A 77-year-old University of Iowa physics professor was killed and four others were injured in a four-vehicle crash in eastern Iowa early Sunday evening.
The accident happened on Highway 1, near Solon. According ot the Iowa State Patrol’s accident report, the driver of a Jeep Cherokee failed to stop at a stop sign, crashed through a camper and hit an S-U-V on the driver’s side. Dr. Usha Mallik, an emeritus professor of physics at the University of Iowa, was driving that third vehicle and died at the scene. A fourth vehicle was hit by debris from the camper.
The driver of the first vehicle was flown to University of Iowa Hospitals. A one year old child, a woman from Cedar Rapids and a man from Paris, France, were taken by ambulance to the same hospital in Iowa City.
The professor who died in the accident has been involved in research at CERN, the world’s largest particle physics laboratory. In 2020, Dr. Mallik received a University of Iowa award for being a mentor to students and faculty as well as her service to the global “high energy physics” community.