UNLV President Dr. Donald D. Snyder and Vice President for Research and Economic Development Dr. Thomas Piechota welcome UNLV Innovation readers to the Winter 2014 issue.

Supercomputing on campus; cosmic radiation and a mission to Mars; a grant to help at-risk kids; Bluetooth boosts blood-flow sensing; high marks for grad programs; a plentiful mineral from space; hard-to-find soft fossils; climate challenges; the public weighs in on drones; and preserving Nevada’s old newspapers.

Engineering professor Shahram Latifi draws on a breadth of knowledge to craft elegant solutions to problems fraught with complication.

For more than 30 years, U.S. universities have had the right to commercialize discoveries made through faculty research funded by the federal government. For a time, few universities made much of the opportunity. But today, as funding support for higher education is increasingly imperiled, marketing great ideas has never been more popular --- or more crucial. Three UNLV projects show how research benefits the university, the business community, and you.

Call it watering the green spots. UNLV’s Faculty Opportunity Awards program provides seed funding for faculty researchers with promising ideas and a desire to pursue additional funding from government agencies, foundations, or private industry. The program has supported a wide variety of campus research projects involving multidisciplinary teams, single investigators, and other faculty working to develop intellectual property.

During the past decade, UNLV’s Schools of Allied Health Sciences and Nursing have expanded their research programs and boosted collaboration among faculty investigators in support of the university’s vision of becoming a major research institution. The following profiles demonstrate the diversity and depth of the two schools’ research projects.

What will a medical school bring to UNLV research and discovery?

Faculty authors explore our place in the universe, Gandhi and his mentors, a small city’s civil rights struggle, and more.

An annual accounting of research and economic development activity over the last fiscal year.