Millions of women die every year from the simple household task of cooking. The University of Iowa is hosting a group of internationally recognized experts at a conference, Women’s Health and the Environment: Going up in Smoke, to address the silent global crisis of cookstove smoke.

The Noddle, a device invented by UI-spinout company Voxello, is a technology that helps patients communicate with their health care providers, even though they are unable to speak.

University of Iowa researchers have documented for the first time how melanoma cells form tumors. The team reports the process is similar to that of breast cancer cells, and they have successfully screened for two antibodies that stopped tumor formation in both cancers. Results published in the journal “PLOS One.”

Baseball-Reference.com, the definitive online guide for baseball statistics, started out as a project that CEO Sean Forman worked on in his spare time while finishing his doctorate in mathematics at the University of Iowa. Tolerated by his non-baseball-fan advisor, the site is now Forman’s fulltime job.

The Big Ideas program, a suite of interdisciplinary classes taught by multiple UI faculty members, allows students to explore broad topics, like the origin of life and the history and science of oil, from multiple perspectives. The coursework also satisfies a General Education requirement.

Siblings Empowered, a business co-founded at UI by student Caleigh Bemont, uses online platforms to provide emotional support to children of siblings who are in traumatic life situations.

Marilynne Robinson, professor emerita at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, will be honored at the Library of Congress with a special event titled Fiction, Faith and the Imagination on Monday, April 3. The event will be live-streamed on the Library’s YouTube site at youtube.com/libraryofcongress.

The Office of Outreach and Engagement awarded four grants to support projects and initiatives making a significant impact in Iowa communities.

MFA student Robby Scott was born near Oakland, California, into a family with quick tempers, abusive tendencies, mental illness, and unfortunate affections for drugs and alcohol. Now married and planning to stay in Iowa to teach art, Scott says his craft helps him put his life in perspective.

Six people have been selected to receive 2016–2017 Diversity Catalyst Awards, which are sponsored by the Chief Diversity Office and the Office of Equal Opportunity and Diversity.

The Iowa City Science Booster Club, a partnership between the University of Iowa and the National Center for Science Education, supports local science education by providing a platform for fun, community-based science events. What’s the secret of the booster club’s success? Graduate student involvement.

Former congressman Jim Leach writes in defense of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and touts the organization’s support of “vitally important intellectual work.” The visiting professor in the UI College of Law and former chairman of the NEH says that “the humanities are America's stock and trade.”