Stories of Discovery and Impact

Rackham student Maxwell Woody measures how electric vehicles can reduce greenhouse gas emissions and slow climate change.

With a telescope and boundless Maize-and-Blue spirit, beloved astronomer Hazel “Doc” Losh (Ph.D. 1924) brought the stars down to earth for generations of Michigan students.

Rackham doctoral candidate Lucy Smith researches the transatlantic tooth trade, George Washington’s dentures, and their impacts on access to dental care in the U.S. today.

The 1950 fire that gutted Haven Hall became a campus mystery with a shocking culprit: Robert H. Stacy, a U-M doctoral student found guilty of setting the blaze.

Rackham Ph.D. student Simon Rakei studies tax havens and their impacts on local communities.

At the height of McCarthyism, U-M alum and faculty member William Paton (Ph.D. 1917) helped drive Professor Lawrence Klein from Michigan, costing the University a scholar who would later win the Nobel Prize.

Rackham students Kelsi Caywood and Elena Rosario offer their perspectives on co-creating curricula with public school teachers in Puerto Rico through an annual initiative with the University of Puerto Rico and the U-M Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies.

U-M bacteriologist Paul de Kruif (Ph.D. 1916) transformed his laboratory adventures into the raw material for Sinclair Lewis’s Arrowsmith, helping shape one of literature’s most memorable scientists.

Two Rackham students, Casidy Campbell and Jessica Roden, explore new possibilities for advancing racial justice online and offline.

In 1938, U-M alum and botany instructor Elzada Clover (Ph.D. 1935) braved the Colorado River to study the Grand Canyon’s flora, becoming one of the first known women to complete the perilous journey.

Rackham Ph.D. candidate Etienne Herrick-Sutton works with Great Lakes region farmers to identify strategies for improving the environmental and economic outcomes of cover cropping.

In 1965, Rackham alum William Gamson (Ph.D. ’59) helped to create U-M’s first teach-in in protest of the Vietnam War, sparking a movement that swept campuses nationwide.

Rackham Ph.D. candidate Theresa Norpeli Lanyo researches ways to effectively address maternal mortality rates through group prenatal care.

A few Rackham alums took inspiration from the mystery of graduate school to publish actual mystery novels, including Elisabeth Carey and Marian Waite Magoon, Ypsilanti teachers writing as “Carey Magoon,” published I Smell the Devil; U-M Ph.D. Leonard Greenbaum wrote Out of Shape.

UMSI doctoral student Qiwei Li earned a prestigious Google Ph.D. Fellowship, recognizing research that pushes the boundaries of how people interact with emerging technologies.

At their essence, electoral systems turn votes into winners and losers, with far-reaching consequences. Rackham political science alumnus Samuel Baltz studies how different systems represent their voters and impact election outcomes.

In 1970, reporting by journalism graduate student Kathleen Shortridge exposed and quantified U-M’s inequitable treatment of women, leveraging campus journalism to create change.

Rackham student and sociologist Joyce Ho’s research seeks to understand homeowners’ experiences and insurance companies’ responses in the aftermath of forest fires in northern California.

Rackham doctoral candidate and human-computer interaction researcher Jaylin Herskovitz co-designs accessible tech with blind people, improving their experience with the world, online and off.

On the eve of the first Earth Day in 1970, U-M staged a landmark environmental teach-in, organized in part by David Allan, then a zoology doctoral student who went on to graduate, become a professor, and eventually the dean of U-M’s School of Natural Resources and the Environment., helping ignite a national movement.

Rackham Ph.D. candidate Rebecca Wai studies relationships between refugee communities and farmers in Uganda.

Rackham Ph.D. student Kaiwen Sun studies ways that smart tech impacts family life, with an eye toward greater safety.

From fieldwork to the president’s office, U-M alumnus and zoologist Alexander Ruthven (Ph.D. 1906) carried his belief in the deep bonds between humanity and nature into his University leadership from 1929 to 1951.

Tribal radio stations are important sources of healthcare information in Native American communities, which have been particularly hard hit by COVID-19. Ph.D. alumna Jana Wilbricht studied this crucial role, and helped two stations better reach their audiences.

Robert Cooley Angell (Ph.D. 1924), sociologist, U-M professor, and grandson of President James Burrill Angell, studied campus social life before challenging big-time football as a commercial force at odds with higher education.

The Rackham Program in Public Scholarship supports publicly engaged scholarship through mutually beneficial projects created between Rackham students and community partners.

Rackham Ph.D. candidate Kassidy Jungles researches new therapeutics for an aggressive subtype of breast cancers disproportionately impacting young Black women.

Rackham doctoral candidate and former high school teacher Kyle P. Smith explores the pedagogical possibilities of LGBTQ+ young adult literature to talk across differences in the classroom.

Two U-M Ph.D.s of 1906 heralded a new age of research: Alexander Ruthven secured a lasting home for scientific collections, while Alfred Dachnowski became the first Whittier Fellow in Botany.

Artificial intelligence is rapidly being implemented across a wide range of industries, but it still has many vulnerabilities that leave it open to attack. Rackham computer and information science Ph.D. student Abderrahmen Amich is developing new lines of defense.

Rackham mechanical engineering student Alejandro Azocar’s work blends artificial intelligence with high-torque motors to create the next generation of bionic prostheses.

As university preseident, Lyman Beecher Brooks (Ph.D. 1942) guided Norfolk State into a thriving university, expanding educational opportunity for generations of Black students.

Rackham Predoctoral Fellow Yijun Gui researches the neurological mechanics of hunger with hopes of developing new therapeutics for individuals living with anorexia nervosa.

Rackham psychology and women’s and gender studies student Erick Aguinaldo explores male identity and the cultural forces that create it.

Bees and other insects are crucial for the reproduction of many plant species, but roads often impose obstacles to this vital function. Rackham students Gordon Fitch and Chatura Vaidya studied this problem and proposed some solutions.

Shut out of much of Ann Arbor’s housing by discrimination, Black U-M students built networks of welcoming homes and organizations that offered shelter, community, and belonging.

New research led by Rackham public health Ph.D. student Delvon Mattingly shows Black COVID-19 patients in Michigan have nearly double the number of hospital stays and worse experiences with testing and care than their white counterparts.

As Bentley collections show, figuring out what constituted a graduate degree, and how to award it, wasn’t always clear cut.

Sociology Ph.D. student Aunrika Tucker-Shabazz explores the unseen costs of discrimination in the way Black girls are punished in public schools.

Gertrude Buck earned U-M’s first rhetoric Ph.D. The archives reveal how she used writing and teaching to break barriers for women, laying groundwork for today’s feminist rhetoric.

U-M doctoral alum Gabriela Lena Frank (DMA ’01) reflects on the heritage, artistry, and creative vision that shaped her music and led to Pulitzer recognition.

Rackham doctoral alum Jean Dawson launched a crusade to rid the city of Cleveland of its flying pests.

Mira Walker (DMA ’26) was awarded a Mental Health Awareness Microgrant to present three sensory-friendly concerts welcoming audiences with sensory sensitivities, disabilities, and neurodiverse conditions.

In the early 1970s, government pressure was mounting for U-M to give women a level playing field on campus, but the University’s all-male administration was slow to act. A group of determined women demanded accountability and action.

UMSI doctoral alum Jane Im (Ph.D. ’24) explores how social platforms can give people a stronger voice in shaping safer, healthier, and more democratic online communities.

For as long as there has been human civilization, it has been shaped in part by the climate. Rackham history Ph.D. candidate David Patterson is exploring how medieval Europeans thought about the world around them.

Among the 20,000 American Indians who fought for the Union and the Confederacy during the Civil War, a single company from Michigan was made up almost entirely of indigenous men. A researcher used Bentley archives, including the dissertation of Rackham alum Michelle Cassidy (Ph.D. ’16) to trace their history and share the story of the Anishinaabeg of Company K.

Meet Michelle Light, whose training at the Bentley during her doctoral studies changed her career path. Today, she’s an associate librarian for Yale’s Library Special Collections & director of the Beinecke Library.

Developing new, more efficient batteries has become paramount if automotive and other industries want to move away from fossil fuels. Mechanical engineering Ph.D. student Changyu Deng is developing ways to speed up that process.

Ross J. Wilhelm (Ph.D. 1962) was an esteemed professor of business economics at the University of Michigan. So why, then, does his collection at the Bentley Historical Library contain folders full of strange symbols and ciphers, complex drawings and codes, and references to an obscure 16th century text?

Ph.D. student Allegra Fonda-Bonardi and Associate Professor Silvia Lindtner earned prestigious CUSP Fellowships to advance research reimagining how technology can serve people and communities.

During his graduate studies at U-M Austin McCoy (Ph.D. ’16) initiated the Being Black at Michigan (#BBUM) movement, which archives at the Bentley Historical Library that tell a story of activism and social justice that is still ongoing.

Former Hamtramck mayor, Polish American Historical Association first vice president, and Rackham alum Karen Majewski (Ph.D. 1998) races to rescue community records before vital pieces of Polish American history disappear.

For nearly 20 years, James Tobin (Ph.D. 1986) has been writing about the University’s history. We sat down with him to talk about research, collections, and even finding love at the library.

A look at the history of women’s athletics at U-M, leveraging “The History of Intercollegiate Athletics for Women at the University of Michigan,” a dissertation by Rackham alum Rackham alum Sheryl Szady (Ph.D. 1987).

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, women like Helen Dodson Prince (Ph.D. 1934), Harriet Williams Bigelow (Ph.D. 1904), Agnes Ermina Wells (Ph.D. 1924), Hazel Marie Losh (Ph.D. 1924), and others fought to study the stars just like their male colleagues. The Detroit Observatory was training ground for women astronomers.

Four UMSI doctoral students—Seth Bernstein, Veronica Pimenova, Andrew Balch, and Ashlyn Campbell—earned 2026 National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowships, advancing bold research at the intersection of people, information, and technology.

Through a new program, Rackham alum and former Barbour scholar SeoHyun Bae is empowering local people in Ethiopia to help their own communities.

Half of all graduate students experience psychological distress. Rackham students Sara Abelson and Janelle Goodwill are leveraging their public health and social work expertise to help their fellow peers across U-M.

Professor Emeritus H. Robert Reynolds and music education Ph.D. student Doris Doyon join forces to author In Pursuit of Great Conducting, a guide to the artistry and leadership behind the baton.

Rackham English and education student Elizabeth Tacke explores the complex ways people communicate about disabilities and trauma.

Asian carp are poised to enter Lake Michigan, but to what extent is a matter of debate. Rackham alumnus Peter Alsip’s research sheds light on the watery invaders’ potential whereabouts.

U-M doctoral alumnae Sasha Kasman Laude (DMA ’23) and Angie Zhang (DMA ’24) struck a high note as finalists for the 2025 American Piano Awards.

Few mammals are as ubiquitous as the squirrel, but what makes them act the way they do? Rackham student Amy-Charlotte Devitz takes us into the mind of the bushy tailed rodent.

Through a Rackham International Research Award, biogeochemistry Ph.D. candidate Rebecca Dzombak is looking for insight into the future of Earth’s climate in the ancient soils of Iceland, Scotland, and the Faroe Islands.

U-M doctoral alum Robert M. Warner (Ph.D. 1958) helped build the Bentley Historical Library into a leading archive before taking the helm of the National Archives.

The Hudson River has been the focus of a major pollution cleanup effort since 2002. But Rackham alumnus Jacob Kvasnicka found the cleanup itself poses risks.

U-M doctoral alum Eliza R. Sunderland (Ph.D. 1892) brought scholarship to the causes of women’s rights, education, and religious reform, forging a public life at a time when few women held advanced degrees.

Educational studies doctoral student Kimberly Ransom is bringing childhood voices back into the story of the historic Rosenwald school in Pickens County, Alabama.

Wireless charging is already taking hold. But imagine charging your home appliances or even your car without a single wire. Rackham electrical engineering student Xin Zan is working to make that—and more—a reality.

Rackham alum Molly Range helped model the tsunami that contributed to the downfall of the dinosaurs.

Rackham architecture student Alaa Algargoosh uses virtual reality technology to recreate historic buildings and better understand the experience of being in them.

There’s no mistaking when it’s cold outside, but how our bodies know that has been an open question. Molecular and integrative physiology Ph.D. student Elizabeth Ronan is working to understand where that chilly feeling comes from.

In addition to Earth Day, 2020 marks the 50th anniversary of the Ecology Center. Rackham English language and literature Ph.D. candidate Elizabeth Harlow is helping them commemorate the occasion through online storytelling.

Since March 2020, Rackham biostatistics student Rupam Bhattacharyya has been working with a team of researchers to help population-dense India manage its response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

School of Public Health Ph.D. candidate Sarah Rozenblum looks at what lessons the United States can learn from how European countries have approached reopening their economies in the wake of COVID-19.

Bats are a potential source of the novel coronavirus behind COVID-19, but a different affliction is ravaging their own populations. ecology and evolutionary biology Ph.D. candidate Giorgia Auteri wants to help them—and help people grasp their importance to our ecosystem.

In 1985, the Minority Organization of Rackham was formed. Now called Students of Color of Rackham (SCOR), the group continues to expand support and advocacy for the academic, professional, and social needs of graduate students of color.

In 2019, U-M launched a commission to help it achieve carbon neutrality. Rackham nursing graduate Megan Czerwinski used her expertise in sustainability and health education to help members of the U-M community understand the stakes and learn how they can contribute.

It often conjures images of farms or forests, but what does it really mean for a place to be “rural”? Rackham student Surabhi Balachander is looking for a new definition that reflects people’s lived experiences.

Rackham anthropology alumnus Colin Quinn helped start a program that connects a Romanian community with its mining heritage.

Whether it’s housing access, media portrayals, or the professional sphere, people of color often face discrimination around the language they use. Linguistics Ph.D. candidate Kelly Wright is listening to their side of the story.

For decades, the Standard Model of physics outlined four fundamental forces underlying every physical phenomenon. Now, nationwide research including Rackham students and alumni may change the way we understand our universe.

Barbour Scholarship alumna Lili Liu has spent her career with the World Bank, helping governments around the world better serve their people.

Brought together at U-M in the early 1960s, Rackham alumni Jim Thatcher and Jesse Wright went on to create IBM’s first screen readers for blind and low-vision computer users. Over six decades later, a Rackham alum and his faculty mentors are preparing the next leap in accessible computing.

Flight technology has been continually evolving for over two centuries. Rackham aerospace engineering alumna Christina Harvey is looking to write the next chapter in that story by looking at the creatures who do it better than anyone: birds.

Explore how much the graduate student population at U-M has changed over the last 20 years with data from the class of 2005 and the class of 2025.

A student film explores the life of Rackham alumna and Barbour Scholar Wu Yi-Fang (Ph.D. 1928).

Rackham Ph.D. candidate Irene Routté’s public scholarship focuses on how refugee-run organizations and youth councils foster a sense of home for Congolese newcomers to Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Edavelth Kakkat Janaki Ammal would go on to pioneer new hybrid crops and advocate for preserving India’s native plant life.

Every dish has a story to tell. Rackham student and food historian Khánh Linh Trinh studies the evolution and legacy of the Vietnamese noodle soup phở’.

U-M’s first female Korean Ph.D. graduate fought for the safety of her niece, who paid it forward by ensuring the well-being of women on a global scale.

Erin Leary is in the second year of her Ph.D. in the Department of American Culture, researching the intersection of Indigenous studies and climate change. Leary’s (Re)mapping project seeks to recenter Indigenous knowledge through placemaking.

Kyla McMullen is U-M’s first Black woman to graduate with a Ph.D. in computer science and engineering—and she’s driving change and scaling her influence with a podcast.

Rackham student Emily Laub researches the role of facial recognition in wasps—and its impact on co-creating a thriving nest.

Fifty years ago, Hobbs Moore became the first African-American woman to earn a Ph.D. in physics.

Rackham Ph.D. candidate David Van Dijcke uses alternative data sets to help understand the impacts of some of the world’s most complex problems, including internet shutdowns, air raid alert system functionality, and polarized American politics.

Dean Mike Solomon announced the decision, which was based on broad university feedback and will take effect in the 2022–23 admissions cycle.

Barbour Scholarship alumna Kapila Khandvala dedicated her life’s work to advocating for women’s rights and education in Indian society.

Rackham doctoral student I-Uen “Yvonne” Hsu shares the curiosity, perseverance, and sense of community shaping her research and her journey at U-M.

U-M doctoral alum Juliette Becker (Ph.D. ’20) followed the strange orbit of a distant “ghost planet,” uncovering new clues in the search for the elusive Planet Nine.

U-M doctoral alum Dominic Bednar (Ph.D. ’22) exposes the hidden toll of energy poverty, revealing how unaffordable home energy deepens racial, economic, and health inequities.

When decisions about your healthcare are informed by AI, bias in machine learning can have dire consequences. Ph.D. student Trenton Chang researches how inequities in healthcare delivery impact machine learning and AI.

The 1913 copper mine strike changed Michigan history forever, and the novel The Women of the Copper Country highlights the central role women played in the struggle. Comparative literature Ph.D. candidate Júlia Irion Martins prepared a statewide reader’s guide to help people understand their story.

As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine continues, sociology Ph.D. candidate Kristin Foringer and a team of U-M researchers are working with the Reckoning Project to collect eyewitness testimonies of the violence—and use them to gather evidence of war crimes.

U-M alumnus Paul Cornely (1928, MD ’31, DPH ’34, HSCD ’68), the first Black man to earn a doctorate in public health, fiercely championed equal care and helped desegregate America’s hospitals.

Each year during Halloween, children dress up as some of the movies’ iconic villains. New research from Rackham developmental psychology Ph.D. student Valerie Umscheid reveals that they are capable of looking past these characters’ wicked deeds to the moral complexity beneath the surface.

Doctor of Musical Arts candidate Bryan Ijames followed his ear, his heart, and some scholarly detective work to resurrect a forgotten piece by composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor.

U-M’s first female Korean Ph.D. graduate fought for the safety of her niece, who paid it forward by ensuring the well-being of women on a global scale.

Pollen allergies affect nearly one third of the global population, and climate change is set to make it worse. Rackham student Yingxiao Zhang is developing a better way to forecast allergy season to help people better navigate its headaches.

Rackham student Anawar Mahagoub Ali Mohamed’s journey to understand the pyramids in his own backyard and his village’s place in the ancient Kingdom of Kush.

U-M doctoral alum William “Nick” Collins (A.B. ’70, M.A. ’72, Ph.D. ’75) and other Rackham alums helped launch the student-run University Cellar, challenging high textbook prices and reshaping campus bookselling.

Since 1944, a treaty between the United States and Mexico has governed the exchange of water from the Rio Grande between the two countries. As political and ecological stressors complicate that arrangement, Rackham student Vianey Rueda looks at what can be done.

U-M doctoral alum Elmer Imes (Ph.D. 1918) broke barriers in physics, using infrared spectroscopy to provide crucial evidence for the emerging quantum theory.

Psychology Ph.D. candidate Danielle Rosenscruggs looks at students’ feelings of fraud and self-doubt with an eye toward developing strategies for individuals and institutions alike.

U-M doctoral alum and Olympian Michael Gould (Ph.D. ’10) reflects on the discipline, determination, and drive that propelled him from Michigan to competition on the world’s biggest stage.

Rackham political science Ph.D. candidate Ignangeli Salinas-Muñiz researches how the limited democracy experienced in U.S. territories impacts citizens.

Rackham archaeology Ph.D. student Brendan Nash works to shed light on Michigan’s earliest human settlement and the lives of these ancient hunter-gatherers.

U-M doctoral alum and archaeologist Carla Sinopoli (M.A. ’79, Ph.D. ’86) reveals how objects can unlock human stories, turning material traces of the past into vivid lessons for the present.

An exploration of four key issues jointly authored by Rackham’s Artificial Intelligence Ethics and Equity Research Group.

In a new study, a group of Rackham psychology students found COVID-19 cases and deaths are higher in U.S. metropolitan areas with higher levels of racial segregation.

Rackham doctoral candidate Jordan Lucore researched biomarkers of wild capuchin monkeys in Costa Rica, revealing a decline in the animal’s immune system performance in higher temperatures.

U-M doctoral alum John Geissman (B.S. ’73, M.S. ’76, Ph.D. ’80) follows magnetic clues locked in ancient rocks to investigate the “Great Dying,” Earth’s largest mass extinction.

U-M doctoral alumni Jerome and Isabella Karle (Ph.D. ’44) transformed crystallography and revealed the architecture of molecules, a scientific legacy celebrated by the annual Karle Symposium.

More than 100 graduate students and postdocs participated in a Rackham program to explore the benefits and risks of AI in research, academic writing, creative production, graduate education, and more.

Rackham alum and LSA Dean Anne Curzan, who earned her U-M Ph.D. in English Language and Literature, goes “all in” on the power of a liberal arts education to transform lives.

U-M doctoral alum Homer A. Neal (Ph.D. ’66) explored the smallest particles in the universe while shaping Michigan through scientific leadership, public service, and an enduring commitment to inclusion.

U-M doctoral alum Helen Foster (Ph.D. ’46) became a true “rock star,” mapping remote Alaskan terrain during a trailblazing career with the U.S. Geological Survey.

Pianist and U-M doctoral alum Tzu-Yin Huang (MM ’14, DMA ’17) turned her immersion in the Gershwin Initiative into prizewinning scholarship, bringing renewed attention to an American musical icon.

U-M doctoral alum Dwight Lowell Dumond (Ph.D. 1929) wielded history as a weapon for freedom, chronicling the antislavery movement and challenging racist interpretations of America’s past.

A new study, co-led by SEAS doctoral student Jason Hawes, finds that some city-grown crops equaled or outperformed the carbon footprint of conventional agriculture under certain conditions.

U-M doctoral alum Albert Hyma (Ph.D. 1924) explored the Renaissance and Reformation, and pursued encounters with spirits that added an otherworldly chapter to his scholarly life.

In the fight against coffee pests, known as coffee berry borers, ants are allies, but a new discovery by Jonathan “Jonno” Morris (MS ’16, PhD ’24) has revealed there may be a new feature to this protection.

U-M doctoral alumni Harrison M. Randall (Ph.D. 1902) helped to make Michigan’s Summer Symposia in Theoretical Physics a crossroads for scientists reshaping modern physics.

Claire McKenna, a SEAS doctoral candidate, led research that shows switching to efficient, cold-climate heat pumps could be economically unfeasible without government policy offsetting the costs.

U-M doctoral alum Sidney Fine (Ph.D. 1948) spent six decades bringing Michigan’s political, labor, and civil rights history to life for generations of students and readers.

U-M doctoral alum Mary Frances Berry (Ph.D. ’66, J.D. ’70, HLLD ’97) reflects on a lifetime of civil rights activism and her guiding rule: fight the policy, not the politician.

U-M doctoral alum Frank Beaver (Ph.D. 1970) helped transform a groundswell of student interest in cinema into a thriving film program at Michigan.

Two SEAS Ph.D. students developed a guidebook with information on how each Great Lakes state can support local flood resilience initiatives and provided actionable recommendations to each of the Great Lakes states in relation to their flood resilience policies.

U-M doctoral alum and professor emerita Rowena Matthews (Ph.D. ’69) recalls how her starring role in television commercials for Tang became an unlikely footnotes in her pioneering career in biophysics.

SEAS doctoral student Caroline Beckman is part of a research team working to help people better protect themselves from smoke, other air pollutants produced by wildfires.

SEAS Ph.D. candidate Congyi Dai says his work aims to understand how development aid can be made more transparent while giving the countries receiving aid greater negotiating power.

U-M doctoral alum Hunein “John” Maassab (Ph.D. 1956) transformed influenza prevention by developing the cold-adapted virus that became FluMist, the needle-free nasal vaccine used worldwide.

U-M doctoral alum Samuel C.C. Ting (Ph.D. ’62) launched a Nobel Prize-winning career in physics at Michigan, reshaping our understanding of matter.

Ph.D. candidate Erin Gallay is first author of the study, “Place-based civic science–collective environmental action and solidarity for eco-resilience,” recently recognized as a Wiley Top Cited Article in 2022-2023 in Child and Adolescent Mental Health.

U-M doctoral alum Albert H. Wheeler (Dr.P.H. 1944) broke barriers as U-M’s first African American professor to earn tenure and Ann Arbor’s first Black mayor, advancing civil rights on campus and across the city.

Second-year SEAS Ph.D. student Hana Manjusak’s research explores post-war reconstruction and focuses specifically on landmine clearance in Bosnia, a country that is one of the most mine-contaminated places in the world and home to her family.

U-M doctoral alum Arthur Burks (Ph.D. 1941) helped build ENIAC, the pioneering electronic computer that launched a new technological age and shaped the future of computing at Michigan.

U-M doctoral alum Oluwami “Wami” Dosunmu-Ogunbi (Ph.D. ’24), the first Black woman to earn a U-M robotics doctorate, returned to the commencement stage to inspire the next generation of engineers.

U-M doctoral alum Bunyan Bryant (Ph.D. 1972) helped forge the field of environmental justice, exposing inequity and empowering communities to fight for a healthier world.

The social aspect of climate resilience has been the focus of Jess Lasoff-Santos’ research at the University of Michigan School for Environment and Sustainability for nearly 10 years, both while pursuing a master’s degree and a Ph.D. which he will defend later this year.

U-M doctoral alum Theodore R. Speigner (Ph.D. 1961) became the nation’s first African American to earn a doctorate in conservation, breaking ground for future environmental leaders.

Rackham Ph.D. candidate Berk Durutürk offers his perspectives on harmful algal blooms in the Great Lakes, with an eye for protecting ecosystems and communities for generations to come.

U-M doctoral alum Gwendolyn Calvert Baker (Ph.D. 1972) recounts a trailblazing life in education and civil rights, navigating a white world with courage, candor, and an unshakable commitment to justice.

SEAS Ph.D. student Jiahui Chen is lead author of a study showing that by relying on their vehicle’s batteries for more than just transportation, EV drivers could save thousands on their energy bills and cut carbon emissions.

After three months at the helm of U‑M, President Domenico Grasso (Ph.D. 1987) shares his main goals, his thoughts on the Look to Michigan campaign priorities, and his impressions of our donor and volunteer community.

U-M doctoral alum Marjorie Lee Browne (Ph.D. 1950), one of the first Black women in America to earn a mathematics doctorate, broke barriers through scholarship, teaching, and mentorship.

Over a century ago, groups of Afrikaans-speaking Boer settlers left war-torn South Africa for Argentina. Today, their descendants speak a unique blend of Afrikaans and Spanish, and a team of U-M researchers is working to document it before it disappears.

U-M doctoral alum Willie Hobbs Moore (Ph.D. 1972), the first Black woman in America to earn a physics doctorate, broke barriers in science and advanced technologies that transformed manufacturing.

Ph.D. student Caroline New explores the interconnectedness of the natural world through art, poetry, and her anthropological studies.

U-M doctoral alum Detlev Bronk (Ph.D. 1926) carried his scientific vision from the laboratory to the presidency of Johns Hopkins, shaping American research and higher education.

Jason Hagani’s research examines the impacts of human activity on wolves in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and how those are reflected in the trophic system at large.

SEAS doctoral student Charlotte Probst led a study that found birds are smaller and face more breeding challenges than prior generations because the number of insects available to feed on has dropped in recent decades.

U-M doctoral alum Claudia Alexander (Ph.D. 1993) helped lead NASA’s Galileo and Rosetta missions, guiding humanity’s exploration of Jupiter and a distant comet while opening doors for Black women in space science.

SEAS Ph.D. student William Brinkerhoff and his team have been researching soil health and how crop fertilization can become a more circular process through urine collection, processing and reuse.

U-M doctoral alum Beth A. Brown (Ph.D. 1998), the first Black woman to earn a U-M astronomy doctorate, explored the universe in X-rays while inspiring new generations of scientists at NASA.

U-M doctoral alum Jerome B. Wiesner (Ph.D. 1950) carried his expertise from the laboratory to the White House and MIT presidency, shaping science, technology, and public policy.

Rackham history Ph.D. student Renny Hahamovitch considers how—and why—the American space program has changed, and what that can tell us about meeting today’s most urgent challenges.

Ph.D. Student Caroline Beckman was part of a team that developed a prototype Mobile Air Conditioning Unit intended for neighborhood residents for whom cooling was inaccessible.

SMRs have the potential provide a low-carbon path to meeting our country’s energy needs, but they’ll need help from policy and learning on the job, according to research from Ph.D. student Max Vanatta.

New University of Michigan research co-authored by Lauren Hart, a recent Ph.D. graduate in biological chemistry, shows that harmful algae blooms in Lake Erie produce a greater range of toxic compounds than previously known.