Awards and Recognition

Marco Pravetoni talked with KARE 11 about his development of a U of M made vaccine for opioid use; Michelle Phelps is quoted in the Star Tribune story, “Most Minneapolis voters want reform, not fewer cops”; Lisa Harnack is quoted in an Eat This, Not That! story about simple ways to avoid a heart attack; Michelle Duffy is quoted in the Discover Magazine story, “The Two Sides of Envy at Work”; Heidi Roop is quoted at KARE 11 about a report showing that climate change could force 200 million people to move by 2050; Pauline Boss is quoted in the New York Times story, “The Dead Get a Do-Over”; Michael Pitt is quoted in an NBC News story about COVID-19 likely leading to a rare disorder that left an 8-year-old girl paralyzed; Vasudha Sharma is quoted in a Minnesota Public Radio story about Minnesota farmers tapping technology to conserve water in drought. 

University of Minnesota researchers are part of a new $25 million climate modeling center funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) called the Learning the Earth with Artificial Intelligence and Physics (LEAP). The new center is one of six new science and technology centers announced by NSF and aims to bring greater precision to climate modeling and encourage societies to prepare for the inevitable disruptions ahead. It will also train a new wave of students fluent in both climate science and working with big datasets and modern machine-learning algorithms. U of M researchers will lead the development of a new generation of machine learning algorithms that are able to leverage scientific knowledge to identify relationships between different components of the global climate system even in presence of limited data.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) recently announced six new science and technology centers to advance ambitious, complex research in a variety of areas, including climate change. U of M scientists will be key collaborators in the Center for Oldest Ice Exploration (COLDEX), a new NSF funded center that will drive climate system discovery and build climate literacy. COLDEX aims to transform the current understanding of Earth’s climate system by discovering and recovering some of the oldest ice on the planet. The University of Minnesota will play a critical role in leading the center, with Heidi Roop serving as the Center’s director for knowledge transfer. The Rapid Access Ice Drill, co-developed by University of Minnesota Duluth Professor John Goodge, will be one of the tools used to achieve the COLDEX program’s goals.

To promote moral courage, integrity, and civic-minded leadership, the family of Thomas E. Burnett, Jr., ’86 BSB, is establishing a scholarship at the Carlson School of Management to honor Tom’s life, leadership, and sacrifice on September 11, 2001. Burnett was a passenger on United Flight 93. His plane was hijacked by Al Qaeda terrorists. He and fellow passengers and crew made a decision that changed the outcome of the deadliest attack on American soil. In his final words, in a phone call to his wife, Burnett said they were going to “do something.” Because they fought back, Flight 93 crashed into a Pennsylvania field, leaving the two potential targets, the U.S. Capitol and the White House, unscathed. 

“As a family, we’ve sought to “do something” that would have long-lasting impact and build upon Tom’s values, specifically his belief that democracy required an educated citizenry to thrive,” says Martha Burnett Pettee, Tom Burnett’s sister. “In recognition of the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attack, we’re creating an endowed Burnett Scholar program at the Carlson School with a donation of $300,000 to establish the scholarship.”

Doug Hartmann is featured in a new four-part HBO and HBO Max documentary series; Maggie Reiter and Shane Evans are featured in a Minnesota Public Radio story about an increasing interest in water-saving alternatives to thirsty lawns; David Boulware is quoted in the Newsweek story, “Ivermectin As COVID Treatment Study Flawed According to Scientists”; Michael Osterholm is interviewed at Bloomberg-Quint about what the next six months of the pandemic will bring; Pauline Boss is quoted at Health.com about grief after 9/11 and how it’s helping us cope with loss from COVID-19; Jill Hasday explains new vaccine mandates in an interview with KSTP-TV Minneapolis-St. Paul; Ed Goetz is quoted in a Minnesota Public Radio story about whether mobile home parks are the answer to Minnesota's affordable housing shortage; Byron Vaughn is quoted in the Time story, “Fecal Transplants: A New Treatment for IBD”; Elizabeth Heger Boyle is quoted in the New York Times story, “As Abortion Rights Expand, the U.S. Joins a Handful of Telling Exceptions”; Cynthia Rugeley is quoted at MinnPost about politics and Minnesota's urban-rural divide; Nancy Luxon and Jake Ricker are quoted in a USA Today story COVID-19 mandates in higher-ed.

In an effort to nurture a regional innovation ecosystem and move more discoveries from the research lab to the real world, the National Science Foundation (NSF) announced that it is establishing a Great Lakes Innovation Corps (I-Corps) Hub with a new $15 million grant over five years beginning Jan. 1. The University of Minnesota will play a key role in the Hub, receiving $2 million in funds. The Great Lakes hub will provide more opportunities for University of Minnesota innovators, while extending the University’s leadership in commercialization education to additional institutions across the Midwest.
 
The 11-university hub, led by the University of Michigan, is one of five NSF-funded I-Corps hubs across the country. The University of Minnesota is one of three "partner" institutions co-leading the consortium with the University of Michigan. 

This year, the 2021 Minnesota Monthly “Top Doctors” list featured 236 University of Minnesota Medical School faculty members from 18 departments – a 25 percent increase from last year.

Bill Doherty is interviewed in the Minnesota Public Radio story, “Reaching out to people who are still unvaccinated for COVID-19; Nichole Morris is interviewed in CBS Local about a study showing Twin Cities drivers aren’t stopping for pedestrians in crosswalks; Steve Kolbe is interviewed in the Minnesota Public Radio story, “For 2 weeks every August, Duluth is the nighthawk capital of the world”; Ann Masten is quoted in the New York Times story, “The Secret to Raising a Resilient Kid”; Doctors are dismayed by patients who fear coronavirus vaccines, but clamor for unproven ivermectin, with comments from David Boluware in the Washington Post; Rebecca Wurtz is quoted in a NBC News story about a study showing the delta variant doubles ta person’s risk of hospitalization; Logan Spector, Ellen Demerath, and Annie Hotop, are quoted in the Mpls St. Paul Magazine story, “Crowd Sourcing at the State Fair”; Ed Goetz is quoted in the Star Tribune story, “As Minneapolis faces rent control vote, experts caution it's not a cure-all”; John Thull is quoted in the Minnesota Public Radio story, “Drought drives good grape year in Minnesota.”

A new clinical trial was awarded to Rebekah Pratt and Rachel Winer (University of Washington), along with co-investigators Rahel Ghebre, Timothy Ramer, Sophia Yohe, Bryan Weiner (University of Washington), and Adam Szpiro (University of Washington). The team received a $2,910,214 award from the National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health for their clinical trial "Reducing cervical cancer screening disparities in Somali immigrant women through a primary care based HPV self-sampling intervention."

Aiming to improve health and well-being and to increase dairy cattle productivity while also reducing antibiotic use by the industry, a team of researchers led by Luciano Caixeta, assistant professor in the Department of Veterinary Population Medicine at the University of Minnesota College of Veterinary Medicine, recently received $500,000 from the United States Department of Agriculture—National Institute of Food and Agriculture to refine immune-based solutions to prevent or treat mammary infections in dairy cattle.