COS News

On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic. Cases outside China had risen 13-fold and the virus was spreading rapidly. Those first six months of the pandemic were challenging, says Sam Scarpino, AI+Life Sciences director at the Institute for Experiential AI at Northeastern, because we didn’t have great options...

Human safety trials of a novel antibiotic treatment for Lyme disease developed by Northeastern professor Kim Lewis are scheduled to start this spring in Australia, with results anticipated by fall. “Hopefully, the results will be positive,” says Lewis, University Distinguished Professor of Biology. So far the therapeutic agent, an antibiotic known as hygromycin A, has...

Meni Wanunu works with small things — very small things, like individual molecules. But how can researchers observe the inner workings of something so miniscule? For advancements in sensors that stretch and scan molecules on their own level, Wanunu has received the Innovator of the Year Award from the Northeastern University chapter of the National...

Andreia Ionescu, a biology professor at Northeastern, recently won the 2023 NSF CAREER Award for her project: Understanding how the hierarchical organization of growth plate stem cells controls skeletal growth. Please read about how she narrowed her focus to skeletal biology and the revolutionary research happening at Northeastern.    Can you tell me how you...

Looking for a creative way to give back?  Community Palette is a new club on campus that aims to serve individuals in underprivileged, clinical, and community settings in Boston through creative and visual arts initiatives. To learn more about this organization, I interviewed the founder and president, Seher Abbasi.  Can you tell me a bit...

Calling all Women in STEM!  February 11th was International Day of Women and Girls in Science, an annual observance adopted by the United Nations General Assembly to promote the full and equal access and participation of women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics fields.  To celebrate this day, read about Northeastern’s very own third-generation female...

When the cold temperatures hit your lips and dry them out this winter, you might turn to some sort of lip product for a solution. But with a plethora of options to choose from, which will work best? When finding a product for your chapped lips, going with something simple is best, says Leila Deravi,...

As NASA gears up to send human beings back to the moon during the still-to-be-scheduled Artemis III mission, researchers with the federal agency are learning more about the geologic profile of Earth’s lone satellite — including that it, apparently, has been shrinking. A study published recently found that a proposed landing site for NASA’s long-anticipated...

The San Joaquin Valley of California, despite supplying a significant percentage of the country’s food, is nevertheless a dry, arid place. Fresno, at the heart of the valley, receives just over 10 inches of rain a year on average, according to the National Weather Service, and sometimes as little as 3. And yet, until the...

Congratulations to Professor Srinivas Sridhar on his election as a 2023 National Academy of Inventors (NAI) Fellow. Sridhar’s election comes from demonstrating a “highly prolific spirit of innovation in creating or facilitating outstanding inventions that have made a tangible impact on the quality of life, economic development, and welfare of society.” Read more about the...

A Northeastern marine scientist has discovered a new species of tiny mollusk that lives in an ancient, submerged cypress grove called the Alabama Undersea Forest. Dan Distel, research professor at Northeastern’s Marine Science Center, says the bivalve written up in the journal Deep Sea Research represents a new genus and species of mussel and offers...

Chelsea Pe Benito always knew she would be a dancer. But in her mind, it didn’t look quite like this. Pe Benito trained for 15 years as a ballerina growing up in central New Jersey, studying at the prestigious Princeton Ballet School through high school, dancing in standards like “Swan Lake” and even touring in...