Pediatric brain tumors are the leading cause of disease-related death in U.S. children and adolescents. When their son Samson survived his childhood diagnosis, alumni Kim Gilman and Jeff Gelfand began fundraising to advance scientific research. Their support has propelled a team of Michigan Medicine researchers, led by Maria Castro and Pedro Lowenstein, to achieve a significant milestone.

In 1914, eleven years after the Wright Brothers took flight at Kitty Hawk, the first aeronautics class was offered at U-M, launching what would become the nation’s first collegiate aeronautics program. Adventurous students soon took to the skies in gliders, simple planes — and, by the 1920s, hot air balloons. Things didn’t alway sgo as planned.

In recent years, China’s technological advancements have captured the world’s attention, with DeepSeek — a Chinese AI model — emerging as a focal point of both admiration and anxiety. This duality reflects a deeper tension in how the U.S. perceives technological progress from China, revealing complex layers of fear, competition, and reflection.

Marcus Foundation’s $30 million gift supports a collaboration between Stanford and U-M to help stroke victims regain the ability to read, write and speak. The scientists are using the world’s smallest computers linked up to the world’s most biocompatible sensors.

Desalination plants, a major and growing source of freshwater in dry regions, could produce less harmful waste using electricity and new membranes made at the University of Michigan.

A new class of semiconductors that can store information in electric fields could enable computers that run on less power, sensors with quantum precision, and the conversion of signals between electrical, optical and acoustic forms. But how they maintained two opposite electric polarizations in the same material was a mystery. Until now.

The Robert M. Vogel Collection of Historic Images of Engineering & Industry includes nearly 23,000 photographs of civil engineering, industrial processes, and mechanization of the 19th century, as well as over 1,200 prints, books, ephemera and realia.

Using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, a team of researchers, including astronomers from the University of Michigan, are closing in on the answer to a looming cosmic question. In probing the Flame Nebula, they’re finding out what’s the smallest celestial body that can form on its own from clouds of gas and dust in space.

The project assembles a team of experts from across the country for a mission called STARI — STarlight Acquisition and Reflection toward Interferometry. The goal is to showcase the viability of a new technique for studying exoplanets, or planets outside of our solar system.