A meaningful teacher-student relationship can shape an entire career. A new annual gift to the University of Iowa College of Public Health highlights how that connection can endure for decades and continue to drive scientific discovery.

Dale Lundgren, a longtime University of Florida faculty member and pioneer in aerosol science, has committed a gift of $50,000 annually to support the research of Tom Peters, professor in the UI Department of Occupational and Environmental Health. The flexible funding allows Peters and his team to pursue emerging questions and develop new approaches to understanding airborne exposures, work that can be directly traced back to Lundgren’s influence decades earlier.

Peters first met Lundgren in 1989 during his final semester as an undergraduate student. Inspired by both the subject matter and Lundgren’s approach to teaching, he chose to continue his studies under Lundgren’s mentorship. “It sparked my interest in the field,” Peters recalls. “I liked his style, I liked the science, and that really set the direction for my career.”

That direction was solidified during Peters’ master’s training in Lundgren’s laboratory. Lundgren emphasized technical expertise but also encouraged independence and growth, encouraging Peters to gain experience beyond his laboratory. A decade later, when Peters applied to doctoral programs, Lundgren supported him with a candid endorsement letter, one he shared with Peters. Peters called Lundgren and remarked that he would try to live up to the letter. True to form, Lundgren replied that “I wouldn’t have written it if I didn’t think you deserved it.”

Years later, that early mentorship has come full circle. After reconnecting and seeing the scope of research underway at Iowa, Lundgren was motivated to support his former student in a tangible way. “I was impressed with Tom as a student, and later with the work he built in his career,” Lundgren says. “It’s very special to be able to support that.”

The annual gift gives Peters and his team the freedom to explore new ideas, support students, and launch pilot projects that can grow into larger research initiatives. It also supports a unique collaboration with the University of Minnesota, Lundgren’s alma mater, to revisit a technology he first developed in 1960.

That technology, an airborne particulate sampler, was designed to detect particles in the air, including biological materials. While innovative for its time, the concept has renewed relevance today. With modern advances in materials, analytics, and data systems, Peters and his collaborators are working to adapt the design for current challenges, from surveillance of hospital bioaerosols to continuous measurement of workplace exposures.

“This kind of support allows us to move quickly and creatively,” Peters says. “We can revisit important ideas and adapt them with today’s tools in ways that weren’t possible before.”

For Peters, the gift is professionally meaningful and personally significant. “I definitely feel honored,” he says. “He’s someone I’ve looked up to for a long time, so for him to make this contribution to support my work is pretty terrific.”

Lundgren views the gift as an extension of his lifelong commitment to mentorship and innovation. “This was an idea I worked on years ago that we didn’t fully develop at the time,” he says. “Now there’s a chance to build on it and see where it can go.”

By linking past innovation with present-day research and grounding that connection in a longstanding mentor-student relationship, the gift underscores how investing in people can lead to lasting scientific progress.