Featured Stories

  • Local farms, stores fill gap for groceries

    May 25, 2020

    Reports of wasted milk and rotting onions no longer needed by restaurants showed the limitations of the food industry to quickly pivot during times of great stress, but local farms and stores have stepped in to fill consumers needs.

    Read The Story
  • U-M photography students document their lives in quarantine

    May 18, 2020

    “Earn the trust of a stranger, and work with them to document the essence of a day in their life over the course of five weeks.” The parameters of the project quickly changed in March when U-M announced plans to move classes online and encouraged students to return home in order to slow the spread of COVID-19.

    View their work
  • Helping, learning in Kenya

    May 11, 2020

    Before the global pandemic reached Kenya, 30 University of Michigan students immersed themselves in the east African country in a learning and service journey. This team of U-M faculty and students in dentistry, medicine, pharmacy and engineering work together on programs to improve health care and overall community health around Meru, in central Kenya.

    Learn more about their learning and service
  • Hail! Class of 2020

    May 1, 2020

    Congratulations to all of the U-M students who earned their degrees this spring. We appreciate the work you have done to earn a University of Michigan degree, and the sacrifices made by you and your families. #MGoGrad

    Celebrate the Class of 2020
  • Rewriting the Monarch Story

    Apr 27, 2020

    Every winter millions of monarchs migrate to the same places in Mexico. But do we actually know just how they do it? LSA Professor D. André Green wants to find out.

    Read The Story
  • seismometer captures eerie quiet during pandemic

    Apr 20, 2020

    A vibration-sensing seismometer originally installed in Michigan Stadium to measure ground shaking from fans during home football games has been repurposed to capture the quiet on campus and on surrounding city streets during the COVID-19 pandemic.

    Learn more about this sharp drop in ground vibrations
  • Engineers work to disinfect N95 masks

    Apr 13, 2020

    U-M engineers are working quickly to develop efficient, effective and scalable ways to disinfect masks, which are typically discarded after one use. As part of the effort, they’re testing whether the masks still work—and fit well—after repeated rounds of treatment. A viable means of getting multiple uses from masks would help protect doctors and nurses until more masks can be produced.

    Learn more about this research
  • Energy independence in Puerto Rico

    Apr 6, 2020

    The stakes are high for this U-M team that traveled 2,000 miles from Ann Arbor to Adjuntas. In collaboration with the local nonprofit Casa Pueblo, they hope to bring energy independence to “The City of the Sleeping Giant.” Retrofitting the generator and setting up the gasifier is one of the key components in this project.

    Learn more about this renewable energy project
  • Stone-age ‘likes’

    Mar 30, 2020

    In a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, U-M paleolithic archeologist Brian Stewart and colleagues establish that the practice of exchanging eggshell beads over long distances spans a much longer period of time than previously thought.

    Learn more about this research
  • Faster screening to hit “undruggable” targets

    Mar 23, 2020

    Medicines made from coiled protein fragments could provide a new handle on hard-to-treat diseases like cancer, but they are difficult to design. A new technique, developed at the University of Michigan, could change that. It can harness bacteria to produce billions of different drug candidates that won’t fall apart quickly inside the body.

    Learn more about this research
  • Launching Solar Orbiter

    Mar 16, 2020

    For more than a decade, a U-M team helped develop the scientific payload aboard Solar Orbiter. For colleagues Sue Lepri and Jim Raines, this moment has been 13 years in the making.

    Learn more about launch night
  • An ultra-precise mind-controlled prosthetic

    Mar 10, 2020

    In a major advance in mind-controlled prosthetics for amputees, U-M researchers have tapped faint, latent signals from arm nerves and amplified them to enable real-time, intuitive, finger-level control of a robotic hand.

    Learn more about this prosthetics research
  • Ultimate Time Keeper

    Mar 7, 2020

    Feeling the effects of springing forward? U-M researcher Sara Aton gives tips about how to train your body clock for the time change. Good news: It involves snacks.

    Watch a video about this research
  • Women Who Weld

    Mar 2, 2020

    Samantha Farrugia was studying for her master’s degree in urban planning at U-M in 2014 when she walked past the Digital Fabrication Lab on her way to class one day and saw welding going on. Within weeks, Farrugia was learning to weld in her spare time. She moved on to learning how to train other people to weld through an unusual independent study supported by a U-M professor in the lab.

    Learn more and view other U-M: Stories of our State
  • White-nose syndrome

    Feb 24, 2020

    A new study from University of Michigan biologists presents the first genetic evidence of resistance in some bats to white-nose syndrome, a deadly fungal disease that has decimated some North American bat populations.

    Learn more about this research
  • American Rhapsody

    Feb 17, 2020

    Inspired by the current politically divisive moment in our nation’s history, Aaron Dworkin explores the complexity of our founders in a new spoken word orchestral work. The work incorporates the writing and speeches of George Washington with 19th-century composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s “Symphonic Variations on an African Air” to explore themes of race, society and human nature.

    Learn more about this piece
  • Making their way

    Feb 10, 2020

    Woodworking equipment whirs as teens turn out the latest in creations and consumer products that have come from years of making things at the Brightmoor Maker Space in Detroit.

    Learn more and view other U-M: Stories of our State
  • Madelon’s World

    Feb 3, 2020

    When she broke the gender barrier at U-M in 1870, Madelon Stockwell was alone. She lived her life much the same way.

    Learn more about Madelon’s legacy
  • Rare Native American photographs

    Jan 27, 2020

    The new collection, which comes from noted collector Richard Pohrt Jr., will add more than 1,000 images by more than 150 photographers to the library’s renowned archive of early American history. Taken primarily between 1860 and 1920, the vintage prints—many of which come from the original negatives on the original photographers’ mounts—feature more than 70 different First Nations.

    Learn more about this collection of photographs
  • 2020 MLK SYMPOSIUM

    Jan 20, 2020

    Education is the systematic instruction that prepares us to be productive participants in society. Thus ‘the (mis)education of us’ invites us to consider how our schooling and larger socialization practices have worked against us in working together to build a just nation for all.

    Learn more about the 2020 Symposium
  • The Union Reopens

    Jan 13, 2020

    The Michigan Union has always been a central location for student involvement, leadership, learning, and social connection. The renovation will honor that history and the Union will serve for another 100 years as the place where Michigan memories are made.

    Learn more about this historic renovation
  • Strike up the band

    Jan 2, 2020

    When Bryan Mangiavellano decided to pursue a career in conducting and music education, he imagined leading a large collegiate marching band one day. “Mr. M” is one of more than 400 U-M alumni currently at the helm of hundreds of elementary, middle and high school music classrooms across the state of Michigan.

    Learn more and view other U-M: Stories of our State
  • ‘TIS THE SEASON

    Dec 23, 2019

    The University of Michigan welcomes one and all to its many museums, gallery exhibitions, and holiday events to get in the spirit throughout the month of December.

    View the December exhibitions & events
  • Inclusive Play

    Dec 16, 2019

    While adaptive sports like powerchair football provide invaluable opportunities for children with mobility disabilities to participate in athletic events, these games are not designed for competitive play between kids with disabilities and those without. A media artist inspired by a young sports enthusiast with cerebral palsy is looking to change that.

    Learn more about iGYM
  • A World Without Ice

    Dec 9, 2019

    This multisensory experience created by U-M SMTD professor Stephen Rush and SMTD and Residential College professor Michael Gould with visual artist Marion Tränkle and climate scientist Henry Pollack, is now on view at the Ann Arbor Hands-On Museum through Jan. 5, 2020.

    Learn more about this art installation