Virtual groundbreaking on the new $78 million Ferland Engineering Education and Design Center was held in late April. The facility, designed for the mechanical engineering and biomedical engineering programs with laboratories for mechanical engineering technology, is slated for completion in 2022. umaine.edu
Emergency funds for Indigenous students experiencing pandemic-related hardships have been made available at the University of Sudbury in Ontario. usudbury.ca
A new College of Engineering undergraduate program in urban construction management will launch this fall at the University of New Orleans. This will be the college’s fifth bachelor’s program. uno.edu
UPenn has launched an online EdX course leading to a certificate in robotics machine learning. Participants will gain concepts and qualifications in mathematical concepts, programming, and designing and building dynamic robots. For the third year in a row, UPenn’s School of Nursing has led the nation in securing grants from the National Institutes of Health. In fiscal 2019, the school took in $11.3 million from NIH. upenn.edu
Burrell College of Osteopathic Medicine has made a $400,000 donation to a scholarship fund for premed students at New Mexico State University. To date, Burrell has donated $1.5 million to NMSU. bcomnm.org
The Center for Materials and Manufacturing Sciences at Troy University is researching new ways to recycle plastic medical waste, as well as avenues for bolstering production of personal protective equipment for health care workers. troy.edu
The Canadian Institutes of Health Research awarded $5 million to the University of Saskatchewan to help address disparities in health care. The funds will support an initiative to create a network of Indigenous research centers grounded in the communities themselves. usask.ca
In 2014 Johns Hopkins University moved to diversify the student body by ending legacy admissions (giving preference to applicants who have a family connection among alumni). Since then, the school has seen an increase in limited-income, first-generation students. There are funding resources available for students with financial need (including a $1.8 billion gift from alumnus Michael Bloomberg earmarked for financial aid). Also at Johns Hopkins, the Applied Physics Laboratory has partnered with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to support population-based biosurveillance using a data analytics platform. The laboratory’s Early Notification of Community-based Epidemics tool will be used to visualize information as part of the National Syndromic Surveillance Program. jhu.edu
A scholarship program for high school and community college students headed to Arizona State received a $30 million boost from State Farm Insurance. The company will work with the university on its Pathways for the Future program, which helps prospective students build academic skills. asu.edu
The School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at SUNY Buffalo has been recognized as a national leader in diversity by the American Society of Engineering Education. Part of the recognition is due to the school’s support of students launching clubs such as the AISES College Chapter. buffalo.edu
One of the country’s largest neuroscience research facilities will be constructed at Washington University in St. Louis. By late 2023, the $616 million, 11-story facility will be home to more than 100 research teams and 900 scientists and staff members from various departments at the School of Medicine. wustl.edu
An anonymous gift of $252 million — the largest single donation in the history of UC Berkeley— is earmarked for a new facility, to be known as the Data Hub, for the school’s Division of Computing, Data Science, and Society. berkeley.edu
A gift of $5.4 million will go toward establishing the Fitz Family Fellows Program within the Georgetown Initiative on Technology and Society. The gift will support ethical technological innovation and women’s leadership in international development and peacekeeping efforts. georgetown.edu
This fall UND will launch the world’s first PhD program in Indigenous health, developed partly in consultation with AISES. Courses will be available through distance learning, with students coming to campus twice a year. The school also offers a master’s of public health with an emphasis on Indigenous health. und.edu
A new Department of Cybersecurity Engineering, the first of its kind in the nation, launched in March at George Mason University. The program will focus on hardware and software security in several areas, including health, finance, and cellular networks. gmu.edu
A National Science Foundation (NSF) Innovations in Graduate Education grant has gone to Iowa State to establish a program designed to increase job readiness and hone professional skills. The voluntary one-credit, three-year program is launching in July. iastate.edu
The recently opened IDEA (Innovate |Design| Engineer | Apply) Lab at Sacred Heart University is a facility where students can get creative with ideas that merge entrepreneurship and technology. Aiming to go beyond the typical university makerspace, the well-equipped IDEA Lab encourages users to execute real-life projects. sacredheart.edu
The Karsh STEM Scholars Program at Howard University has received a $10 million gift — the largest in the 153-year history of this historically black college. The funds will go toward diversifying STEM professions and increasing the number of underrepresented minorities earning a PhD. howard.edu
The Glooscap First Nation of Nova Scotia has signed a memorandum of understanding with Acadia University in Wolfville to advance Indigenization efforts on campus. The agreement establishes a full-time coordinator of Indigenous affairs and supports initiatives that benefit Mi’kmaq students and foster their culture. acadiau.ca
The NSF has given the cybersecurity program at the University of West Florida a $2.4 million grant, which will provide full-tuition scholarships and stipends for undergrad and grad students in cybersecurity, IT, and computer science. uwf.edu
Engineering students at the University of Arizona are working with the Navajo Nation under an NSF grant to help solve problems related to food, energy, and water security in remote rural areas. One innovation is a solar-powered water purification system that can be transported by a pickup truck. arizona.edu
A three-year, $500,000 NSF grant has gone to Tufts University to broaden the school’s efforts to securely extract information from complex data sets and apply these techniques in diverse disciplines. Tufts will use the funds to establish a TRIPODS (Transdisciplinary Research in Principles of Data Science) Institute, a centerpiece of the NSF’s Harnessing the Data Revolution initiative. There are now more than 20 institutions with TRIPODS Institutes. tufts.edu