News & Updates

Montana State University tallied an all-time high for total research expenditures in 2019-2020, totaling $167 million. The total marks an 8% increase over the previous year’s total expenditures of $154 million reported to the National Science Foundation, and the seventh year in a row that research expenditures have topped $100 million, according to Jason Carter, MSU’s vice president for research, economic development and graduate education.

University of Arkansas anthropologist J. Michael Plavcan will co-lead an international project focused on Natodomeri, a newly discovered fossil site in Kenya that will expand scientists’ understanding of the origins of modern humans around the time of their migration out of Africa.

The National Institutes of Health today announced $129.3 million in scale-up and manufacturing support for a new set of COVID-19 testing technologies as part of its Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics (RADx) initiative. NIH is awarding contracts to nine companies for technologies that include portable point-of-care tests for immediate results and high-throughput laboratories that can return results within 24 hours. These tests add to initial awards made to seven companies on July 31, 2020.

The U.S. National Science Foundation is establishing new artificial intelligence institutes to accelerate research, expand America's workforce, and transform society in the decades to come. Enabled by sustained federal investment and channeled toward issues of national importance, continued advancement in AI research holds the potential for further economic impact and improvements in quality of life.

The University of Kansas Medical Center and Children's Mercy Kansas City announced today that they will be leading the regional efforts of a nationwide clinical trial brought through the COVID-19 Prevention Network (CoVPN). Anticipated to launch in mid-to-late August, the phase 2/3 trial is funded by the National Institutes of Health and sponsored by AstraZeneca.

Kansas State University is leading a new research consortium that focuses on speeding up research for COVID-19 drug treatments. The consortium is making all its findings freely available to researchers worldwide.

The University of Kansas School of Engineering and the Kansas Department of Health and Environment have expanded a project to detect COVID-19 virus in the wastewater systems of local communities across the state.

A video explaining the transmission and mitigation of COVID-19, produced by Hawaiʻi Emergency Management Agency (HIEMA), features Thomas Lee, an assistant professor of epidemiology in the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa Office of Public Health Studies in the Myron B. Thompson School of Social Work, and lead modeler and forecaster for HIEMA.

A re-analysis of fossils from one of Europe’s most significant paleontological sites reveals a wide diversity of animal species, including a large terrestrial monkey, short-necked giraffe, rhinos and saber-toothed cats.

Dramatic increases in the scale and availability of data are profoundly reshaping the life sciences. As a result, data acquisition and availability -- from DNA sequencers to environmental sensors to parallel global studies -- are outpacing the capacity for analysis, including the development of models that represent knowledge of biological processes.