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The drive to discover leads University of Minnesota students and faculty to take a multi-dimensional view of improving human health: promoting healthy ways to live and work, healthy places in which to live and work, and better systems for health care. Donors share this vision, and their gifts are helping to turn aspirations into innovations that make life better for us all.
It’s stocked with Legos, Play-Doh, and colored markers, but this place isn’t all fun and games. In fact, the toys are tools to create a prototype for what might someday become a nanocapsule delivery system for molecular therapy. Welcome to the Medical Devices Center, a joint project of the College of Science and Engineering (CSE) and the Medical School, and beneficiary of numerous in-kind and cash gifts from medical technology companies. "It’s a place where engineers and physicians can collaborate in consultation with patients, during surgeries, and in the rehabilitation process," notes center director and Richard C. Jordan Professor of Mechanical Engineering Arthur Erdman. "It directly fills the void that used to exist in going from idea to advanced prototype."
Tour the Medical Devices Center in a short video.
For many people, design is about consumer trends: making things look more attractive or function more efficiently. But 21st century design is much more than just another pretty face. It’s a socially conscious discipline that is aiming to improve quality of life, solve problems of global significance, and sustain a healthier world. Just one example: A team of U of M architecture students and faculty helped residents in Biloxi, Mississippi rebuild a park many months after Hurricane Katrina. The multi-generational green space offers kids a place to play beside a community garden, where older residents can sit in shaded comfort, watching their children and their plants thrive. "One woman told me she didn’t feel safe in the old park. Now, she brings her grandchildren to the park every afternoon," said student team member Catherine Sandlund, ’00 B.A., ’09 M.A., who received both the Pesek Fellowship and the Ron Krank Vision Award in architecture. "My fellowship gave me the confidence to do this. It was an affirmation of my chosen field."
Visit the park in Biloxi through a narrated slideshow.
If it’s true that you are what you eat, what you eat better be safe. The U of M is working to ensure that worldwide food systems are safe, affordable, and accessible through a project called the Global Initiative for Food Systems Leadership, started in part through a major gift from General Mills. By organizing major corporations and leading universities to work with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the U is developing leaders for the world’s food supply. Will Hueston holds the Chair for Global Food Systems Leadership, established by Cargill. He believes creating a network of leaders can accelerate the adoption of best-in-class food system management programs globally: "Everyone benefits, from producer and processor to teacher and candlestick maker." The public health impact could be substantial, for developing and developed countries alike. "It’s possible to produce enough food to meet global demand, sustainably, on a finite amount of land," Hueston points out, "if we start looking at the world as our breadbasket."
Hear Professor Will Hueston discuss the Global Initiative for Food Systems Leadership in a short video.
