COS News

During her time at Northeastern, Delia Mocanu developed a passion for network science. Now at Facebook, she finds herself working on one of the largest data experiments in history — the News Feed.

Even before the vast majority of states were loosening the measures intended to keep people physically distant and slow the spread of the coronavirus, people were starting to travel further and see each other more, according to research from Northeastern’s Network Science Institute.

SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, was circulating in major U.S. cities as early as January, says Alessandro Vespignani, director of Northeastern’s Network Science Institute. And if we want to keep our communities safe going forward, we need to understand how we missed a virus that was right under our noses.

Researchers at Northeastern mapped the way proteins within human cells behave after the cells are hijacked by the virus to identify drugs that might be able to fight it. The team is now working with other experimental researchers to begin testing those drugs.

After days of closures and requests—or orders—to stay home, many people caught in the heart of the COVID-19 pandemic are wondering if these efforts will be enough. Network scientist Alessandro Vespignani says the answer depends on the ways that local, regional, and federal governments use the time.

Faster electronics, better communication devices, more efficient ways to store data are just some of the outcomes that the researchers can think of - if magnetite’s puzzle of hidden powers could be figured out. Eventually, it lead to new ways to manipulate materials and improving electronics by harnessing the behavior of their electrons.

“Imagination is the limit,” says Swastik Kar, an associate professor of physics. “It could change the way we can detect and communicate signals. It could change the way we can sense things and the storage of information, and possibilities that we may not have even thought of yet.”

Quantum computers represent an incredible leap in computing, but it's still in its infancy. Harnessing the power of spintronics, Professor Don Heiman is creating special materials to help make these computers more efficient, more accurate, and help usher them into the mainstream.

Some parts of the moon never see the light, but they are full of resources that NASA could mine to settle on the lunar surface and venture beyond. The agency selected a team of Northeastern students to develop robotic systems to help survey the darkest areas of the moon.

The 2019 Highly Cited Researchers list features has included six Northeastern researchers who rank in in the top 1 percent by citations in their fields between 2006 and 2016.

“Either the screening, detection, and isolation in China will be able to contain the epidemic there, or it will be a global issue,” says Alessandro Vespignani, Sternberg Family Distinguished University Professor at Northeastern. “And this will be decided in the next couple of weeks.”

Environmental factors drive the majority of our risk for non-communicable diseases, says Albert-László Barabási, Robert Gray Dodge Professor of Network Science at Northeastern. We need to be studying them.