Hien Nguyen, associate professor in chemistry, has been selected to receive the 2018 Horace S. Isbell Award in Carbohydrates by the American Chemical Society.

Professor Emeritus Julius Schmidt, whose contributions and mentoring garnered him the unofficial title “grandfather of cast iron sculpture,” passed away June 20. Schmidt’s family encourages UI faculty and staff who knew him and who plan to attend an Aug. 11 memorial to share brief memories during the short service.

Emily Drummer, a filmmaker pursuing her MFA in cinematic arts at the University of Iowa, received a Princess Grace Foundation Film Scholarship Honorarium for 2017.

“Jackson Pollock’s ‘Mural’: The Story of a Modern Masterpiece,” a documentary produced by and created at the University of Iowa, has been nominated for an Emmy Award by the Mid-America Chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.

University of Iowa astronomers have located quasars inside four dusty starburst galaxies. The discovery may explain why this type of galaxy, where huge numbers of stars were once created, ceased making stars.

UI alumnus Paul Willis owns a celebrated free-range pig farm in Thornton, Iowa, one of the stops on this year’s RAGBRAI route. He’s also the founder of the Niman Ranch farm network, where his UI alumna daughter, Sarah Willis, works. Both say their UI education contributed to their success.

Fiscal year 2017 saw an estimated 1 percent increase in both total external funding and funding that supports research and scholarship at the University of Iowa.

More than 140 high school students from around Iowa, the U.S., and countries like Italy, China, South Korea, and Canada have come to the University of Iowa to learn at the Iowa Young Writers’ Studio. The students spend two weeks honing their craft and immersing themselves in Iowa City culture.

Jessica Graff, a spring 2017 graduate of the University of Iowa with degrees in English and engaged social innovation, wrote an essay about her honors thesis project, “The Interfaith Initiative.” Graff taught K-6 students about world religions and tolerance in after-school programs in the Iowa City, Iowa, area.

Pigeons, UI researcher Edward Wasserman has shown, can do a lot of what humans can do, including learning many new object categories simultaneously, selectively ignoring irrelevant information, and learning to recognize human emotional expressions, even on unfamiliar faces.

Ali Hval, a UI graduate student in art, helped officials from the city of Clinton, Iowa, and the UI’s Office of Outreach and Engagement unveil the mural she designed and painted at a ribbon cutting July 6. Hval’s mural adorns the historic Jacobsen Building in downtown Clinton.

The University of Iowa awarded nearly 4,300 degrees at the close of the 2017 spring semester.