Adam Bledsoe
Geography, Environment, and Society
College of Liberal Arts
University of Minnesota Twin Cities
Legacies of the Black Twin Cities: A Political History of the Present-Day
This project contextualizes current Black activism in the Twin Cities by tracing the historical linkages between today’s Black political actors and institutions and the last century of political activity in Minneapolis and Saint Paul. Drawing on interviews and a variety of archives, Adam Bledsoe charts out how the experiences and outcomes of previous generations of Black activism lay the groundwork for subsequent generations of activists and the current political landscape of the Twin Cities.
Martina Cardone
Electrical and Computer Engineering
College of Science and Engineering
University of Minnesota Twin Cities
Privacy and Security in Modern Communication and Computing Systems
Martina Cardone develops technologies for privacy and security of Big Data. Her research focuses on secure data transmission over wireless networks, and privatization of sensitive data prior to sharing data with external analyzers. Her work leverages rigorous mathematical analysis to obtain provably optimal solutions that also offer suitable engineering guidelines for practical design and implementation over current and next-generation communication networks and computing frameworks, such as wireless cellular networks and recommender systems.
Xue Feng
Civil, Environmental, and Geo- Engineering
College of Science and Engineering
University of Minnesota Twin Cities
Water, Climate, and our Changing Ecosystems
Water controls how plants and microbes use carbon to grow. As climate change shifts the timing and amount of precipitation, the hydrological processes that make water accessible to plants will determine how ecosystems will respond under new environmental and societal pressures. Combining theoretical, computational, and field-based approaches. Dr. Feng investigates the interactions between water and plants in forests, wetlands, and cities, to better understand their responses and feedbacks to the climate.
Jacob Jungers
Agronomy and Plant Genetics
College of Food, Agricultural, and Natural Resource Sciences
University of Minnesota Twin Cities
Developing and Deploying New Crops to Improve Agricultural Sustainability
Summary: Agriculture is dominated by annual crops that leak nutrients and emit greenhouse gases. Dr. Jacob Jungers is developing the world’s first perennial grain crop, which has potential to drastically improve agricultural efficiency. His research focuses on how to grow this new crop alongside others to minimize fertilizer and pesticide inputs. Outcomes of his research result in improving farmer profitability while minimizing environmental damages such as soil loss, water pollution, and greenhouse gas emissions.
Patrick Kelly
Physics and Astronomy
College of Science and Engineering
University of Minnesota Twin Cities
Probing the Universe’s Dark Matter and Energy and Uncovering the Mergers of Neutron Stars
Patrick Kelly both acquires observations and builds instruments to address the nature of dark matter, dark energy, and cosmic explosions. A preponderance of the universe’s matter and energy is dark -- it does not emit or interact with light – and Dr. Kelly uses supernova explosions and gravitational lensing of individual stars across the universe to probe its composition. Recent detections of ripples in spacetime also reveal merging neutron stars. He is constructing two powerful sets of telescopes to find and understand these cataclysmic events.
Jason Kerwin
Applied Economics
College of Food, Agricultural, and Natural Resource Sciences
University of Minnesota Twin Cities
Using Innovative Programs and Randomized Field Experiments to End Global Poverty
Despite incredible progress and economic growth over the past fifty years, many parts of the world are still persistently poor. These disparities create a moral imperative to raise living standards in the developing world and tackle the numerous other challenges facing poor countries. Dr. Kerwin answers that call by using randomized experiments and the tools of economics to discover and test solutions to the interlocking set of social and economic problems that keep people poor.
M. Bennett McNulty
Philosophy
College of Liberal Arts
University of Minnesota Twin Cities
Immanuel Kant on (Improper) Science
Immanuel Kant, paramount Enlightenment philosopher and keen theorist of science in the wake of the Scientific Revolution, (in)famously tweaked chemistry, psychology, anthropology, and biology as natural sciences, only “improperly so-called.” Bennett McNulty’s research project examines the reasoning behind Kant’s relegation of these disciplines to the rank of “improper” science to grasp better their state of development in the 18th century, Kant’s criticism of them, as well as our contemporary understanding of science.
Noelle Noyes
Veterinary Population Medicine
College of Veterinary Medicine
University of Minnesota Twin Cities
Microbes for Sustainable Intensification of Livestock Production
As the human population expands, so does its demand for protein. Livestock farmers must meet this demand, but their land and water are shrinking rapidly, meaning they must produce more with less. Dr. Noyes confronts this challenge through scientific discovery of the livestock microbiome. She seeks to understand how this invisible universe can be optimized to grow healthier, more efficient animals to feed the planet sustainably, sufficiently and safely.
David L. Poerschke
Chemical Engineering and Materials Science
College of Science and Engineering
University of Minnesota Twin Cities
Accelerated Design of New Materials to Survive Extreme Environments
Meeting society’s energy and environmental challenges requires resilient new materials that possess the right combination of mechanical and functional properties, and the capability to survive high temperatures and stresses without melting, fracturing, or deteriorating. Dr. Poerschke’s group synthesizes new materials, measures their properties, and tests them in extreme environments. By coupling these experiments with analytical and computational models to understand why materials fail, we accelerate the discovery of durable new metal alloys, ceramics, and composites.
Xavier Revelo
Integrative Biology and Physiology
Medical School
University of Minnesota Twin Cities
Metabolic Disease Turns “Hero” Immune Cells into Disease-promoters
Inflammation is part of the immune response that protects us from infections. However, increasing evidence has revealed that inflammation is a promoter of metabolic disease. Dr. Revelo and his team study the role of the immune system and inflammation in the development of obesity, fatty liver disease, and heart failure. As obesity-related disease is a worldwide epidemic, the research led by Dr. Revelo can lead to advances in its prevention and treatment using immunotherapy.