News from Brown

Hailing from a wide variety of disciplines and backgrounds, the scholars join the Brown community this year to guide student-centered learning and engage in high-impact research.

Early-career researcher Jessica Plavicki is advancing understanding of how environmental contaminants interfere with heart and brain development — the formidable task of establishing her new lab should prove fruitful for decades to come.

A new study shows that graphene sheets can block the signals mosquitos use to identify a blood meal, potentially enabling a new chemical-free approach to mosquito bite prevention.

In marking the start of the 2019-20 academic year, President Christina Paxson and Dean of the College Rashid Zia encouraged students to harness the power of the Open Curriculum to become change agents in their communities.

This month, staff members from the Administrative Fellows Program’s second cohort returned from an experiential opportunity in Brazil with new insights on how to achieve a fully diverse and inclusive campus.

A total of 2,755 new undergraduate, graduate and medical students began studies at Brown University this week — here’s a look at who arrived on College Hill.

Works by three artists explore topics such as land ownership, immigration and tourism as they relate to women of color.

On a quest to unearth insights about ethylene production and plant growth, Adrian Lee spent his summer applying the revolutionary genetic engineering tool alongside Brown faculty.

A two-day event in early August offered undergraduate researchers from Brown and beyond the chance to showcase findings unearthed and topics investigated in the University’s classrooms and laboratories this summer.

In a summer internship at the Swedish advertising firm NORD DDB, rising junior Harshita Agarwal unearthed surprising insights that revealed decision-making patterns and biases among Swedes.

More than 31,000 generous donors contributed $420.6 million to Brown during its Fiscal Year 2019, investing in student success, high-impact scholarship, campus life and many other University initiatives.

Working with the Rhode Island Department of Health, Brown MPH student Joyce Pak is interviewing hospital and other critical facility managers to inform a real-time computer model of storm consequences.

With a passion for space and space engineering, two engineering students spent the summer working to design a robotic arm that may fly on Brown’s next student-built satellite.

With her website Fields of Hay, Shira Buchsbaum hopes to convince undergraduate students at Brown that the phrase “special collections” doesn’t mean “off limits.”

In recent months, prestigious national and international organizations recognized Brown faculty for their research, scholarship and leadership.

One semester after Bleeding Heart Libertarianism, four Brown students are working with political scientist John Tomasi to make connections between political philosophy and conditions on the ground in Chile.

With a new five-year grant from the National Institutes of Health, the Center for Addiction and Disease Risk Exacerbation will launch four research projects and establish a clinical laboratory for biological addiction research at Brown University.

Brown’s anchor tenancy in the Wexford Science and Technology building continues University’s commitment to transforming Jewelry District into a hub for technology transfer, entrepreneurship and economic innovation.

The new collaboration between Brown University and the Rhode Island Department of Corrections will expand an already successful opioid treatment program in correctional institutions, helping people who are in the justice system but outside prison walls.

An analysis led by Brown sociologist Jayanti Owens found that different treatment of black and white students accounted for half of the racial gap in school suspensions and expulsions among 5- to 9-year-old children.

Ariel Deutsch, a Ph.D. student in the Department of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences, will join an astronaut who walked on the Moon and two top NASA scientists for a panel titled “Lunar Geology: Past, Present and Future.”

In “Possibly,” available online and airing on the Public’s Radio every Tuesday, Brown undergraduates track down answers to Rhode Islanders’ questions about sustainability.

A monthlong events series, free and open to the public, will celebrate 50 years since the first Moon landing and Rhode Island’s contributions to space exploration.

Four years after Brown’s Warren Alpert Medical School began an innovative program to educate leaders for tomorrow’s health care systems, 15 students earned both M.D. and master of science degrees.

Faculty members Sohini Ramachandran and Anita Shukla are among the winners of the Presidential Early Career Award in Science and Engineering, the nation’s top honor for early-career scientists and engineers.

In a step toward molecular storage systems that could hold vast amounts of data in tiny spaces, Brown University researchers have shown it’s possible to store image files in solutions of common biological small molecules.

Members of the Brown community gathered at 295 Lloyd Ave. to dedicate the new Philip D. Andrews Memorial Building in memory of a legendary Plant Operations employee who served Brown from 1947 to 1990.

For students in the spring 2019 course Antigones, an ancient Greek play served as the basis of a semester-long examination of journalistic ethics, citizenship and other timely topics.

The School of Professional Studies and a new Division of Pre-College and Summer Undergraduate Programs will operate as independent units within the Office of the Provost, each under new leadership.

The muscles in bats’ wings are much cooler than the muscles in their core, a new study finds — and this research could one day enhance our understanding of human muscle.

A new technique for isolating cells carrying the full fetal genome from cervical swabs could enable doctors to diagnose genetic disorders without using needles to harvest cells from the placenta.

Removing used needles does not reduce the spread of Hepatitis C virus — instead, changing the ratio of infected to uninfected needles is critical, study finds.

Computer models show why eruptive magma chambers tend to reside between six and 10 kilometers underground.

A new computer model that captures the dynamics of the red blood cell sickling process could help in evaluating drugs for treating sickle cell disease.

Researchers found that people who ate high levels of vitamin A were 17 percent less likely to get the second-most-common type of skin cancer years later.

In a finding that could shed light on tissue formation, wound healing and cancer spread, a new study shows that human cells follow the same rules as non-living particles to form fractal-like branching structures.

Punitive peers can increase how much fellow decision-makers support punishment, by up to 40 percent.

Turbulent heat exchangers are widely used in HVAC systems around the world, and a new study demonstrates a simple modification that can improve their capability by 500%.

By keeping the brain in sync, these long-hypothesized but never-found neurons help rodents to detect subtle sensations.

Researchers have shot a “movie” of subtle molecular motions in unprecedented detail, shedding light on previously unseen chemical dynamics.

Brown Biomedical Innovations to Impact will award five faculty projects $100,000 each to accelerate promising medical solutions into commercial technologies.

Study found that hospitals with more black patients saw smaller increases in compliance with new sepsis protocols than those that treat mainly white patients, highlighting a need to evaluate the effects of quality improvement projects for minority groups.

While the precise reasons are unclear, an analysis of overdose deaths in Rhode Island and Connecticut showed that cold snaps raised the risk of fatal opioid overdoses by 25 percent.

Understanding the normal molecular interactions could aid in the development of therapeutics to prevent the formation of clumps associated with ALS and frontotemporal dementia.

At the first Dr. Samuel M. Nabrit Conference, molecular life scientists from historically underrepresented groups gathered at Brown to learn about cutting-edge research; Brown professors and junior researchers discussed how their identities as members of underrepresented groups have affected their career paths.

There are no legal safe consumption spaces in the U.S. currently, but a three-city study found that a majority of people who use opioids would be willing to use locations where they would have medical support in case of overdose.

Working with a Brown University faculty member, an undergraduate student developed an algorithm that enables robots to reproduce human-like pen strokes just by looking at images of handwriting or sketches.

Offering courses, programs and support to students at every stage of the entrepreneurial process, the Nelson Center has become a nexus for entrepreneurship at Brown in just three years since launch.

Brown’s scholars in international and public affairs are addressing inequality, convening conversations that move the needle on tough issues and connecting students with practitioners on the ground.

Researchers in Brown’s School of Engineering are developing next-generation renewable energy technologies, advancing energy efficiency in computing and finding new ways to detect and clean contaminants in the environment.

The University is advancing its reputation for excellence in the arts by forming new partnerships with artists and scholars and making major new investments in programming and facilities.

Brown researchers are building understanding of the brain, restoring movement for patients with paralysis, unlocking the secrets of devastating diseases and devising new treatments to address brain-related disorders.

With an increased focus on unearthing novel data sources for analysis, Brown’s economics scholars are bringing new insights to complex problems and teaching the next generation of researchers and policymakers to do the same.

Learning at Brown is a collaborative, hands-on experience — one in which students often lead their own research projects or conduct research alongside their instructors.

Humanities scholars at Brown are energizing comparative work that informs a deeper understanding of the most challenging questions of global common concern.