Professor Soderstrom's collaborative research project with former OS Advisory Committee member Professor Wayne Jones (Ross School) and OS alumna and current Professor of Kinesiology Kate Heinze was highlighted at a day-long symposium of  M-Cubed projects. Her research, which included graduate and undergraduate students from across the campus, focused on the emergence of locally-owned food business in Detroit.

MCubed is a two-year seed-funding program designed to empower interdisciplinary teams of University of Michigan faculty to pursue new initiatives with major societal impact. The program minimizes the time between idea conception and successful research results by providing
immediate startup funds for novel, high-risk and transformative research projects. The funds are intended to generate data for groundbreaking, high-impact publications, or preliminary results for new, innovative research proposals. The program also includes high-visibility, campus-wide research symposia to showcase the resulting groundbreaking research. 

MCubed characteristics are:

  • Multidisciplinary – Taking advantage of UM’s excellence across breadth.
  • Collaborative – Three researchers from at least two different units.
  • Unreviewed – No formal review; peers approve by agreeing to “cube.”
  • Bold – Drives risk-taking in innovative and interdisciplinary research.
  • Exciting – High-profile, campus-wide symposia to present results.
  • Distributed – Funding from PIs, units, Provost, and Rackham