Features
Artificial intelligence is all around us. And if AI is not already in your doctor’s office, you can bet it’s coming soon — with the potential to create major improvements in our health care and well-being.
Sheinelle Jones, co-host of the “3rd Hour of Today,” is one of a handful of Black women helming a national TV broadcast. And she thinks it’s important for people to see her full self: accomplished, Black, a woman, a mother, a daughter, a wife, a volunteer, a pray-er, a proud Midwesterner, and a human who embraces joy, who sometimes falters, sometimes loses her nerve — but persists nonetheless.
Driven to capture rare and unexpected images of fragile landscapes, Los Angeles-based photographer Josh Anon has had his share of awe-inspiring encounters with wildlife around the world. Anon, a Roblox product lead by day, has captured images of penguins, polar bears, walruses and much more.
With unfailing energy and laser-sharp focus on institutional improvement, Michael Schill, Northwestern’s 17th president, plans to continue the University’s “rapid and steep” ascent to become one of the nation’s top universities. And now, in addition to maintaining the University’s high academic standards, he has a clear goal: building Northwestern’s athletic department into a national model for integrity and student well-being.
The 2023 Northwestern Alumni Medal recipients — Roberta Buffett Elliott ‘54, Chris Galvin ’73, ’77 MBA and Charles S. Modlin Jr. ’83, ’87 MD — are leaders in philanthropy, business and health care.
Fourth-year doctoral candidate Tabor Whitney ’22 MA spends several months each year in Los Tuxtlas, Mexico, collecting feces samples from mantled howler monkeys. The feces may contain clues about the monkeys’ physical condition and could aid Whitney in developing a “health index welfare assessment,” a tool that provides metrics that conservationists can use to make decisions about the endangered creatures.
Joanna Bush ’99 is a top concept artist and film illustrator in Hollywood who has helped bring to life Oscar-winning films like Life of Pi and La La Land. She has collaborated with filmmakers like Steven Soderbergh, Ang Lee, Jordan Peele, Zach Braff ’97, Tyler Perry, and more, while crediting the Northwestern student group Section 22 for giving her a start in film.
We’re all generating an exponential amount of data all the time, and the ability to connect the dots between those bits of data is cause for concern. Northwestern alumni who work in privacy protection agree that comprehensive federal legislation is needed to set reasonable expectations for individual data protection rights and to harmonize the growing patchwork of state rules that protect only a subset of the population.
As President Michael Schill wrapped up his first few months in office, Northwestern Magazine talked with him about higher education’s role in creating a compassionate community, his favorite books and what he values most in his human — and canine — companions.
Humanity has made a mess of our precious planet. These researchers are developing amazing new ways to help restore it.