If he wasn’t caring for endangered spider monkeys, junior biology major Zack Kennedy was securing turtle eggs against poachers during a co-op last fall in the Taricaya Ecological Reserve in Peru’s Amazonian rainforest. The experiential learning opportunity, which also required him to grow his own food and live without electricity, sparked his interest in environmental sustainability. It showed him […]

For undergraduate students, the opportunity to work side-by-side with leading faculty researchers can be a life-changing experience. So what is it like for students to spend day in and day out, living and working with top researchers for months at a time? Ask any of the participants of the Three Seas Program at Northeastern. Now […]

Human behavior is 93 percent predictable, a group of leading Northeastern University network scientists recently found. Distinguished Professor of Physics Albert-László Barabási and his team studied the mobility patterns of anonymous cell-phone users and concluded that, despite the common perception that our actions are random and unpredictable, human mobility follows surprisingly regular patterns. The team’s […]

In a breakthrough development for early drug research, Northeastern University scientists are now able to test, in real time, the impact of new drugs being developed to treat neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. A patented new imaging technology developed by Northeastern’s Center for Translational NeuroImaging (CTNI) enables researchers to produce highly accurate data without resorting to […]

Phyllis Strauss, who is researching DNA repair in mice, and Nicole Rafter, an author, researcher and instructor in biological theories of crime, and crime films and society, have received highly competitive Fulbright Scholarships for 2009–2010, according to the Council for International Exchange of Scholars, which administers the program. Currently fulfilling her four-month Fulbright grant in […]

Researchers at Northeastern’s Electronic Materials Research Institute (eMRI) are collaborating with two Harvard Medical School researchers to develop a nanotechnology-based “smart implant” to treat cancer. The device could improve the efficiency of radiation and drug-based treatments for lung, pancreatic and prostate cancers. Professor and physics department chair Srinivas Sridhar, director of the eMRI, is leading […]

Facebook, Google, and other expansive Internet sites share important characteristics with complex biological systems, says physicist Ginestra Bianconi—both contain a vast number and variety of linkages that can be better understood through network theory. In particular, Bianconi’s latest research focuses on modeling the evolution and dynamics of networks in different contexts: from the Internet to […]

Professor of Biology Slava Epstein has won a prestigious million-dollar grant to do something scientists in the last hundred years have been unable to do: grow oral- disease causing organisms in a laboratory. Epstein is the single Northeastern University recipient of a National Institutes of Health (NIH) Challenge Grant. The NIH received more than 20,000 […]

Northeastern biologist Kim Lewis has received a $5.5 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to investigate why antibiotics are not effective for certain infectious diseases. The five-year project, part of the NIH Director’s Transformative Program (T-R01), will focus on three types of disease-producing bacteria to determine how dormant subpopulations of these microorganisms […]

A Northeastern University neurobiologist will bring his expertise in animal robotics to a five-year, $10 million National Science Foundation (NSF) Expeditions research project to develop robobees that mimic the communal feeding behavior of bee colonies. Biology professor Joseph Ayers will collaborate with a team of researchers from Harvard University to develop micro flying robots with […]

An initiative developed by members of Northeastern’s mathematics and science faculty that will promote interest in those subjects among college and high-school students by connecting them to research has garnered a five-year, $1.98 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF). Northeastern mathematicians, physicists and biologists will connect with first- and second-year Northeastern students to […]

To better understand the human capacity for language, Northeastern psychology professor Iris Berent is searching for common sound patterns—simple syllables like “ba”—that are universally preferred across all human languages. This research into language patterns is being funded by a $1 million grant that Berent transferred with her when she moved to Northeastern from her previous […]