Sometimes, researchers need a helping hand to close the distance between a brilliant idea and a commercially viable product, service, or business. That’s where the University of Iowa’s GAP Funding Program comes in.

For the first time since it was immersed in floodwater seven years ago, the University of Iowa Memorial Union ground floor will be open to the public. University and local officials will commemorate the re-opening of the 83,000-square-foot space with a ribbon-cutting ceremony followed by self-guided tours on June 3.

As the UI moves forward with the Iowa Board of Regents’ TIER project, campus leaders are committed to keeping colleagues informed. Here are the latest developments across business cases.

A UI study shows that chronic exposure to a toxin made by staph bacteria produces in rabbits the hallmark symptoms of Type 2 diabetes, including insulin resistance and glucose intolerance. The findings suggest that eliminating staph bacteria or neutralizing the toxins might have potential for preventing or treating the disease.

Ever since joining her middle school mock trial team, Dubuque native Heather Jackson has practiced her trade with the hope of earning a law degree that would, one day, help her use her passion for argument to serve Iowans as a public defender.

UI Children's Hospital is home to Iowa's only nationally ranked neonatology program—reassuring news for a Cedar Rapids family.

Small schools in rural communities often have a hard time finding enough students and teachers to offer Advanced Placement (AP) classes. In Iowa, the state has worked to deal with the problem by offering online AP classes through the UI College of Education’s Belin-Blank Center.

The University of Iowa College of Engineering will require that all new undergraduate students take at least three semesters of creative art credit to earn an engineering degree, beginning in fall 2015.

STEM-talented middle school students in 11 high-poverty districts in rural Iowa are participating in the UI Belin-Blank Center’s STEM Excellence and Leadership program that will build a pipeline to high school AP courses. Economically-vulnerable students often fall through the cracks without specialized programming, according to center director Susan Assouline.

Leaders for the University of Iowa’s OneIT project have prepared draft project charters which address the university’s four information technology business cases related to the TIER initiative. The campus is encouraged to provide feedback via two avenues.

Hundreds of entrepreneurs are in Iowa City this week for Entrefest, an annual conference that helps Iowans learn how to start their own businesses, co-sponsored by by the University of Iowa and the John Pappajohn Entrepreneurial Center.

University of Iowa provost and engineering professor P. Barry Butler, who hasn't been involved in the recall, was part of a team that worked with General Motors and Ford a decade ago on passenger air bag inflators. They created software to model combustion of the propellant, he said.