Research & Innovation

It was a (pre)historic year for IU paleobotanist David Dilcher. In August 2015, Dilcher and a team of European scientists identified what could be the world’s “first flower”: Montsechia vidalii,…

In terms of food, if we can get to 2050 without screwing up the planet, we’re probably good forever. Jack Bobo says this so calmly you might wonder if he’s…

When Faith arrived with her mother at the pediatric ward of the Kenyan hospital closest to the village where they lived, the 4-year-old was so withered that she weighed just…

A scoop of dirt from a farm in the small Indiana town of Rossville may contain some of the answers to our world’s plastic problem. In 2014, Ben Hufford, a…

Take two sofas—one manufactured today and another in 1970—and light them on fire. If you did, IU Southeast student and firefighter Josh Scalf says you’d notice a difference. Due to…

Typically, the children play soccer on packed dirt, not grass. And the balls are sometimes rags taped together. Sometimes, they’re just tape. Those were some of the conditions that Sarah…

Pop quiz: What weather-related phenomenon causes the most deaths each year? Did you guess storms? Blizzards? Floods? Chances are, you didn’t start with “heat.” Yet in North America, extreme heat…

Boniface Njuguna thought, “I know how I can help.” The IU South Bend graduate had a bright idea for solving a dual problem in his home country of Kenya. In…