The Institute for Data-Intensive Engineering and Science (IDIES) hosted its annual symposium on Thursday, Oct. 16. The symposium opened with remarks from Alex Szalay – Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Big Data and Director of IDIES – on the rapid evolution of data science and its expanding applications.
Nihar Shah, an accomplished artificial intelligence (AI) researcher and associate professor at Carnegie Mellon University, delivered a seminar at the Center for Language and Speech Processing (CLSP) on October 10th titled “LLMs in Science, the good, the bad and the ugly.” The seminar purveyed the role of AI in scientific research and peer review.
On Sept. 18, Valentina Cigliola, an assistant professor from Vanderbilt University’s Department of Pharmacology, presented her talk titled “Innate Mechanisms of Spinal Cord Regeneration,” hosted by Assistant Professor of Biology at Hopkins Erin Jimenez.
Thelma Escobar presented at the JHU Department of Biology’s Seminar Series on Thursday, September 25th, 2025. She discussed fascinating progress her lab has recently made regarding chromatin modifications in hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) and the adaptive immune system.
On Oct. 4, the Johns Hopkins Institute for Clinical and Translational Research (ICTR) hosted the 15th annual Henrietta Lacks Memorial Lecture, a commemoration that united science, ethics and remembrance under one name that transformed medicine.
On Tuesday, Sept. 30, Professor Hey-Kyoung Lee from the Department of Neuroscience at Hopkins presented her research as the speaker of the Ru Chih Huang Department of Biology Colloquium Series.
As the semester starts to pick up, take a minute and read the latest scientific discoveries that have occurred within the past couple of weeks.
Toby Mao is a first-year MD candidate at Stanford and a Fulbright recipient passionate about interdisciplinary approaches to medicine, integrating medical engineering, technology and preventative healthcare. In an interview with The News-Letter, Toby reflected on how his background and passion for global health inspired him to pursue the Fulbright Program, which has shaped his commitment to using artificial intelligence for healthcare innovation.
At Hopkins, the Charm City STEM League (CCSL) is run by the Center for Educational Outreach (CEO) to blend STEM education with community engagement. It aims to address systemic inequities by preparing Baltimore students for success at Science Olympiad, one of the nation’s most challenging STEM competitions.
Shea Littlepage is a public health researcher and Fulbright-Fogarty Public Health Fellowship recipient. She is dedicated to advancing global health through qualitative research and providing valuable insights to public health agencies. In an interview with The News-Letter, Shea discussed how her experiences at Hopkins motivated her to study health decision-making among Ethiopian experts during the COVID-19 crisis.
The Department of Biology’s Fall 2025 Seminar Series opened with a packed house on Thursday, Sept. 11 as Simon Alberti, a professor in the Department of Cellular Biochemistry at the Technical University of Dresden, delivered a talk titled “Biomolecular condensates: molecular insights and implications for disease intervention.”
“When I first did the hearing experiment on mice, it was so straightforward — I could see the connection right away between what we were testing and the bigger picture of hearing loss,” Kate Xie shared in an interview with The News-Letter.
Stephen Fried is an associate professor in the Department of Chemistry working on misfolded proteins, which are prevalent in many degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's Disease, Parkinson's Disease, Huntington's Disease, Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis and cystic fibrosis. He seeks to understand how proteins misfold to cause these pathologies and eventually develop treatments and cures for them.
Erin Sutton, flight dynamics model validation lead for NASA’s Dragonfly mission, visited to the Laboratory for Computational Sensing and Robotics on Sept. 10 to share her work on the Dragonfly, a car-sized rotorcraft whose goal is to fly through the methane-rich atmosphere of Saturn’s largest moon, Titan.
How do brains turn environmental inputs into motor outputs? This question, known as the “black box” problem, has left neuroscientists scratching their heads for decades. On Sept. 5, Amanda Ray, a graduate student in the Gordus Lab at Hopkins, presented her dissertation defense, titled “Understanding How Sensory and Motor Information are Processed in a Neuron of Caenorhabditis elegans.”
The School of Public Health’s Wolman seminar series hosted Marta Hatzell, an associate professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering and mechanical engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology on Tuesday, Sept. 9. Hatzell gave a talk titled “Reactive Carbon Capture and Conversion: Pathways to Carbon-Neutral Fuels and Chemicals,” which highlighted the importance of carbon dioxide capture and its direct conversion into valuable materials.
Laboratory workshops, collaborative and independent projects, community events and personal fulfillment — Agara Bio brings it all together. The club, founded in 2018, is a student-run biology club that provides a lab space for students to delve into biology outside of traditional labs. Today, it has grown into a hub for laboratory workshops, independent projects and collaborative events that bring hands-on research opportunities to students across disciplines.
Welcome back to another academic year! Let’s kick things off with the latest updates on science and technology, which include a closer look at how carbon monoxide slips off hemoglobin, a promising method for earlier ALS detection and Amazon joining the AI agent race.
In an interview with The News-Letter, Kim described his journey in developing a haptics communication device for the visually impaired and in the patent application process associated with Hopkins.
This month of May is ALS Awareness Month, and marks an opportune time to spotlight the disease and the importance of continued progress at Hopkins in research and clinical care for ALS patients.
