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.

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.

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In the past five years, the University of Michigan, Michigan State University, and Wayne State University have pumped more than $300 million toward auto-related projects that help enhance vehicle quality and safety, improve engine efficiency and performance, and reduce fossil fuel use. It’s all part of their mission as partners in the University Research Corridor.

Video: Can a car really get 3,300 miles to the gallon? The University of Michigan’s Supermileage Team is on its way to proving it can—with a lawnmower engine. “Fuel efficiency is one of those issues prevalent in society today,” says chief engineer and team co-founder Brett Merkel. “[This technology] can have far-reaching effects and be implemented in just a few years.”

University of Michigan professors will offer free online courses on such diverse topics as finance, electronic voting, computer vision, and fantasy and science fiction using a new web-based platform called Coursera.

How the U.S. shapes education policy, worker training, the tax code, and the regulatory environment will determine whether a recent uptick in domestic manufacturing will continue or spiral into permanent decline, say business professors Wally Hopp and Roman Kapuscinski, co-authors of the Booz study “Manufacturing’s Wakeup Call.”

From the football field and basketball court to the corporate boardroom and executive suite, a new University of Michigan executive education program will teach business leadership through lessons learned in U-M sports.

While the major share of media attention has focused on third-party online social networks such as Facebook, many companies have made the choice to build their own social networks. It’s well worth the investment, say U-M researchers, who find that such networks increase profits and loyalty not only online but in brick-and-mortar stores as well.

The university could inject up to $25 million during the next decade into select venture-funded U-M startups—new companies built around inventions born in faculty members’ labs.