About Us
The College of Science offers distinguished programs in fields
that are at the forefront of discovery, invention, and innovation.
Our degree programs in the physical sciences, life sciences, and mathematics give students a deep understanding of emerging fields such as chemical biology, cognition and neuroscience, environmental and marine science, biochemistry, nanoscience, and network science.
Northeastern’s unique experiential learning approach combined with a strong culture of research provides students with numerous opportunities to collaborate with leading faculty on research projects aimed at solving global challenges.
College of Science
Office of the Dean
Richards 115
360 Huntington Avenue
Boston, MA 02115
617-373-5085
People
We are teachers, leaders, researchers, advisors, business professionals
and students. Welcome to Northeastern’s College of Science.
News
Scientists Still Don’t Have All the Answers about the Coronavirus–and That’s a Sign of Progress
Seven months into the pandemic, U.S. government officials and scientists still disagree over basic safety guidance on the coronavirus. People are still disregarding key public health advice. And we are still seeing leading public health organizations revise their understanding of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, which causes COVID-19.
But the fact that messaging from public health and scientific experts has changed during the pandemic is a sign of progress—and not completely unexpected, says Samuel Scarpino, an assistant professor who runs the Emergent Epidemics Lab at Northeastern.
“By the very nature of emerging and infectious diseases,” Scarpino says, “sometimes you’re going to be right and sometimes you’re going to be wrong.”
Read the rest of this story here
They’re Planning to Build a New Space Station… at the Bottom of the Ocean
When we wanted to study space, we built the International Space Station—a place where astronauts could live, work, and conduct long-term experiments without having to return to Earth.
What if we had something similar on the bottom of the ocean?
Fabien Cousteau, a renowned aquanaut, environmentalist, and documentary filmmaker (and grandson of Jacques-Yves Cousteau), has been envisioning exactly that. And Northeastern is helping to make it a reality.
The rest of this story can be read here
The Cdc Is No Longer in Control of Covid-19 Hospitalization Data. Here’s What That Means.
Under a new federal mandate, the COVID-19 data that U.S. hospitals had been sending directly to the Centers for Disease Control and prevention are now being sent to a different central database, using a system run by a private technology firm.
The change raised concerns among public health experts, who warned the new directive might be a move to sideline the CDC, the leading public health agency in the U.S.
Samuel Scarpino, an assistant professor who runs the Emergent Epidemics lab at Northeastern, says that barring a catastrophe, such as computing systems being hacked or destroyed, changing the way data is collected in the midst of a public health crisis is far from ideal.
“It’s a horrible idea—that’s the technical term for it,” Scarpino says.
Read the rest of this story here
Covid-19 Misconceptions Are Hard To Fight. Cognitive Psychology Might Help.
There are plenty of misconceptions about COVID-19, the disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus. And that’s especially true during a time when false information about the disease, the virus, and possible treatments is so hard to counteract.
Different misconceptions about the coronavirus—about how it gets transmitted, and how it leads to COVID-19 complications, for example—can result from a limited understanding of microbes and disease.
Misconceptions can also arise from a mix of different beliefs and ways of thinking that people inadvertently use when they try to make sense of things they don’t fully understand, says John Coley, an associate professor of psychology at Northeastern who has been studying those thinking modes for the past 10 years.