COS News

Scientists sometimes compare predicting the course of epidemics to forecasting the weather. But there’s a major difference — the impact of human behavior —  says Alessandro Vespignani, director of Northeastern University’s Network Science Institute.  Consider what happens during a downpour, he says. “If we all open an umbrella, it will rain anyway.” “In epidemics, if we […]

To some, fake news may be a tweet, a Facebook post or a url on the dark web. To Northeastern University professor Albert-László Barabási and students in the Barabási lab, fake news is hundreds of small spheres bubbling up across the walls of a darkened room, in reds, oranges, then blues and pinks, while unintelligible whispers grow louder […]

Northeastern University has three projects on display at the Venice Biennale. All three projects tell the story about our changing relationship with data and information.

Bird flu has been detected in 169 livestock herds on dairy farms in 13 states. Northeastern researchers are creating a “risk map” of which farms might be next.

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, the nation’s public health infrastructure was underprepared, to say the least. Public health officials relied on fax machines to deliver test results, hand wrote people’s vaccination status on small pieces of cardboard and discovered that stockpiles of masks and gowns to protect health care workers were insufficient. “We really have […]

In a striking example of old meets new, Northeastern University researchers say network science promises to be a powerful tool in evaluating the effectiveness of traditional Chinese medicine herbal remedies used for more than 2,000 years. Traditional Chinese medicine, or TCM, has proved a challenge for researchers seeking to pinpoint the specific mechanisms by which […]

Albert-László Barabási was sitting in Central Café in Budapest, Hungary, when he got the call that he had been elected to the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) for his work in network science. Network science’s recognition has felt like a long time coming, he says. In 2005, the National Research Council — “the operating and […]

The COVID-19 pandemic not only threatened the health of people around the world, but also exacted a significant toll on the global economy.

Seven years ago, Northeastern graduate Susan Dina Ghiassian was the first employee of Scipher Medicine Corp., a precision medicine company co-founded by Northeastern professor Albert-László Barabási.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is giving Northeastern University $17.5 million over the next five years to head an innovation center designed to help detect and prepare the United States for the next outbreak of infectious disease, especially in rural areas.

Northeastern will soon embark on a collaborative project to bring the methods of network science to the world of small particles and novel materials, with help from a substantial National Science Foundation grant. 

Northeastern University has expanded its world leading Network Science Institute to the university’s campus in London in a move that will establish a new European hub in the fast-growing research field of network science. As part of the expansion, the university has recruited a team of researchers to join its faculty in the United Kingdom. […]