Kayla Faust, a graduate student in the UI College of Public Health, is using the university’s National Advanced Driving Simulator (NADS) for a research study that hopes to reduce the number of crashes involving agricultural vehicles on rural roads.

While self-driving vehicles have been involved in occasional cars crashes recently, researchers at the University of Iowa’s National Advanced Driving Simulator (NADS) who test and develop autonomous vehicles say they can still be safer than when humans are at the wheel.

Nine students and a faculty member from the College of Dentistry were recognized for their achievements in the field of dentistry at the annual banquet of the Mu Chapter of the Omicron Kappa Upsilon National Dental Honorary Society.

College of Pharmacy Dean Donald Letendre was named a fellow of the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists (ASHP) during the group's summer meetings and exhibition event June 2–6 in Denver, Colorado.

Mary Elizabeth Hamilton, who earned her MFA in playwriting at Iowa, was named one of two winners of an international playwriting competition.

The University of Iowa is leading a movement to change the way science is taught at K–12 schools statewide. With funding from the National Science Foundation, educators at the UI are revising the science curriculum and recruiting and training teachers to better educate Iowa children in the sciences.

The Iowa Initiative for Sustainable Communities is working with Mason City on roughly 20 projects throughout the community, ranging from updating the comprehensive plan to designing murals to developing an aging-in-place campaign. Several UI groups are focused exclusively on the North End, aiming to improve residents’ quality of life.

The Richard E. Kerber HeartSafe Initiative aims to train University of Iowa faculty and staff working in non-medical buildings in CPR and the use of AEDs. The initiative also will increase the number and visibility of AEDs on campus.

The search committee in charge of seeking the next vice president for research and economic development at the University of Iowa has been constituted. The committee is expected to begin its search this summer.

The UI will continue to participate in the MidAmerican Energy Company energy curtailment program and receive payment for reducing electricity demand, but all electrical offsets will be made by increasing on-campus electrical generation rather than reducing air conditioning in UI campus buildings.

University of Iowa alumna Jennifer Croft was named a recipient of the Man Booker International Prize for works of translated fiction on May 22 for her English-language translation of Flights, by Polish author Olga Tokarczuk. Croft received an MFA in literary translation from the UI in 2003.

A new University of Iowa–led study reports educational opportunities and higher incomes may be key to closing the health gap between most black and white Americans. Researchers say socioeconomic factors, mainly wealth and education, influenced the differences in health behaviors between the groups more than other variables.