Whether strengthening electric grids or bringing automotive design into the 21st century, protecting water supplies or leading the charge in information assurance, making breakthroughs in biomedical engineering or designing the next generation of the space shuttle, engineers at Iowa State University and The University of Iowa can boast a history of innovation reaching back more than a century and a half—nearly to our state’s entry into the Union.

Not content to rest on their laurels, today the scholars and innovators at Iowa’s Regent institutions have turned to the challenges of the new millennium. And no matter how unique, exotic, or even offbeat a given technological pathway may seem, everything they do has as its ultimate object one very simple proposition: to improve the lives of Iowans, Americans, and people the world over.