Awards and Recognition

University of Minnesota Vice President for Research Chris Cramer has announced his decision to leave the University later this spring. Cramer will join Underwriters Laboratories as the organization's senior vice president and chief research officer who will help set the direction for the organization’s existing research and expansion into new areas of focus. Current Associate Vice President for Research and Professor Michael Oakes will serve as interim vice president for research after Cramer leaves his position on June 1. President Gabel intends to launch a national search in the fall.

The University of Minnesota has received $14.2 million in new funding support from the National Institute on Aging (NIA) to better understand how early-life conditions and experiences shape later-life risk of Alzheimer’s and other dementias. The funding adds a new component to an ongoing $28.4 million High School & Beyond cohort study and builds upon a $500,000 pilot study funded by the Alzheimer’s Association in 2020. The project’s goal, based at the University’s Minnesota Population Center, will bring together an interdisciplinary team to understand the biological pathways through which health inequities in cognitive impairment form.

Three University of Minnesota Twin Cities departments have been awarded 2021 Engaged Department grants for their work in furthering the institutionalization of community-engaged research and/or teaching in the department’s academic agenda.

The grant recipients are: Comparative and International Development Education in the Department of Organizational Leadership, Policy, and Development, College of Education and Human Development; the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Medical School; and the Division of Biostatistics in the School of Public Health.

University of Minnesota Chemistry Professor George Barany was recently named a National Academy of Inventors (NAI) Fellow and will be inducted into the NAI at the academy’s annual meeting in June. Barany holds 38 patents, several for the detection of genetic disease. Election to NAI Fellow status is the highest professional distinction accorded to academic inventors who have demonstrated a prolific spirit of innovation in creating or facilitating outstanding inventions that have made a tangible impact on quality of life, economic development and the welfare of society.

Gill Roehrig, Department of Curriculum and Instruction, has been selected as president-elect for NARST, a global organization for improving science education through research. Her three-year term will begin in April. Roehrig’s scholarship focuses on STEM integration and science teacher development.

Linda Koehler, Department of Rehabilitation Medicine, recently earned the 2020 American Physical Therapy (APTA) Oncology Research Award, which recognizes its members annually whose work has contributed specifically to oncologic physical therapy.

Abe Jacob is interviewed at KSTP-TV about the vaccination ramp-up in Minnesota after the J&J vaccine approval; John Watkins is interviewed for the CBS story, “Why Are We So Fascinated With The Royal Family?”; Erika Lee is quoted in a Washington Post story about race in America; Nicole LaVoi is quoted in a CNN story about a lack of media coverage of women in sports; Richard Frase is quoted in a Minnesota Public Radio story about Minnesota's reckoning with race and policing; Michael Osterholm is quoted in the NY Magazine story, “The Pandemic’s Dr. Doom Bets It All”; Mark Bee is quoted in an Atlantic Monthly story about a U of M study showing how frogs tune out useless, noisy males; Danielle Kilgo is quoted in a KZTV story about what implicit bias is; Logan Spector is quoted in The New Yorker story, “When the Kids Started Getting Sick”; Leslie Barlow and her artwork are featured in a Mpls St. Paul Magazine story; Mary Jo Kreitzer is quoted at Health.com about COVID caregiving burnout and how to fix the system; Stephen Schondelmeyer is quoted in a Politico story about the drug industry pushing the FDA to solve its growing inspection backlog; George Weiblen is quoted in the KMSP story, “Delta 8: A legal 'Weed Light'?” 
 

The John Tate Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Advising serve to recognize and reward high-quality academic advising. They call attention to the contribution academic advising makes to helping students formulate and achieve intellectual, career, and personal goals. 

The recipients of the 2020-21 John Tate Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Advising are: 

• Barbara Goodwin, Senior Academic Advisor/Pre-Health Services Coordinator, College of Liberal Arts, University of Minnesota Twin Cities
• Kacey Gregerson, Senior Academic Advisor, Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, College of Science and Engineering, University of Minnesota Twin Cities
• Victor Lai, Assistant Professor in Chemical Engineering, Swenson College of Science and Engineering, University of Minnesota Duluth
• Jenna Parks, Assistant Director for Academic Advising, College of Biological Sciences, University of Minnesota Twin Cities 

The awards will be presented during the Tate Advising Conference on March 4.

The U of M School of Public Health received a $5 million philanthropic gift from Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota to establish the Center for Antiracism Research for Health Equity. The center is dedicated to addressing and uprooting structural racism’s impact on health and healthcare. Rachel Hardeman, associate professor and Blue Cross Endowed Professor of Health and Racial Equity, created the vision for the center and will serve as its founding director. This is the largest gift to a center at the School of Public Health. Learn more about the gift and the new center.

With nearly $6 million in awards to the School of Nursing and Earl. E. Bakken Center for Spirituality & Healing in 2020, the University of Minnesota ranked 12th in National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding to schools of nursing. The annual tabulation conducted by the Blue Ridge Institute for Medical Research placed the University first among Big Ten Academic Alliance institutions and sixth among all public universities. School of Nursing research is addressing health issues across the life span in local, state, national and global contexts. Its areas of excellence include health promotion among vulnerable populations, prevention and management of chronic health conditions, symptom management, and nursing informatics and systems innovation.