Health & Science
Last summer international aid workers began descending from Soviet-era helicopters into the forests, mountains and villages in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s North Kivu region, setting up treatment centers and laboratories, and donning hazmat suits as they treated people sick with the Ebola virus. The workers brought computers, lab equipment, vaccine doses and anything else that supported epidemiology, data and patient management, and infection prevention and control.
Northwestern professors Brian Uzzi and Adam Waytz and alumnus Mark Knickrehm weigh in on the promise and peril of artificial intelligence.
Champion triathlete and medical researcher Jacquie Godbe is helping develop and improve stem cell treatments.
South Asians account for 60% of the world’s heart disease patients, and that trend continues for the 5.4 million South Asian immigrants in the United States. South Asians — the second–fastest growing minority group in the country — have the highest death rate from heart disease compared with other ethnic groups.
Genetic mutations — inherited from our parents and carried from birth — can increase our risk of developing diseases from schizophrenia to cancer. But environmental factors also play a critical role in determining who develops certain maladies and who doesn’t.
Rosanna Hertz, author of Random Families, interviewed more than 350 children, their parents and gamete donors to explore how they used cultural narratives about genes and genetics to understand their relationship to their immediate families and donor networks.
Northwestern psychologist Vijay Mittal says human behavior is made up of three primary components: emotion, cognition and motor activity. By examining motor behavior as both an early signal and a treatment tool, Mittal hopes to stop psychosis in its tracks.
John Stroup, CEO of the global manufacturing company Belden, helped launch a first-of-its-kind program to help job applicants break the cycle of substance abuse and find employment. A mechanical engineering student at Northwestern, Stroup says the University's emphasis on the humanities helped him become a more well-rounded person.
As Garry Cooper ’14 PhD prepared to throw out used equipment at a Feinberg School of Medicine lab in 2015, an idea hit him: Lightly used, expensive research equipment could be reused rather than trashed. “I kept seeing reports about the funding problems in scientific research — how really smart and innovative junior faculty members are leaving academia and going into industry because of the job and funding prospects,” says Cooper, who studied neuroscience.
Hannah Chung ’12 hopes to make the treatment of childhood cancer a little more bearable. The co-founder of Sproutel, Chung works alongside CEO and co-founder Aaron Horowitz ’12 to design products that make a meaningful health impact on the lives of patients.
