COS News

Medical dramas like “Grey’s Anatomy” set expectations for a generation of aspiring doctors that they’d spend most of their medical training and career in the operating room, saving lives in a dramatic way. Northeastern biology major Marcello Twahirwa was lucky enough to get time in both the operating room and with patients during a co-op...

Sharks lose teeth all their lives, replacing them in a kind of endless rotating Rolodex, while humans, of course, get only our two sets. Beavers’ teeth, notoriously, grow all their lives and have to be worn down to prevent injury. New research has now placed another animal into the self-sharpening set, Schistocerca gregaria, the desert...

Assistant Professor Psyche Loui contributed a Cantonese folk tune to a groundbreaking study comparing speech and music across 55 world cultures.

Perched at the entrance of a stadium in Ocala, Florida, in mid-March, Fiona Howard takes a breath and coaxes a large, dark bay gelding with a gash of white down his face into a smooth trot. She and the horse, an 11-year-old Hanoverian called Diamond Dunes, have only known each other a week. But their...

NASA has awarded Northeastern and partners a prestigious grant to launch a particle detector into earth’s upper atmosphere. How can we better understand vital questions about the unseeable dark matter that seems to constitute much of the vast universe around us? And how can we capture the faintest yet most information-rich signals from distant astrophysical...

The onset of puberty has been creeping downward for decades. In the United States, the average age of girls reaching puberty ranges from 8.8 to 10.3 years old. The early start of puberty, which is associated with many health risks, can be triggered by chronic stress in children. New research by Northeastern scientists has identified...

It turns out plastics in the ocean do more than suffocate turtles, fish and other marine life. A new study co-authored by Northeastern researcher Aron Stubbins shows that microplastics may reduce the ability of the ocean to help offset the climate crisis by slowing down the rate at which carbon is taken from the sea...

Congratulations to the FY25 TIER 1 Award Recipients  This year, 25 cross-disciplinary teams have been chosen for highly competitive Tier 1 Awards, with 11 of these teams involving faculty from the College of Science.  TIER 1 Seed Grant/Proof of Concept Program awards are supported by the colleges, institutes, global campuses, and the Senior Vice Provost for...

What do names like Noah, James, Mateo, Mia, Evelyn and Luna all have in common? They’re not only some of the top baby names in the United States, but they also seem to flow off the tongue. And that’s exactly why parents love them. On May 10, the Social Security Administration released a list of...

Program 50th Anniversary Hazel Sive, PhDDean, College of Science, Northeastern University Welcome Remarks Rhoda BernsteinDaughter of Dr. Louis and Madlyn Barnett Reflections from the Barnett Family Barry L. Karger, PhDFounding Director Emeritus,Barnett Institute of Chemical & Biological Analysis, Northeastern University The Barnett Institute: 50 Years In September 1973, the Institute of Chemical Analysis, Applications and...

The founder of Northeastern University’s Barnett Institute of Chemical and Biological Analysis made it clear that the institute’s 50th anniversary was as much a celebration of its future in cutting-edge research as a tribute to its past. “You can’t be afraid of doing new things. Science changes so rapidly, each one of you is going...

The origins of consciousness have been debated by philosophers for centuries. Each conscious person has a sense of “being me,” which invariably gives rise to the question of where that sense originated — from within or outside the body, says Northeastern University psychology professor Iris Berent. “How do human brains give rise to this experience?...