In July the U-M Solar Car Team won the 2012 American Solar Challenge for a fourth consecutive American title. It was a record-breaking run, as the team finished the race with a 10-hour, 18-minute lead on the competition.

For a year-and-a-half, a U-M surgeon and her team turned the operating room into a laboratory—the first anywhere to apply the auto industry’s lean model of manufacturing to head and neck surgery. The outcome? Focusing on efficiency and profitability can enhance staff morale, resident education, and patient care.

Related Story: Acting on the New Health Care Act

Fetchnotes, founded by a team of U-M undergrads, is an innovative new cloud-based system that lets users organize information via phone, smartphone app, desktop widget, or web browser.

Ann Arbor is home to a first-of-its-kind test of “smart” technology that allows vehicles and highway infrastructure to communicate with each other. The goal is to help reduce crashes and improve traffic congestion.

Professor and presidential adviser Paul McCracken dies at 96; Ann Arbor VC firm fights Silicon Valley; new health system helicopters take flight; students, faculty contribute to Mars mission; U-M doctors oversee cutting-edge trial on ALS; researchers find father’s age linked to risk of autism; U-M program steers kids toward STEM careers; study shows teens prefer information highway to actual highway.

On a frigid Moscow night, William Revelli and the Michigan Symphony Band launched one of the most ambitious cultural exchanges in history. The year was 1961.

As the world’s Olympians basked in gold and glory, six female swimmers quietly conquered the treacherous waters of the English Channel to honor a friend.

View some amazing footage of former head diving coach Dick Kimball, and learn his secret to staying young.

From the Amazon to Indonesia, 1870s explorer Joseph Beal Steere collected thousands of species to advance scientific research at U-M.