Health & Science
In just a few months, Morton Schapiro will step down as president of Northwestern after 13 years at the helm. During President Schapiro’s tenure, the Evanston and Chicago campuses were transformed by more than 50 major construction projects and the creation of 17 new research institutes and centers.
At just 22 years old, Casey Grage ’19 became CEO of Hubly Surgical, a startup set on revolutionizing neurosurgery. Hubly invented a lightweight neurosurgical drill that Grage says offers key advantages over conventional drills used to access to the brain in cases of stroke, aneurysm, trauma or other emergencies.
After a treacherous 45-day climb, Chris Bombardier reached the 29,032-foot summit of Mount Everest in May 2017. It was numbingly cold, but Bombardier felt nothing but pride in what he had accomplished for the hemophilia community: He became the first person with the bleeding disorder to climb the world’s tallest mountain, knowing full well that an accident on the ascent could lead to a dire situation.
In 13 years as Northwestern University president, Morty Schapiro transformed the campuses, expanded international opportunities and supported faculty research — all while diversifying the student population. The University also faced financial challenges and several controversies, as well as an unprecedented pandemic.
Northwestern researchers are part of global teams studying antibiotic resistance in Pakistan, climate change in Japan, the effect of cobalt mining on communities in the Democratic Republic of Congo, mysterious strands in the Milky Way and more.
Most LGBTQIA individuals face challenges when trying to access high-quality care, leading to poorer health outcomes. Northwestern researchers are coming together to study these communities, remove barriers to care, and develop groundbreaking interventions to improve health.
Julius Lucks, a professor of chemical and biological engineering, and postdoctoral fellow Khalid Alam and doctoral candidate Kirsten Jung created a device to test water for 17 different contaminants. The technology, nicknamed ROSALIND in honor of DNA pioneer Rosalind Franklin, can assess water safety and quality with just a single drop.
The Human Longevity Laboratory is just one part of the ambitious, multicenter Potocsnak Longevity Institute, whose goal is to build on Northwestern’s ongoing research in the rapidly advancing science of aging. “The biological processes that drive aging may be malleable,” says Douglas Vaughan, director of the institute and chair of the Department of Medicine at Feinberg, “and we think we can slow that process down, delay it, even theoretically reverse it.”
Louis A. Simpson ’58 was a big believer in giving everyone access to education.
This past summer, women’s tennis star Naomi Osaka and Olympic gymnast Simone Biles launched a movement in Black women’s mental health by choosing not to compete in order to care for their mental health. In this essay for Northwestern Magazine and in her recent book, professor Inger Burnett-Zeigler shows the other side of what strong Black women display to the outside world.
