Innovation

  1. Rock and roll, bling and the new economy

    Looking for hopeful economic signs? Startups launched by students and faculty are transforming the way Michigan thinks about business.

    Related: Four U-M startup companies win prizes in business plan competition

  2. A shark inspires an artist to build a new hydropower generator

    At U-M’s marine hydrodynamics lab, artist and inventor Anthony Reale is testing a portable generator, based on the shape of the basking shark’s mouth, that provides electrical power from river currents.

  3. The protest psychosis

    In the 1960s, psychiatry saw an astonishing but largely hidden phenomenon. Schizophrenia, once seen as a disease of anxious, well-off white women, became a go-to diagnosis of angry, urban black men. How did madness, blackness and civil rights become linked, and what were the consequences for patients and society? U-M psychiatry professor Jonathan Metzl looks for answers.

  4. Going global

    Why would U-M embark on a formal research collaboration with a university in Shanghai?

  5. Sustainable mobility

    Automakers at the 2010 North American International Auto Show have big hopes for their new vehicles—hipper, more fuel-efficient, environmentally sound cars.

  6. The man who gave me Japan

    An alum’s story of how U-M prof Edward Seidensticker changed his life through poetry.

  7. Students help to bring the Internet to rural Africa

    Residents of rural Kenya now have e-mail accounts and Internet access thanks in part to the work of U-M engineering students.

  8. Harder than brain surgery

    Chair of the University of Michigan’s Department of Neurosurgery, Dr. Karin Muraszko shines as both a brain surgeon and a person. In this moving video, originally produced by Michigan Television for the Big Ten Network, Dr. Muraszko describes the challenges of brain surgery, overcoming disability and sexism, and helping families face the possible loss of a child.