Christopher Uggen is quoted in Medium about the return of voting rights to ex-felons in Florida; Pajau Vangay and Dan Knights are quoted in The New York Times (PDF) about the ecosystem in immigrants’ guts; Kathryn Pearson is quoted in the Bring Me The News story, “Could Minnesota be next in line for legal marijuana?”; Scott Meyer is quoted in a Star Tribune story about the student run CLAgency; Jessica Hellmann is quoted in Scientific American about a new index that ranks U.S. cities based on climate risk and readiness; Erik Moore was interviewed by CBS Minnesota about the unique shoe tree tradition; Clark Chen is quoted at Kare 11 about a new U of M trial for a brain cancer treatment; George John is quoted at CBS regarding paper catalogs and advertising making a comeback; Kathryn Pearson comments in the Republican Eagle about the record amount of political ad spending from outside groups in Minnesota during the recent election; Stephanie Standal and Roni Evans are quoted in a Minnesota Daily story about researchers finding new ways to treat pain without prescription drugs in light of the opioid crisis; Kate Adamala is quoted in Nature about how biologists are creating life-like cells from scratch.

The all-University Award for Global Engagement is given to faculty and staff members in recognition of outstanding contributions to global education and international programs at the University or in their field or discipline. The 2018 Award for Global Engagement will be presented to the following recipients at a ceremony on Nov. 14:

• Michael Anderson, director, English Language Programs, College of Continuing and Professional Studies
• Joan DeJaeghere, professor, College of Education and Human Development
• Sabine Engel, director of International Programs, Institute on the Environment
• Brian Steffenson, professor, Department of Plant Pathology, College of Food, Agricultural, and Natural Resource Sciences

Christopher Uggen is quoted in The Atlantic about felon voting disenfranchisement; the Star Tribune features Joseph Gaugler as he begins a begins statewide tour to shed light on Alzheimer's; Silvia Balbo is quoted about the safety of e-cigs in Time Magazine; Dan Knights is quoted in the Washington Post (PDF), The Atlantic, Gizmodo, and NPR about his research about the impact of an American diet on the microbiomes of immigrants; Donald Wyse and George Weiblen are quoted in MinnPost about the potential economic and environmental impacts of growing hemp in the Midwest; Monique MacKenzie, Sally Lightner, and Julie Grossman are mentioned in a Minnesota Daily story about planning for the St. Paul campus; Michael Osterholm is interviewed in the New York Times (PDF) about turbocharging the flu shot with the help of llamas; Thomas Stoffregen talks about the causes of seasickness and what to do about it in the Washington Post (PDF); Przemek Bajer is quoted in a MinnPost story about a ‘salmon cannon’; Kamil Ugurbil is quoted in a Nature story about the world’s strongest MRI machines.

Ryan Mattke, head of the Borchert Map Library, recently accepted the Governor's Award for the Minnesota Historical Aerial Photographs Online website, which includes thousands of digital copies of historical aerial photographs, mostly from between the 1920s and the 1990s, covering all 87 counties in Minnesota.

Investigators William Arnold (Civil, Environmental, and GeoEngineering), Alptekin Aksan (Mechanical Engineering), Marc Hillmyer (Chemistry), Paige Novak (Civil, Environmental, and GeoEngineering), and Timothy Smith (Bioproducts and Biosystems Engineering) received a $94,000 planning grant from the National Science Foundation’s Engineering Research Center program to develop the framework for an Engineering Research Center (ERC) that will ultimately lead to innovations with respect to how water is treated and managed in the United States and beyond.

Leslie Morris comments in a Kare 11 story about the Pittsburgh shooting fitting into a larger context of anti-Semitism; Kathryn Pearson comments in CBS Minnesota on the record number of negative political ads airing in Minnesota; Robert Kudrle is quoted in a Politico story about Trump’s tariffs; Katy Kozhimannil is quoted in a New York Times (PDF) story about rural hospital closings; Mark Bell is quoted in a CNN story about president Trump’s threats of a nuclear buildup; Alexis Grinde and Josh Bednar are quoted in a Duluth News Tribune story about hanging birdhouses to study boreal chickadees; Jessica Hellmann is quoted in the Smithsonian story, “To Save Endangered Species, Should We Bring Them Into Our Cities?”; Joseph Bump is quoted in a Science story about repopulating landscapes with rhinos and reindeer; Paul Sufka is quoted in a UPI.com story about taking brisk walks to decrease the need for arthritic knee replacement.

A new collaboration among three of Minnesota’s most important health research, education, and care delivery organizations--U of M School of Public Health, Mayo Clinic, and Hennepin Healthcare--will train experts in a game-changing, modern approach to health care. Called learning health systems, the approach embeds researchers in a health care system, creating a nimble feedback loop among researchers and clinicians so they can more quickly, and together, improve the quality of patient care. The Learning Health System Mentored Career Development Program was chosen as 1 of 11 programs nationwide to receive $4 million over five years.

For the third consecutive year, the University of Minnesota School of Nursing has been recognized with the Health Professions Higher Education Excellence in Diversity (HEED) Award from INSIGHT Into Diversity Magazine. The HEED Award honors U.S. nursing, medical, dental, pharmacy, osteopathic, veterinary, and other health schools and centers that demonstrate an outstanding commitment to diversity and inclusion. The school’s efforts to recruit and retain diverse and underrepresented students, its policies and strategies to train and mentor faculty, and its innovative diversity education programming including the Diversity Deep Dive focus on poverty contributed to the award selection.

The Institute on Community Integration’s Research and Training Center on Community Living (RTC-CL) began a new five-year, $4.3 million grant to continue to conduct a wide range of projects related to community supports for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, including seven new studies in areas of employment for people with disabilities, direct support workforce development, community inclusion, and assistive technology.

Gary Reineccius is quoted in the FiveThirtyEight story, “No, LaCroix Isn’t Poisoning You Like You’re A Giant Cockroach”; George Weiblen is quoted in Nature about what legal weed in Canada means for science; Nichole Morris is interviewed at Streetsblog.USA regarding U of M research about getting vehicles to yield to pedestrians; Jessica Savage is quoted in the East Bay Times about making giant gourds/pumpkins great again; Kelly Mitchell is quoted in The Economist (PDF) about Wisconsin being twice as likely to imprison people as Minnesota; Larry Jacobs is quoted in MinnPost about how Minnesota campaigns are exploiting voters’ anxiety over health care; Robert Schwarz and others are mentioned in a MinneInno story about the U of M’s craziest, most interesting innovations; Sergio Gradilone is quoted in the PostBulletin.com (PDF) about a very exciting recent cancer discovery at Hormel.

Kinesiology professor Diane Wiese-Bjornstal has been inducted into the National Academy of Kinesiology (NAK) as a fellow. NAK is composed of distinguished scholars with significant contributions to the kinesiology field. 

Susan Wolf co-authored an article in Science critiquing a recent report by the National Academies on research participants rights; Ian Maitland is quoted in a Los Angeles Times story about corporations not having any 'values' beyond making money; George Weiblen is quoted in a TwinCities.com story about Hemp potentially becoming a leading Minnesota crop; James Butcher is quoted in Scientific American about the accuracy of personality tests; Francis Shen is quoted in the New York Times (PDF) story “Democrats Are Ignoring One Key Voting Group: Veterans”; Rachna Shah is quoted in the New York Times (PDF) about lean production processes in business; Elizabeth Criswell is quoted in the Healthline story, “7 Ways to Help Your Child's Brain Develop”; Craig Packer is quoted in a National Geographic story looking back on the death of Cecil the lion; Katherine West Scheil writes “What Shakespeare’s Wife Could Tell Us” in Time magazine; Montserrat Torremorell is quoted in the Star Tribune about the global spread of African swine fever and the risk to U.S. farmers.

Christopher Cramer has been named the University's vice president for research, effective Nov. 12, 2018, and continuing through Nov. 12, 2020. Cramer earned his A.B. from Washington University in St. Louis and his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois. His professional career began with four years of service as an officer in the U.S. Army, including combat duty in Operation Desert Storm. He joined the University of Minnesota in 1992 and is now a Distinguished McKnight University Professor in the Department of Chemistry. He has served as the director of both undergraduate and graduate studies for the chemistry program, and he has received both of the University’s systemwide awards for outstanding teaching: the Morse-Alumni award for undergraduate education and the award for graduate and professional education. In 2013 he became associate dean for academic affairs in the College of Science and Engineering, and he currently serves as CSE’s associate dean for research and planning. He also chaired the Faculty Consultative Committee in 2011-12.

The University of Minnesota has received a $1.75 million grant over three years from the National Science Foundation (NSF) as part of the NSF's Smart & Connected Communities grant program. The University of Minnesota’s project is one of only 13 projects chosen by NSF nationwide. The grant, entitled Leveraging Autonomous Shared Vehicles for Greater Community Health, Equity, Livability, and Prosperity (HELP), supports fundamental research on a critical challenge facing many cities and communities—how to leverage the emergence of self-driving vehicles, also known as autonomous vehicles, to rethink and redesign future transportation services and enable smart and connected communities where everyone benefits. The research envisions an ambitious "smart cloud commuting system” based on giant pools of shared autonomous vehicles.

Dan Voytas is quoted in The Washington Post (PDF) on the future of food editing; Michael Osterholm is quoted at FiveThirtyEight about making a flu shot your Halloween Tradition; Laura Niedernhofer is quoted in The Guardian about new discoveries in the biology of aging; Patrick Horst is quoted in a Star Tribune story about active baby boomers testing the limits of artificial joints; William Iacono is quoted in Wired about polygraphs for job screenings; Marc Bellemare is quoted in The New York Times (PDF) about whether your salad habit is good for the planet; George John is quoted in the Kare 11 story, “Black Friday Is Coming. Here’s What Not to Buy Until Then”; Christopher Terry is quoted at Slate about the federal government’s war with California over net neutrality; Paul Robbins and Edgar Arriaga are quoted in CBS Minnesota about a discovery that could slow aging; Elizabeth Lukanen is quoted in the Star Tribune about the soaring costs of family health coverage in the U.S.; Lynn Blewett is quoted in a Forbes story about high deductibles in healthcare as employers shift costs.

The Laura and John Arnold Foundation (LJAF) and Pew Charitable Trusts announced a national research and reform effort to make probation and parole systems fairer and more effective. In partnership with LJAF and Pew, the University of Minnesota's Robina Institute will provide research support to help draft a model for a research-based policy framework. To strengthen this effort, the Laura and John Arnold Foundation is also supporting research partners at the Council of State Governments who will develop a 50-state snapshot of probation and parole revocations to prison, and the Urban Institute and Crime and Justice Institute to evaluate state reforms currently underway.

The Carlson School’s Master of Science in Supply Chain Management program was ranked sixth in the nation, according to a ranking released by Gartner. Gartner, a global research and advisory firm, evaluated 30 programs across 46 eligible universities throughout the country. This was the first time the Carlson MS SCM program was eligible for the list. Now entering its third year, the program is ranked among programs that have existed for decades.

Mechanical Engineering Professor Uwe Kortshagen has been elected as a Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS). The number of APS Fellows elected each year is limited to no more than 1/2 of 1 percent of the membership. Kortshagen is being honored "for contributions to our fundamental understanding of non-linear electron transport and plasma-nanoparticle interactions in low temperature plasmas and the development of plasma based synthesis of nanoparticles." See this and other Mechanical Engineering awards.

Larry Zanko and Sara Post are quoted in a Duluth News Tribune story about a product developed by UMD’s Natural Resources Research Institute to fill potholes; Traci Mann is quoted in The Washington Post (PDF) about a new Weight Watchers program that critics say is ‘diet culture’ in disguise; Lee Frelich comments about Minnesota's fall colors changing with the climate at Minnesota Public Radio; Ann Parr is quoted at Scientific American about a man walking after years of paralysis; Russell Luepker is quoted at CNN about a drugmaker’s claims regarding major heart benefits of a fish oil derivative; George Trachte is quoted in a Duluth News Tribune story about water as an overlooked “health food”; Philipp Dahm is quoted in a Reuters story about guidelines around prostate cancer screening for men; Jessica Hellmann is quoted in the MPR News story, “Climate change and Minnesota's midterm elections: a voter guide”; Michael Osterholm is quoted in a USA Today story about whether influenza could kill again as it historically has; Joel Waldfogel was cited in The Seattle Times story, “How 5 good jobs turned into bad ones.”

The University of Minnesota has received a four-year, $5.3 million grant from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), an agency of the U.S. Department of Defense, to lead an effort that could spark the next wave of U.S. semiconductor innovation and broaden the competitive field for circuit design. Sachin Sapatnekar, professor of electrical and computer engineering, will lead the grant. Integrated circuits power almost every electronic device we use today. The U of M is one of only 11 lead universities or companies to receive funding from the DARPA Intelligent Design of Electronic Assets (IDEA) program, a new program under the DARPA Electronics Resurgence Initiative. Other partners on the University of Minnesota-led grant are Texas A&M University and Intel, a leader in the semiconductor industry.