Recent graduate Seth Berke didn’t expect to leave Hopkins interested in pursuing a research career but, after using cloud computing methods to analyze genomic data, that’s exactly what’s happened. Berke works with biostatistician Ingo Ruczinski where he develops more efficient methods of employing and gaining insight from preexisting data sets.
As the spring semester is kicking into high gear, let’s go over some of the biggest headlines in science news from the past week.
Saikat Dan is a research fellow affiliated with the Computational Mechanics Research Laboratory (CMRL) and is advised by Somnath Ghosh in the Civil Engineering Department. As a PhD student this past fall, he taught a HEART course titled Computer Simulations: How Real are They? in which he gave a high-level overview of the field as well as applications of his research.
A recent paper published by a joint team of researchers from Hopkins and the University of Washington, Seattle used retinal cell organoids to establish that the human red and green cone cell development is regulated by retinoic acid. The paper, titled Retinoic acid signaling regulates spatiotemporal specification of human green and red cones, was published in PLOS Biology on Jan. 11, 2024.
A new semester has begun as we returned to a snowy campus. This week’s science news reveals exciting new insights that can help transition our mindset from vacation to school.
In a giant stride toward restoring mobility to those grappling with lower limb paralysis, Hopkins scientists have unveiled promising research on a novel spinal stimulator that could potentially transform the lives of approximately the lives of 1.5 million Americans affected by paralysis due to spinal cord injuries.
On Friday, Dec. 1, the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) hosted a colloquium presentation featuring astronaut Christina Koch. The talk, titled “Human Spaceflight: A Mission to the International Space Station,” discussed Koch’s journey to becoming an astronaut and life in space.
On Wednesday, Nov. 29, the student-led Artificial Intelligence Society at Johns Hopkins (HopAI) invited Daeyeol Lee, a Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Neuroscience and Psychological Brain Sciences, to share his views on biological and artificial intelligence (AI). At the talk, Lee explored how intelligence manifests itself across biological boundaries and how the definition of intelligence can help developers and users gain a deeper understanding of AI.
On Wednesday, Nov. 29, the In-vivo Cellular and Molecular Imaging Center (ICMIC) hosted a seminar featuring Regents' Professor of Chemistry at Georgia State University Jenny Yang. The talk, titled “Noninvasive Precision Imaging of Microenvironment of Cancer and Metastasis,” discussed biochemical approaches to improving magnetic resonance imaging of cancers.
While many first graders eagerly jump into reading, this was not the case for Parallel Learning CEO and Forbes’ 30 Under 30 Education Entrepreneur Diana Heldfond, who spoke in a Nov. 30 installment of the Leading Change: Perspectives from Outside of Medicine talk series titled "Neurodiversity and Leadership."
Research has been part of sophomore Ethan Posner’s life since high school, prompting him to dive deeper during his time at Hopkins. A Biophysics major, Posner is a member of the Fleming Lab, where he has investigated Outer Membrane Proteins (OMPs) for the past year and a half.
On Monday, Nov. 27, postdoctoral fellow Kiara Eldred from the Thomas Reh Lab at the University of Washington gave a talk titled "Visualizing Progenitor Cell Trajectories in the Developing Human Retina" for the Department of Biology.
As we are approaching finals season, let’s take some time to acknowledge the hard work of scientists around the world and learn from their commitment to their work. This week’s science news covers new insights into the monkeypox virus in Congo, robots made of human cells, archaeological preservation in Ukraine and an AI-robot that can predict and synthesize new materials.
In the rapidly evolving field of artificial intelligence (AI), understanding and improving AI security is increasingly crucial. Yuchen Yang, a third-year doctoral student advised by Yinzhi Cao, employed an automated attack framework to reveal the vulnerabilities in text-to-image generative models such as DALL·E 3 and Stable Diffusion. The paper, “SneakyPrompt: Evaluating Robustness of Text-to-image Generative Models' Safety Filters,” formerly titled “SneakyPrompt: Jailbreaking Text-to-image Generative Models,“ will be presented at the 45th Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Symposium on Security and Privacy.
Craig-Schwartz works in a pediatric oncology lab under Dr. Michael Koldobskiy, whose research focuses on diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma (DIPG), an aggressive and fatal form of brain cancer that occurs almost exclusively in children. The lab is currently working on developing new drugs to combat the tumor as well as studying the epigenetic mechanisms of how the development of the tumor is regulated.
On Tuesday, Nov. 7, Peng Jiang, a Stadtman investigator for the Cancer Data Science Laboratory, held a talk discussing the role of big data approaches in studying intercellular signaling — specifically, how cancers evade immune system function in humans. The talk was titled “Big Data Approaches to Study Intercellular Signaling During Tumor Immune Evasion” and was hosted by the Institute for Computational Medicine and the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Hopkins.
With Thanksgiving approaching, we can all take a moment to be grateful for the beauty of scientific discovery. This week has brought images from the Euclid Space Telescope, biological chimeras and yet another superconductivity controversy.
On Tuesday, Nov. 7, the Johns Hopkins Health Policy Forum invited Chairman, CEO and President of Becton, Dickinson and Company (BD) Tom Polen to share his insights into the current state of global health care and BD’s role in it. Polen was joined by Dean of Carey Business School Alex Triantis.
Aimon Rahman, a third-year doctoral student in the Vision & Image Understanding (VIU) Lab in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, is making significant contributions to the field of medical artificial intelligence (AI). In her Hopkins Engineering Applications and Research Tutorials (HEART) course titled "Introduction to Deep Learning for Medical Imaging," Rahman introduces students to the practical applications of computer vision in medical image analysis.
In everyday life, we all make choices based on the information available to us. These decisions range from life-changing acts to the minutiae of existence. The question we answer, consciously or not, is whether or not we have enough data on which to act, or if we need to gain more information before doing so. This question is called the explore/exploit trade-off.
