News

Six teams of University of Arizona experts, including several VIP Team Leads or Executive Committee members (Dr. Scott Saleska, Dr. Cristian Roman Palacios, Dr. Ken McAllister) were chosen as the 2025 Big Idea Challenge awardees for their proposals to accelerate transdisciplinary projects that could transform lives, shape policy, drive economic impact, and provide training for the next generation of talent.

This initiative aims to study the requirement for a bioregenerative life support system that can recycle waste materials, water, nutrients, and air. NASA is investigating technologies such as developing planting substrate in space and controlled environment agricultural systems. A range of crops, such as fruits, vegetables, and leafy greens, must be produced by space agriculture systems.

Diana Daly, a VIP leader and associate professor of practice in the College of Information Science who studies digital culture and how people share their belief systems online, weighs in for a U of A News article on the different types of false online information, and why there are no easy solutions.

Groundwater forecasting, aquaculture, and helping smallholders were winning innovation areas in the latest innovation challenge from nonprofit FoodShot Global, which hosts challenges for entrepreneurs based on a particular issue related to food, agriculture and/or environment. Dr. Laura Condon was a winner, and her team's innovation is receiving broad attention.

A fellowship for women in medicine and science, including VIP Team Leader Dr. Salma Patel (left, with another SSWIMS fellow Dr. Sujata Saha, right), supported projects that are improving education, research and patient care — and preparing participants for leadership.

This initiative aims to study how solar panels can be used to help shade crops, known as agrivoltaics. This innovative approach allows food and renewable energy production to coexist in the same space.

Vertically Integrated Projects (VIP) at the University of Arizona is pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. David Margolis as its faculty director.

“Students know so much about the online world. It’s essential to involve that knowledge in what we teach. I started collecting student stories for our podcast Social Media & Ourselves in 2018, but it was the iVoices Media Lab that supercharged the involvement of student voices in what our students learned."

New data on over 1,500 trees across nearly 1,000 sites shows that an existing theory of how individuals within a species will respond to a changing climate might not be true.

The Vertically Integrated Projects (VIP) program at UArizona is holding its Inaugural Poster Session on Monday, March 25, from 2 to 4 pm in the Forum (First Floor) of the Health Sciences Innovation Building at the University of Arizona Tucson campus.

A University of Arizona Health Sciences SensorLab collaboration cultivates creativity with a unique multimedia performance and interactive exhibit.

In 2022, the Sonoran Center for Excellence in Disabilities received one year of funding from the University of Arizona Libraries Digital Borderlands Initiative, a three-year grant project funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to develop DISCAPAZ: Disability Experiences in the Borderlands. The UArizona Libraries’ goal is to produce and disseminate new, open-access humanities scholarship on the US–Mexico borderlands by integrating library services into a collaborative research process that emphasizes data-intensive, digital storytelling.

A new study involving University of Arizona researchers suggests change is happening faster than trees can adapt. The finding offers "a word of caution for ecologists" studying climate change.

Proposals from more than 10 academic units were among the recipients of the 2023 Catalyst Seed Grants from Vertically Integrated Projects (VIP). The focus of the grants was the creation of new undergraduate research opportunities that are embedded in faculty- or staff-led projects.

Dr. Martha Bhattacharya, Assistant Professor in the Department of Neuroscience at UArizona, received the Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the foundation’s most prestigious honor for junior faculty members. She will receive $1.1 million of funding over five years from the NSF's Division of Integrative Organismal Systems.

Building an AI tool to improve medical interviews is the continuing focus of a Vertically Integrated Project offered by Health Sciences Design.

The University of Arizona debuted its Wonder House at South by Southwest, giving attendees of one of the country's largest festivals a first-hand look at UArizona research and innovation.

Briana Pomales started her research on the DNA and migratory patterns of bees at Pima. Today, she is a research assistant and peer mentor at the University of Arizona.

This summer, the Arizona Institutes for Resilience launched its support for Vertically Integrated Projects, or VIPs, focused on inquiry and research into pressing environmental and resilience challenges. VIPs provide a compelling and authentic avenue for student engagement and collaboration as undergraduate and graduate students work alongside postdoctoral scholars and faculty members in long-term research with tangible outcomes.

What if a nursing student interested in improving quality of life for senior citizens could be put on a team with an engineering student and a computer science student? And what if instead of spending just 16 weeks getting their feet wet on the topic, they could help usher a project into existence semester after semester, watching it slowly unfold from start to finish?