Law School launches podcast focused on DEI

Women often talk about the struggles they face feeling pinched between family and work obligations. As a result, many have trouble getting enough quality sleep, managing stress and maintaining a healthy work-life balance. These issues are very near and dear to the heart of Notre Dame’s Jessica Payne, professor of psychology and director of the Sleep, Stress and Memory (SAM) Lab, whose research focuses on how sleep and stress influence psychological function, well-being and human memory.

Retired U.S. Army Lt. Col. Kenneth Heckel, director of regional development at the University of Notre Dame and previously director of academy advancement for the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, has been named director of Notre Dame’s Office of Military & Veterans Affairs (OMVA), effective April 10.

“Today, the big challenges are information technology and energy,” says László Forró, the Aurora and Thomas Marquez Professor of Physics of Complex Quantum Matter in the University of Notre Dame's Department of Physics and Astronomy. “But tomorrow, the big challenge will be water.”  The World Health Organization reports that today nearly 2 billion people regularly consume contaminated water. It estimates that by 2025 half of the world’s population could be facing water scarcity. Many of those affected are in rural areas that lack the infrastructure required to run modern water purifiers, while many others are in areas affected by war, natural disasters or pollution. There is a greater need than ever for innovative ways to extend water access to those living without power, sanitation and transportation networks. Recently, Forró's lab developed just such a solution. They created a water purifier, described in the Nature partner journal Clean Water, that is powered by a resource nearly all of the world’s most vulnerable people have access to: the sun.

University of Notre Dame experts look back on this 20-year anniversary and discuss whether those objectives were adequately met, and the aftermaths of war and peace on the Iraqi people and on the U.S. 

As part of this year’s Notre Dame Forum on War and Peace, the University of Notre Dame will hold two events exploring the impact and aftermaths of the Iraq war on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the U.S. invasion.

Guests including anti-death penalty advocate Sister Helen Prejean, of “Dead Man Walking” fame, and Bishop Alfred Agyenta of Ghana will deliver remarks during the upcoming Catholic Social Tradition Conference from March 23 to 25 at the University of Notre Dame.