STORIES OF IMPACT

A grant was made to to the University of Michigan’s Water Center for $532,000 and will use to update data and improve models to inform improvements for the health and water quality of Lake Erie.

Marsal School Associate Professor Jon Wargo is the 2023 recipient of the Early Literacy Teacher Educator of the Year Award. The award is given annually by the Early Childhood Education Assembly (ECEA) of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) to a teacher educator in the area of early childhood focusing on language and literacy development.

Tom Lyon, Dow Professor of Sustainable Science, Technology, and Commerce, was recently awarded the World Sustainability Award from the MDPI Sustainability Foundation. The award, totaling $100,000 between him and his co-awardees, recognizes Lyon’s contribution to corporate sustainability.

Memories of disease could impact human lives down to the cellular level. That’s U-M researcher Claudia Loebel’s idea at least, and it landed her a fellowship from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation.

The University of Michigan is establishing a new Office of Postdoctoral Affairs (OPA) that will serve as a hub to support postdoctoral fellows across the university. U-M has more than 1,400 postdocs who work across all the schools and colleges and play a key part in the university’s research enterprise. The OPA will not only support these postdoctoral fellows as they prepare for their future careers, but will also guide and advise departments and programs about best-practice policies, processes, and services related to the employment and well-being of postdoctoral fellows.

President Joe Biden signed a historic executive order called Revitalizing Our Nation’s Commitment to Environmental Justice for All, which will direct federal agencies to focus on confronting longstanding environmental injustices, furthering the administration’s commitment to environmental justice. Kyle Whyte, the George Willis Pack Professor at the University of Michigan School for Environment and Sustainability (SEAS), a U.S. Science Envoy, and a member of the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council, served as an advisor on the development of the new environmental justice executive order and stood behind Biden in the Rose Garden at the signing.

UM’s Board of Regents approved naming the school the Marsal Family School of Education during its meeting Thursday, Feb. 16, in recognition of a new $50-million gift that will support initiatives to prepare and support a diverse population of teachers, build partnerships with schools and communities and conduct research in collaboration with education professionals.

University of Michigan environmental justice expert Kyle Whyte is one of seven distinguished scientists in the country named U.S. Science Envoys by the U.S. Department of State. Through the Science Envoy Program, eminent U.S. scientists and engineers travel to foreign countries as private citizens, leveraging their expertise and networks to forge connections and identify opportunities for sustained international cooperation.

The David and Lucile Packard Foundation announced today the 2022 class of Packard Fellows in Science and Engineering. This year’s class features 20 innovative early-career scientists and engineers—including University of Michigan School for Environment and Sustainability (SEAS) Assistant Professor Brian Weeks—who will each receive $875,000 over five years to pursue their research.

Misha Teplitskiy, assistant professor at the University of Michigan School of Information, was awarded a $115,655 grant from Schmidt Futures for his research project “Study of Discrimination in Science - Exploring Whether the Identities of Scientists Affect Peer Evaluations.” The award provides funding for one year. Teplitskiy’s research has frequently focused on making sure science is equitable and reproducible. For this project, Teplitski will investigate how biases show up during peer reviews and how that might affect researchers.

The history between Hollywood and the University of Michigan goes back decades. For example, there’s 1955 alumnus and Darth Vader voice James Earl Jones and the 1983 film “The Big Chill,” in which all the main characters graduated from UM together. The Film, Television and Media department, part of the College of Literature, Science and the Arts, has been partially funded by the John H. and Patricia W. Mitchell Scholarship since the 2020-21 school year. The scholarship is named for the Columbia Pictures Television founder and his wife.

Ateam of researchers at three University of Michigan labs have been able to track how a protein binds to its chromatin substrate within a living cell by establishing a collaboration that combines state-of-the-art ultra high-resolution imaging, synthetic protein design and computational modeling. Their results are published in Science Advances.