University of Iowa graduate students Ana-Monica Racila and Serena Gumusoglu have been awarded funding to pursue academic work and lead innovative community projects that empower women and girls. The awards are from the American Association of University Women.

A short film by Michael Gibisser, assistant professor in the University of Iowa Department of Cinematic Arts, will have its world premiere Sept. 6 at the Toronto International Film Festival.

Mark Berg, director of the University of Iowa Public Policy Center's Crime and Justice Policy Research Program and associate professor in the Department of Sociology, was awarded grant funding for a two-year project titled, “Childhood Stressors and Cardiovascular Disease Risk in Adulthood: A Longitudinal Investigation of Divergent Explanatory Models.”

Three Iowa faculty members have been awarded Fulbright grants to conduct research, study, or teach abroad in 2019–20.

A research team at the University of Iowa has been awarded $750,000 from the U.S. National Science Foundation to develop a natural growth additive in fertilizer that aims to improve crop yields. The researchers, led by Ned Bowden in the Department of Chemistry, will test the growth additive on corn and soybean crops and on a biomass source called Miscanthus grass.

Fred Skiff, professor and chair in Department of Physics and Astronomy, has been appointed to the Fusion Energy Sciences Advisory Committee in the U.S Department of Energy's Office of Science. Skiff will advise the DOE in laser and optical plasma diagnostics, and nonlinear dynamics of plasmas.

University of Iowa biologists have traced the evolutionary origin of genes associated with a key enzyme involved in regulating metabolism in eukaryotes, which include all living organisms other than bacteria. The findings were published earlier this month in the journal PLOS One.

Two former UI graduate students have won the 2019 D.C. Spriestersbach Dissertation Prize. Rajula Elango, who earned a PhD in integrated biology in 2017, won in the Biological and Life Sciences category. Stefan Schöeberlein, who earned a PhD in English in 2018, won in the Humanities and Fine Arts category.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has awarded a $4.2 million grant to the University of Iowa over five years to continue the Injury Prevention Research Center (IPRC) in the College of Public Health.

Jeremy Greenlee, of the University of Iowa Department of Neurosurgery, received the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers on July 25 in Washington, D.C. The PECASE is the highest honor bestowed by the U.S. government to outstanding scientists and engineers who are beginning their research careers.