When some people turn 50 years old, they buy themselves a Corvette. Not John Corvino. Instead, for Corvino’s milestone birthday, he decided on a present that would benefit someone other than himself.

Invisible to the human eye, millions of tiny particles are floating through the air. While most are harmless, some of these particles include fly ash, a product of coal combustion that could potentially cause negative health effects.

The entire Wayne State community is invited to get active and help stamp out heart disease on Saturday, May 18, during the 26th annual Metro Detroit Heart Walk and Stroke Walk/Run. Wayne State is playing its part in making metro Detroit healthier, working toward the day when heart disease is no longer the number one reason to lose a loved one.

Claire Cisco, a James Pearson Duffy Department of Art and Art History senior in her final semester for her bachelor’s degree in fashion merchandising, found an opportunity to learn and grow her professional resume at Carhartt Detroit’s clothing and company store.

For parents of children that are challenging or disruptive, there can be little time to seek help or guidance. Kathleen (Lucy) McGoron, PhD, MPSI’s newest faculty member, wants to make it easy for parents to learn new parenting strategies. She is hoping parents can slot her high-tech approach into random down-times to enhance their skills in dealing with disruptive behaviors.

Researchers in the Department of Ophthalmology, Visual and Anatomical Sciences at Wayne State University School of Medicine discovered for the first time that Zika virus can cause glaucoma in experimental models.

The Wayne State University chapter of Net Impact, housed at the Mike Ilitch School of Business, encourages students to learn about sustainability in neighborhood farming. Students will volunteer with the Oakland Avenue Urban Farm to help them prepare for the summer Farmer's Market.

For World Immunization Week, Associate Professor of Infectious Diseases Teena Chopra, M.D., who is corporate medical director of Infection Prevention, Epidemiology and Antibiotic Stewardship for Wayne State and the Detroit Medical Center, shared information everyone should know about vaccinations.

Wayne State University has joined the Detroit Regional Chamber (DRC), Oakland University (OU) and Henry Ford College (HFC) to create a first-of-its-kind regional debt-forgiveness program in an effort to improve degree completion and remove barriers to continued education. The announcement was made during Lumina Foundation’s National Convening in Detroit on April 30. The program targets the 693,000 adults across the Detroit region with college credits, but no degree, by offering debt forgiveness of previously incurred educational debt at any of the participating institutions. The effort is part of the DRC's region-wide goal to improve the postsecondary attainment rate from 40 percent to 60 percent by 2030. The program grew out of WSU’s Warrior Way Back program, which was launched in May 2017 to allow former students with outstanding balances of less than $1,500 to re-enroll and “learn” away their past debt while earning a degree.

Greatness is not randomly conferred on people. It comes from a place in the heart and the soul that defies easy explanation. Damon J. Keith was a great man. The Wayne State community mourns his passing and pledges to honor his legacy through our work in the Damon J. Keith Center for Civil Rights, and by striving to prepare the next generation of leaders to carry his work forward.

Some of the nation’s best and brightest in higher education and community development will come together at Lumina Foundation’s annual Community Network convening, which will be in Detroit April 29 - May 1. Lumina selected Detroit for its annual gathering in part because of its ongoing work within the city and its collaborations with Wayne State University, the Detroit Regional Chamber and other local partners. Nearly 400 people will attend for conversations and workshops focused on strategies to boost degree attainment and increase equal access to opportunities for postsecondary education.

A pair of Wayne State University School of Medicine researchers has secured a National Institutes of Health grant to determine whether a protein naturally produced by humans is more effective in combatting a blinding infection than current steroid treatments.

Wayne State University is one of four of the newest partners announced for the Cooperative Institute for Great Lakes Research’s Regional Consortium (CIGLR) at the University of Michigan. This cooperative will offer expertise to understand, predict, and ultimately solve the critical issues facing the Great Lakes and surrounding communities. With the addition of these new partner organizations, the CIGLR Regional Consortium consists of twelve universities, four NGOs, and three businesses who partner with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in research and development activities that support NOAA’s mission in the Great Lakes.

“Unless someone is flagging an officer down, we’re the first to facilitate getting that person help,” said Wayne State University Police Department Officer Steven Heck, supervisor of communications and camera operations. “We do all the same things a traditional 911 call center would do, but we do much more than that.”

To tell and preserve the stories of Detroit's civil rights pioneers, Junius Williams, founder of Rise Up North and civil rights activist, and Peter Blackmer, lead researcher for Rise Up North and a research fellow at the Detroit Equity Action Lab, are launching Rise Up Detroit. This online resource uses research and materials from Wayne State’s Reuther Library and other Detroit sources to tell stories of resistance through written, oral and visual materials from the civil rights and black power movements in Detroit.

President M. Roy Wilson, whose research has focused on glaucoma and blindness in populations from the Caribbean to West Africa, accepted the Gold Medal of Merit and Honor of A. Anagnostakis and A. Trantas during the 25th Glaucoma Congress, held April 11-13 in Athens.

Each year, the Women Chemists Committee (WCC) of the American Chemical Society (ACS) recognizes five outstanding, early-to-midcareer women scientists with the Rising Star Award. Recipients are chosen at a national level and span all academic, industrial and governmental sectors of chemistry.

Peter Lichtenberg, Ph.D., director of the Institute of Gerontology at Wayne State University, won the 2019 Powell Lawton Distinguished Contribution Award for Clinical Geropsychology from the American Psychological Association (APA). As one of the country’s first-board certified clinical geropsychologists, he has contributed significantly to the practice of older adult psychology in areas including financial exploitation and vulnerability, Alzheimer’s disease, and late-life depression.

More than two years have passed since the W Food Pantry opened its doors on April 2, 2017.In that time, it’s served more than 1,300 students and distributed more than 20,000 pounds of food.

Scientists working at the C.S. Mott Center for Growth and Development, Wayne State University School of Medicine’s Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, have discovered a way to control estrogen receptor changes in pregnancy, possibly leading to a therapy that could prevent preterm birth – the most significant cause of infant morbidity and mortality in the United States.

Wayne State University has launched a new public information service — called DetroitEd411 — to provide the community with free, 24/7 access to resources about post-secondary education opportunities via Facebook Messenger. DetroitEd411 seeks to empower the community and strengthen the city’s workforce by providing guidance and resources addressing all tracks of education, including vocational training, GED opportunities, community colleges and traditional four-year institutions.

Avanaki is leading an international research team — including clinicians and engineers from Wayne State University, Karmanos Cancer Institute, Sharif University of Technology in Iran, AC Camargo Cancer Center in Brazil and Technical University of Denmark — to develop a novel non-invasive method for accurate detection of melanoma using optical coherence tomography (OCT). The findings from this study, partially funded by the American Cancer Society, were recently published in the Cancer Research Journal.

After nearly two years of planning, Wayne State University has announced a significant investment in the creation of an Urban Children’s Health Collaborative (UCHC) – a community-based, multi-mission initiative with a focus on urban child and lifespan development that will foster individual, family and community health.