Published by the Students of Johns Hopkins since 1896
April 28, 2026 April 28, 2026 | Published by the Students of Johns Hopkins since 1896

Science & Technology

COURTESY OF ZACHARY BAHAR The PHSF aims to facilitate student discussion of public health issues in a low-stakes environment.

Creating space: The Public Health Student Forum discusses sustainability in Baltimore

By ZACHARY BAHAR | November 1, 2023

The Public Health Student Forum (PHSF) held an open discussion on environmental safety and sustainability in Baltimore on Oct. 29. The event featured a conversation on the efficacy of Hopkins composting, water safety in light of the recent Cryptosporidium contamination, how institutions can build trust with the Baltimore community and the importance of engaging in local politics.

SCOT NELSON / CC0 1.0 DEED Alex Dong reflects on his experience as an undergraduate researcher studying Bradyrhizobium Diazoefficiens, a bacteria that is important for nitrogen fixation in legume plants. 

The complexity of Brady Diazoefficiens

By ALEX DONG | October 31, 2023

I opened the incubator door, and a familiar whiff of an earthy, repulsive odor attacked my nostrils. I held my breath and slowly took out a stack of yellow gel plates covered with small white dots. This could be the day, I hoped to myself. This was just another round of mutation screening, trying to find that one special bacterial colony with that one specific mutation that could prove our hypothesis.

COURTESY OF ABIGAIL TUSCHMAN By activating Gq-GPCR signaling pathways, Xie was able to produce an analgesic effect in mice.

Alison Xie describes analgesic effects of glial-neuron interactions

By ABIGAIL TUSCHMAN | October 31, 2023

The Department of Biology hosted a seminar on Thursday, Oct. 26 featuring Alison Xie, an assistant research professor of surgery-urology at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. The talk, titled “Glial-Neuron Interactions in Sensory Ganglia Alleviate the Symptoms of Chronic Pain in Mice,” discussed Xie’s research on how Gq-GPCR activation in satellite glial cells (SGCs) of the sensory ganglia can produce analgesic effects in mouse models.

PIXABAY / CC0 CT-SLEB is a new machine learning model that can generate polygenic risk scores with higher predictive ability for non-European populations. 

More accurate genetic risk assessment for people of non-European ancestries by new machine learning model

By SHREYA TIWARI | October 31, 2023

Nilanjan Chatterjee, a professor of biostatistics and genetic epidemiology at the School of Medicine and also recognized as a Bloomberg Distinguished Professor, collaborated on a machine-learning model that would improve the predictive ability of polygenic risk scores in non-European populations. This research, a collaboration with the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Haoyu Zhang from the National Cancer Institute, was recently published in Nature Genetics.

GRID-ARENDAL / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 DEED Research shows that there is little humans can do to stop the melting of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. 

Science news in review: Oct. 29

By VICKY ZHU | October 30, 2023

It’s spooky season, and the following scientific findings sure are a treat! Scientific news this week ranges from as microscopic as gut microbiome to as macroscopic as Mars. 

NOIRLAB / CC BY 4.0 DEED This week brought a new breakthrough in LIGO's ability to detect gravitational waves, enabling even more precise measurements.

Science news in review: Oct. 27

By AKUL KESARWANI | October 30, 2023

As we hop back into school after Fall Break, let’s review some of the biggest headlines in science. This week features stories about malaria vaccines, weight loss drugs, gravitational wave observations and lithium-ion batteries.

ZEISS MICROSCOPY / CC BY-SA 2.0 DEED A team of Hopkins researchers in collaboration with London Women’s Clinic in the U.K. identified a strong association between chromosomal abnormalities, developmental arrest and low morphological rating in preimplantation human in vitro fertilized embryos. 

Study on chromosomal abnormalities sheds light on in early embryo development in human reproduction and IVF

By VICKY ZHU | October 19, 2023

Rajiv McCoy, an assistant professor in the Department of Biology, and his collaborators at London Women’s Clinic in the U.K. discovered a strong correlation between chromosome abnormalities, embryo arrest and low blastocyst morphological grading of the in vitro fertilization (IVF) of human preimplantation embryos. Their results were recently published in Genome Medicine.

COURTESY OF ZACHARY BAHAR Nathan Pennington discussed the problems with the way differential equations are presented in courses.

Nathan Pennington highlights the limitation of exact answers in Ex Numera lecture

By ZACHARY BAHAR | October 18, 2023

Associate Professor in the Department of Mathematics at Creighton University Nathan Pennington delivered a guest lecture to Ex Numera, the undergraduate mathematics club, on Oct. 9. It was their third speaker of the semester. The talk, titled “Why You Should Take Differential Equations,” discussed the issues with typical first-semester differential equations courses in comparison to what the topic looks like.

Stories of strokes: From martial arts to MEG

By MOLLY ZHAO | October 11, 2023

While taking the class Cognitive Neuroscience with Professor Mick Bonner in my freshman year, I heard my future PI Dr. Elisabeth Marsh present the five guiding principles she employs while working at the intersection of stroke research and clinical medicine. I joined the Marsh Lab soon after. While I was interested in learning more about stroke, I did not understand the true complexities of the disease until the fall of 2022, when my grandpa suffered from a stroke.

COMMUNITY EYE HEALTH / CC BY-NC 2.0 DEED In an Oct. 3 talk, Renee Brady discussed the efficacy of employing patient reported outcomes in cancer treatments.

Renee Brady on patient-specific models for cancer response prediction

By ANNIE HUANG | October 10, 2023

In the Institute for Computational Medicine (ICM) special seminar series on Oct 3., Assistant Professor at the Integrated Mathematical Oncology Department at H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center & Research Institute Renee Brady shared insights on using minimally invasive biomarkers to predict treatment responses.

NIAID / CC BY 2.0 DEED A recently published hydrogel treatment promises to alleviate the “pill fatigue“ often experienced by patients living with HIV.

Nascent development in HIV therapy emerges at Hopkins

By RITWIK RAJ | October 9, 2023

In a groundbreaking development, a team of Hopkins researchers has unveiled an innovation in HIV therapy that promises to transform the lives of individuals with the virus. This research, published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, offers a novel method to maintain clinically sufficient drug levels through an injectable solution that autonomously forms into a hydrogel.

MIKE MACKENZIE / CC BY 2.0 Soatto’s Sept. 26 talk addressed public anxiety regarding large language models.

Stefano Soatto demystifies large language models as ChatGPT advances

By ANNIE HUANG | October 9, 2023

In the Sept. 26 Department of Computer Science (CS) Distinguished Lecture Series, Stefano Soatto, a CS professor from the University of California, Los Angeles, and Vice President of Applied Science for Amazon Web Services AI, spoke about the learning and controllability of large language models (LLMs) and computer vision.

SOLIS INVICTI / CC BY 2.0  This past week marked the awarding of the 2023 Nobel Prizes. Below is The News-Letter‘s brief introduction to the groundbreaking work in the fields of medicine, chemistry and physics.

Science news in review: Oct. 8

By ZACHARY BAHAR | October 9, 2023

For many of us, this past week was marked by late nights studying for midterms and catching up on work in Brody Learning Commons. Yet, for the global scientific community, it was marked by the announcements of the 2023 Nobel Prizes! 

RAWPIXEL.COM / CC0 1.0 DEED Doctoral candidates at Hopkins helped discovered a combination of microscopy methods that can facilitate understanding and early detection of treatment-resistant cells. 

Microscopy methods have potential to detect treatment-resistant cancer cells early

By JASON HAN | October 7, 2023

Jeong Hee Kim and Lintong Wu, two doctoral candidates in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Johns Hopkins University, contributed to a study that examined an efficient screening method to detect therapy-induced senescent (TIS) cells that can increase the chance of therapy resistance and cancer relapse. This study, recently published in Science Advances, was in collaboration with researchers from the Polytechnic University of Milan and the National Research Council in Italy.

COURTESY OF ONPOINT VENTILATION  Back row from left to right: Charlie Almoney, Arijit Nukala and Bucky Bryner. Middle: Ria Jha, Alexandra Gorham, Krisha Thakur and Nina Nair. Front: Sneha Batheja. OnPoint Ventilation discusses their work and future goals in an interview with The News-Letter.

Hopkins design team enters 2023 Collegiate Inventors Competition

By DEVASHREE GUPTA | October 6, 2023

One-lung ventilation (OLV), a practice required for many chest procedures, involves the ventilation of one lung and the deflation of the other but has many risks. Amid the height of the pandemic, the OnPoint Ventilation team — initiated as part of the Biomedical Engineering (BME) Design Team program — embarked on a mission to invent a safer instrument for this critical procedure, resulting in the Bronchosleeve, which will be presented at this year's Collegiate Inventors Competition in Washington, D.C.

COURTESY OF ANNIE HUANG Duke Professor Roarke Horstmeyer discussed his recent work on multi-camera microscopy in a lecture delivered to the Hopkins community. 

Revolution in microscopy: Roarke Horstmeyer on multi-camera array microscopes

By ANNIE HUANG | October 4, 2023

The Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) hosted a seminar on Sept. 26 to showcase the research conducted by Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Duke University Roarke Horstmeyer. The talk, titled "Computational 3D Video Microscopy with Multi-camera Arrays," explained the design and algorithm behind the state-of-the-art multi-camera array microscopes (MCAMs) and several use cases.

ARGONNE NATIONAL LABORATORY  / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 Toh shares his personal passion for molecular bioengineering research and reflects on his experience as an undergraduate researcher at Hopkins. 

Big truths from small molecules

By ENOCH TOH | October 2, 2023

As an undergraduate researcher, every experiment I undertake reaffirms my childhood belief: Understanding the intricacies of the microscopic can have a profound impact on the broader scope of human health. 

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