Artists Wycliffe Gordon and Tomas Kubinek—along with Orchestra Iowa’s Maestro Tim Hankewich and Hancher’s executive director Chuck Swanson—will enjoy a picnic lunch with construction workers at the site of the new Hacher Facility Wednesday, May 21. Gordon will perform.

A new study led by the University of Iowa reports a drug may help lower a particular type of cholesterol. The researchers say the drug, evolocumab, boosts statins, which help lower cholesterol. Results appear in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The third of three candidates for the position of University of Iowa Alumni Association President/CEO will visit campus Wednesday, May 14. A public forum will be held at 3:30 p.m. in the Levitt Center for University Advancement.

UI law professor Lea VanderVelde says the circumstances that led Dred Scott to sue for freedom and then to stick with the litigation for eleven years, finally culminating at the Supreme Court, can be attributed to three different sets of factors: geography, local law, and hidden parties.

UI professor Rachel Marie-Crane Williams will talk about bringing students to the Iowa Correctional Institution for Women to facilitate classes on healthy relationships May 27 in Des Moines.

The University of Iowa partners with Postville and Waukon to provide dental care for elementary and middle-school students. The initiative, called Project SEALED, had served up to 700 children in the underserved communities in northeast Iowa.

The University of Iowa Theatre Building will be closed for the summer as it undergoes major renovations. The building will close after finals on Friday, May 16, and will remain closed until before the start of classes in August, when it will open for the fall semester.

The Centers for Disease Control identified the first case of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus, or MERS, in the United States on May 2; Dr. Stanley Perlman, UI professor of microbiology, is part of a worldwide effort to understand more about the virus, discovered in 2012.

A May 20 upgrade to the Virtual Desktop Service—which allows employees and students to access university-licensed software without having to install it—is expected to result in dramatic improvements in speed and performance.

Former Hawkeye kicker Nate Kaeding and UI business professor Jeff Ohlmann discuss the NFL draft from the player's perspective and the increasing importance of statistical analysis in professional sports.

Johnson County's Kirkwood Regional Center, a partnership between Kirkwood, the University of Iowa, the Grant Wood Area Education Agency, and K-12 school districts, is on track to open in 2015, providing STEM courses, technology, and working space for students in the UI's Research Park.

The University of Iowa today launched a new two-step phone verification tool to help protect University of Iowa employees from work-related identity theft.