Vaccines are among the most successful prevention strategies. Yet, worldwide, hundreds of millions suffer and many die from vaccine-preventable diseases. Nicole Basta generates novel data under challenging conditions to maximize the effectiveness of vaccines and the impact of vaccination programs. She combines methods from epidemiology, immunology, and ecology to evaluate immune responses to vaccines and to increase public confidence in, and global access to, life-saving vaccines. Her research directly guides infectious disease prevention policies.

Why do “good people”—perfectly sane and decent folks who find no pleasure in afflicting pain or living in hate or ignorance—collaborate with discrimination, white supremacy, voter suppression, anti-Semitism, and violence? Which cultural phantasies and media discourses are behind their choices? Lorenzo Fabbri proposes to answer these questions in a book analyzing the forms of media and the affective structures fueling current neo-fascist tendencies in Italy and United States.

Philosophy remains alarmingly homogenous. There is a renewed effort to expand the philosophical canon and diversify the field, however there has been very little discussion of how we ought to proceed when it comes to these projects. In her original research, Jessica Gordon-Roth works to identify patterns in scholarship which may be hindering our efforts. The aim is to provide an innovative conceptual framework which can aid philosophy as it works to expand and diversify.

This book project examines the role of colonialism as an embedded and elemental feature of American feminism, particularly how romanticized notions of Indigenous women and societies are imagined and deployed, from the suffragists to reiterations in the second-wave feminism of the 1970s through to the present. In contrast to this history, Juliana Hu Pegues forwards an alternative genealogy of feminist solidarities, articulated in the scholarly, creative, and political alliances of Indigenous and women-of-color feminists.

Soheil Mohajer develops technologies for storage, transmission, and processing of massive amounts of data in a distributed fashion. The proposed solutions are formed by networking together a large number of small entities to exploit the ubiquity of small, inexpensive, but potentially not reliable storage and computation units. The scope of this research spans from mathematical analysis and understanding of the barriers and limits, to developing fast and reliable algorithms to benefit from distributed architectures.

The ongoing miniaturization of conventional semiconductor-based computers rapidly approaches fundamental limits dictated by the laws of quantum mechanics. To transcend these limitations and develop more powerful computers, it is paramount to consider new classes of materials, which fully embrace the richness of quantum mechanics. The Pribiag lab applies innovative nanofabrication and low-temperature measurement techniques to uncover the electronic properties of new low-dimensional material systems and to develop quantum devices that could enable future computing paradigms.

The Smanski group works on diverse projects that share a common theme of leveraging technologies in DNA synthesis/assembly (i.e. writing and composing genetic information) to reprogram living systems. Recently, they have successfully engineered bacteria to produce a potent neuroprotective drug and engineered mammalian cells to produce therapeutic proteins. In parallel, they have invented and demonstrated a new approach for creating effective and safe bio-pesticides that will control populations of insect pests, disease vectors, and invasive species.

Addictive behaviors are major sources of preventable death caused by genetic factors and environmental circumstance. Dr. Vrieze studies such factors in order to identify causal mechanisms in the development of addiction, with the ultimate goal of designing interventions based on this causal understanding. His laboratory uses cutting edge genomic tools and rigorous experimental design to discover genes associated with addiction, and characterize the biological and social mechanisms by which addictive drugs act.

Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) is a non-invasive and radiation-free medical imaging technology that has found immense utility in the diagnosis of numerous diseases and biomedical research, for instance in understanding the human brain. Despite its advantages, MRI still faces major challenges in acquisition duration, necessitating trade-offs in spatial and temporal resolutions. Mehmet’s research develops transformative new methods for fast high-precision MRI to enable the visualization of structures that cannot be characterized with current technology.

Elaine Auyoung uses cognitive research on reading to uncover the relationship between narrative technique and literary experience. Her current book project explores and illuminates cognitive biases that have shaped longstanding narrative conventions. By demonstrating how the stories we tell ourselves can delimit our capacity to understand the world, this project seeks to cultivate broader critical awareness about the habits of mind that hinder us from comprehending and addressing global challenges.