Organisms today are faced with unprecedented environmental change – can we predict how they will respond? Emilie Snell-Rood’s research focuses on the ability of organisms to adjust their development and behavior in different environments. Why are some species capable of learning to use diverse environments, while others are more specialized? Snell-Rood’s research focuses on how tradeoffs between learning and reproduction affect how much organisms can invest in learning and similar developmental processes.

Transforming traditional chemical production methods for a sustainable future is a great challenge. The currently used biorefinery process utilizes food resources and is limited by the metabolic capability of natural microorganisms. To enhance the viability of biomanufacturing, Kechun Zhang is engineering artificial metabolic pathways in bacteria and yeasts for the production of a variety of chemicals, vitamins, and food additives from abundant, inexpensive, and sustainable feedstocks such as corn stove, sugar beet pulp and citrus peel.

Current transmission electron microscopes are able to reach sub-atomic spatial resolutions but cannot be used to image dynamic events that occur faster than a few milliseconds. To overcome this, David Flannigan is working to develop a new electron microscopy technology that couples the high-spatial resolutions achievable with electrons with the very short temporal resolutions of ultrafast pulsed laser systems. In this way, the ability to directly visualize femtosecond events occurring at the atomic-scale will be possible.

Ideally, health research would lead to clear, effective messages and broadly accepted policies promoting health. Often, however, that’s not the case. Sarah Gollust integrates communication science into health policy to analyze the process through which health information is translated into media, shapes public opinion, and affects policymaking. In her assessments of obesity policy, cancer screening, and the Affordable Care Act, Gollust identifies challenges that arise in the translation process,thus informing more effective communication strategies.

Understanding the human brain, in health or disease, remains one of the greatest scientific challenges of the 21st century. Magnetic Resonance Imaging offers the unique opportunity to non-invasively map the connections (i.e. “wiring”) of the brain, and detect possible alterations. However, such complex data requires advanced analysis methods. Christophe Lenglet’s research lies at the crossroads of mathematics, computer science and neuroscience to create the tools which will, ultimately, lead to groundbreaking insights into our brain architecture.

Pamela Lutsey is a cardiovascular disease epidemiologist whose mission and passion is to identify potentially modifiable factors that influence cardiovascular disease risk, which could ultimately be cost-effectively intervened upon to reduce the burden of cardiovascular morbidity and mortality in our nation. She is particularly interested in the role of low serum vitamin D and sleep apnea on the risk of developing cardiovascular disease, and has active research in those domains.

Brain science is appearing increasingly in legal and policy arenas. Better understanding of brain function offers great promise -- but also great peril. Francis Shen's work thus delineates the principles by which cognitive neuroscience should (and should not) be embraced by courts and legislatures. Shen uses innovative empirical legal methods to explore how the effective use of neuroscientific evidence can enhance legal doctrine, and also how the premature misuse of such evidence can be detrimental to justice.

James Van de Ven’s research goal is to study innovative solutions for storing and converting hydraulic and pneumatic energy. His energy storage research eases integration of wind and other renewables into the power grid and enables hydraulic hybrid vehicles. His hydraulic energy conversion work enables a new control paradigm where systems are rapidly switched between efficient on and off states. The impact potential is large as 3% of US energy is transmitted by fluid power.

Violence against women is a worldwide problem that is surging in Latin America. Even though many countries have created laws to address this problem, there is variation in how these laws are (or are not) implemented. Shannon Drysdale Walsh compares how five Latin American countries have developed and transformed their justice systems. She proposes a novel theoretical framework explaining how transnational advocacy networks have created and transformed specialized justice system institutions that help protect and provide justice for women on a global scale.

The brain is composed of circuits, elegantly connected and displaying diversity in their elements. Dr. Krook-Magnuson’s research uses cutting-edge techniques to improve our understanding of neuronal connectivity and diversity in health and disease, and to then use this information to design intervention strategies for neurological disorders, including epilepsy.