The following announcement was shared with the campus community regarding the Grand Challenges Grants program: Dear Campus Community,

University of Maryland astronomers Jessica Sunshine and Sarah Valencia are on a team that NASA selected this month to explore one of the most enigmatic locations on the moon: the Gruithuisen Domes.  

According to new research conducted by Department of Government and Politics Professor and Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement (CDCE) Research Director Mike Hanmer—along with colleagues at four other universities in partnership with the Civic Responsibility Project (CRP)—Americans support sports stadiums becoming another place where individuals can go to cast their vote; a change introduced in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

UMD College of Information Studies Assistant Professor Zubin Jelveh—alongside co-authors Sara B. Heller of the University of Michigan, Benjamin Jakubowski of the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, and Max Kapustin of the Brooks School of Public Policy—recently released a working paper on research that supports that shootings are predictable enough to be preventable.

The human intestines contain a complex and diverse community of microbes that break down food to produce metabolites. Some metabolites are beneficial to human health, such as vitamins, while others can be harmful and lead to obesity or gastrointestinal disorders. A major gap in the microbiome field is measuring and understanding these metabolites.

The COVID-19 pandemic and its impacts have taken a disproportionate toll on American mothers who were pregnant or just gave birth. Maternal mortality (i.e., deaths during pregnancy or in the early postpartum period) increased by 18% in 2020, according to data from the National Center for Health Statistics, exceeding the ~16% increase in overall US mortality in 2020.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, German scientists and surveyors crossed choppy waters and braved dangerous conditions on ships called the Gazelle, Valdivia and Planet. These arduous expeditions, one of which circumnavigated the globe, yielded several discoveries—including the first documented vampire squid—at a time when little was known about life in the deep sea. 

The University of Maryland has received a $1.75 million grant from the Mellon Foundation to continue development of open-source technology to expand digital access to manuscripts and books from the premodern Islamicate world in Arabic, Persian, Ottoman Turkish and Urdu.

NASA has awarded $1 million to a renowned University of Maryland expert on cholera prevention and transmission to develop the first internet and app-based decision-making systems for infectious diseases, followed by a climate disease forecasting center.