A U-M Health System team is striving to make it possible for anyone to propose and fund ideas for patient-focused research studies. The team’s award-winning online protoype, WellSpringboard, would focus on studies designed to compare prevention, diagnostic, or treatment options.

Related: Big Ten universities form Big Ten Cancer Research Consortium

Innovators are exploring business opportunities around their technologies via Michigan I-Corps, a seven-week entrepreneurial training workshop funded by the National Science Foundation.

A new Medical School program offers a rare opportunity for body donors to share their life stories with the U-M students who one day will dissect them.

Video: The Ultimate Gift—How a Patient’s Brain Touched His Doctor’s Heart.

Video: Hundreds of tech-savvy students came to U-M recently to conquer MHacks, an intense, 36-hour challenge to program a real solution to a real problem.

A groundbreaking collaboration between medicine and engineering promises unprecedented advances in facial reconstructive surgery.

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Related: New Biomedical Engineering Dept. Links Medicine and Engineering

Researchers in surgery and dentistry are exploring a cancer stem cell vaccine. A physicist, an artist, and a composer are creating a multimedia event inspired by dark energy. Two teams of engineers and environmental scientists are looking into whether hydraulic fracturing could contaminate drinking water. These researchers all received grants from MCubed, a two-year, $15-million pilot that funds interdisciplinary collaboration at U-M.

U-M Tech Transfer recorded more agreements with commercialization partners than ever before in fiscal year 2012. Meanwhile, entrepreneurs launched 11 new startups last year, eight of which are headquartered in Michigan.

Video: Engineering students are developing video games as therapeutic tools to benefit children with autism. Game play helps improve motor skills, focus, and social interaction.

Award-winning U-M researchers have produced the world’s fastest two-legged robot with knees, which could one day lead to powered prosthetic limbs and exoskeletons that let wheelchair-bound people walk again. In addition, two-legged robots could potentially respond to disasters and conduct dangerous missions on uneven terrain.