News & Publications

Researchers with ATP-Bio, an NSF-funded Engineering Research Center headquartered at the University of Minnesota, have developed a new way of preserving pancreatic islet cells that may lead to improved treatment options for diabetes. Transplantation of pancreatic islet cells can cure for diabetes, but is limited by insufficient supply and inability to store islet cells before use. These barriers must be overcome to allow on-demand treatment.

Congratulations to University of Minnesota law student Claire Colby ‘23, who has been selected to serve as Editor-in-Chief of volume 24 of the Minnesota Journal of Law, Science & Technology (MJLST)! MJLST publishes innovative articles on issues at the intersection of law, technology, and the sciences.

The Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs’ Swain Climate Policy Initiative and the Big Ten Collaboration on Democracy in the 21st Century will host Dr. Katharine Hayhoe, the author of Saving Us: A Climate Scientist’s Case for Hope and Healing in a Divided World, for a virtual event Tuesday, April 12 at 4:00pm Central time. Dr. Hayhoe will explain the complex science connecting our current choices to future impacts and highlight actions that are currently being taken to mitigate climate change. Registration is free, but required; find more information and register here.

We note with sadness the passing of Amos S. Deinard, MD, MPH, on March 9. Dr. Deinard was a faculty member in the University of Minnesota’s Department of Pediatrics, past-Director of the Community-University Health Care Center in Minneapolis, and founder of the Minnesota Oral Health Project. Dr. Deinard collaborated with his family and the law firm of Leonard, Street and Deinard (now Stinson LLP) to fund the Deinard Memorial Lecture Series in Law & Medicine for 14 years.

Michael Osterholm, Director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) worked with 22 other health, science, and policy experts to author a major report detailing how the U.S. can control COVID transmission and severity, prepare for new variants, and create a new normal.

Healthy Foods, Healthy Lives will present its fifth annual Native American Nutrition Conference on May 23 - 25 at Mystic Lake Center in Prior Lake, Minnesota. “Decolonizing and Indigenizing our Diets for Health'' will feature sessions on healing from trauma, practical knowledge for traditional diets, and Indigenizing nutrition and food policy.

The Presidents of the National Academies of Sciences and National Academy of Medicine have urged the Biden-Harris administration to create a new presidential bioethics commission. Their letter to Dr. Alondra Nelson, Interim Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), is based on a white paper authored by a working group led by Susan M. Wolf, Regents Professor at the University of Minnesota, and R. Alta Charo, Warren P. Knowles Professor Emerita of Law and Bioethics, University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Dr. Consuelo Hopkins Wilkins and co-authors recently published a paper that details goals and recommended strategies for achieving diversity, equity and inclusion in clinical research (Boulware, L. et al. Combating Structural Inequities — Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Clinical and Translational Research. New England Journal of Medicine 2022;386(3):201-203.).

Consortium Chair Susan Wolf was quoted in the New York Times on whether biobanks should offer information about genetic risks to individuals participating in a biobank. Biobanks are large-scale collections of medical records, biospecimens, and DNA that researchers can use to study the health impact of genetic variants (click this article's title to read more).

Profs. Susan M. Wolf and James G. Hodge, Jr., are publishing an important new article on “Designing COVID-19 Vaccine Mandates in Colleges and Universities: A Roadmap to the 10 Key Questions” in the Journal of Law and the Biosciences. With the Omicron variant now driving a major surge in COVID-19 infections, the authors map the ten big questions that institutions of higher education need to address to ensure that any COVID-19 vaccine and booster mandate is effective in reducing risk and advancing institutional goals.