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.

A miniature version of the University of Iowa’s advanced driving simulator will participate in a clinical trial later this year to assess a patient’s driving ability after cataract surgery.

A multi-center study led by infection control experts with UI Health Care finds that implementing a series of simple interventions before surgery can reduce the rate of surgical-site infections by up to 40 percent.

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.

Radar technology from the UI will help a new NASA mission look for the building blocks of life on a distant moon.

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.

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

An UI study finds states gain little when dropping adult dental coverage. Researchers say adults in California made 1,800 more hospital visits annually for dental care after losing the benefit. California spent $2.9 million each year, 68 percent more before eliminating the benefit. Results in the journal Health Affairs.

The University of Iowa has teamed up with the National Science Foundation to establish a program for accelerating commercialization of technologies developed by student and faculty inventors and entrepreneurs, especially those developed by women.

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.