11 story about why ticks have been so bad this year; James Kakalios is quoted at Today about a woman who finally got her two ceramic bowls unstuck after an epic Twitter saga; Akshay Rao comments at KARE 11 about why gas prices won’t fall as quickly as they went up; Victoria Hall says at Minnesota Public Radio that it’s okay to restart backyard bird feeding as avian flu risk ebbs; Gary Reineccius is quoted in the Wired story, “The Secret to Tastier Fake Meat? Breeding Better Beans”; Gabe Chan is interviewed in the Minnesota Public Radio story, “Solar is now the 'cheapest energy in history'”; Nichole Morris is quoted in a NBC News story about police driving practices coming under scrutiny; Beth Olmstead is interviewed in a Fox9 story about blood donations for your pet; Matthew Aliota is quoted in Forbes about the spread of monkeypox and whether you should wear a mask. 

The University of Minnesota has received $66 million from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) to establish a center to develop antiviral drugs for pandemic-level viruses, including SARS-CoV-2. The Midwest Antiviral Drug Discovery Center is part of a network of nine national centers established by NIAID in response to the public health emergency caused by COVID-19. The initial project period is three years with an anticipated extension to five years and additional funding of more than $20 million per year.