Posted 17 July, 2026
Every day, researchers at the University of Iowa are seeking answers to questions that will change the lives of people who live in our state and beyond. Why are cancer rates on the rise? Can gene editing treat a rare disease? How can children born prematurely succeed in school? How can we help rural Veterans manage chronic pain?
"Research changes lives," says David Schwebel, UI vice president for research. "Whether we're developing new therapies for devastating diseases, helping children reach their full potential, or addressing challenges facing rural communities, our faculty are committed to solving problems that matter. External funding allows them to translate ideas into discoveries that improve the health and well-being of people in Iowa and around the world."
Those efforts received strong support in fiscal year 2026, with the university securing $771.7 million in external funding, including $536 million for research, scholarship, and creative activities across more than 2,100 projects. The federal government remained the university's largest source of research support during FY 2026, providing $295.8 million for projects spanning medicine, public health, engineering, education, the social sciences, the arts, and the humanities.
These investments reflect confidence in UI researchers, but they do more than support scholarly efforts — they make possible discoveries that improve health and strengthen communities in Iowa and beyond.
Collaborative research tackles some of medicine's toughest challenges
Some of the year's most significant awards support teams of researchers working together to solve complex problems that no single investigator could address alone.
For the first time in more than two decades, two UI research teams received new, prestigious National Institutes of Health (NIH) P-series grants in the same year. These highly competitive awards bring together experts from multiple disciplines to work on complex health and scientific problems.
One of those teams, led by David Stoltz, professor of internal medicine, received nearly $12 million over five years to develop new treatments for primary ciliary dyskinesia (PCD), an inherited disease that causes chronic respiratory infections and progressive lung damage.
Many people with PCD are not diagnosed until childhood or adulthood because newborns are not routinely screened for the condition. By then, years of recurring infections may already have caused lasting damage. The lung and sinus disease worsens over time, affecting quality of life, and, in some cases, leading to early respiratory failure.
Building on Iowa’s internationally recognized work in cystic fibrosis, Stoltz and his collaborators are first working to better understand how PCD develops, then will test whether gene editing can treat the underlying causes of the disease, not just its symptoms. The long-term goal is to create new treatments that help people with PCD live longer, healthier lives.
Another multidisciplinary team, from the UI’s Holden Comprehensive Cancer Center, received an NIH P-series grant for $10.7 million to develop new treatments for neuroendocrine tumors, cancers that most commonly occur in the digestive tract, lungs, and pancreas. NET diagnoses are increasing in all age groups, especially among adults age 50 and older.
Led by Dawn Quelle, professor of neuroscience and pharmacology; James Howe, professor of surgery–surgical oncology and endocrine surgery; and Yusuf Menda, professor of radiology–nuclear medicine, the research program combines laboratory science, advanced imaging, surgery, and early-stage clinical trials to bring new treatments to patients.
The team will explore several promising approaches to improve care for patients, including helping the immune system fight cancer more effectively, combining targeted radiation with medicines that slow tumor growth, and studying whether medications commonly used to treat diabetes and obesity affect how these cancers develop or grow.
The work is especially meaningful as Iowa continues to face one of the nation's highest rates of new cancer diagnoses, making research on cancer prevention and treatment a critical priority for the state.