Bringing Representation to Film

At the 2016 Academy Awards, the issue of diversity — or lack thereof — was widely acknowledged, with many actors threatening to boycott the show. It’s no secret that Hollywood struggles with on-screen diversity, which is exactly what makes Fatima Liaqat so passionate. Liaqat was born and raised in Pakistan and moved to Salt Lake […]

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SHERO: Biodegradable Pads

For many women around the world, feminine hygiene products are not easily available or accessible. Women are often forced to stay home from school and work during their menstrual cycle. Alicia Dibble, Amber Barron and Ashlea Patterson, material science and engineering students, are working to solve this problem. “When women can’t access any means to […]

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Helping Patients Catch Their Breath

When it’s a matter of life or death, it’s important to constantly improve the industry. Which is why, when U faculty member and anesthesiologist Sean Runnels had an idea for a safer upgrade to breathing tubes and the process of inserting them, it wasn’t difficult to recruit students for his team. He reached out to […]

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Low-Cost Air Quality Sensor

Jonathan Whitaker will have a sigh of relief for more reasons than graduating in 2017. An undergraduate in computer engineering, he and a team of electrical and chemical engineers developed a low-cost air quality sensing platform that will be distributed to 150 schools across the Salt Lake Valley, with manufacture-ready plans for mass production. Just […]

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Promoting Social Entrepreneurship

Liz Morales, an ethnic studies and communications major, has devoted herself and her education to create opportunities for under-served populations in higher education. “I realized entrepreneurship is more than just a product-based entrepreneur. It’s someone that wants to change something in the world,” Morales said. “That’s what social entrepreneurship does. It makes people think. It […]

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Choreografish

For the fall 2016 semester, Kun Cheng, an Entertainment Arts and Engineering (EAE) graduate student, was the lead engineer developing a virtual reality video game for students with autism through the Therapeutic Games & Apps Lab (or Gapp Lab). Given the framework provided by University of Utah dance instructor Eric Handman, EAE students under Cheng’s […]

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Thinner Solar Cells

Dennis Pruzan, a materials science and engineering Ph.D student, is innovating the future of solar energy. In collaboration with professor Michael Scarpulla, he is researching how to make cadmium telluride (CdTe or “Cad Tell”) thin film solar cells that could disrupt the solar energy market. CdTe is in the class of thin-film solar cells that […]

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