On Thursday, March 13, the Department of Biology hosted Greg Lang, associate professor of biological sciences at Lehigh University. Lang delivered a talk titled “Genome evolution in laboratory populations of yeast” as a part of the Department’s Seminar Series, and explored his lab’s work conducting experimental yeast evolution on the bench.
In the wake of shifting political attitudes towards science, policymaking and advocacy have become critical in guiding the future of science. The Science Policy and Diplomacy Group at Hopkins is an entirely graduate-student-run group aiming to ensure that science and policy remain connected through advocacy, awareness and action.
On Friday, March 7, 2025, Stand Up for Science, a volunteer-based operation designed to protest perceived threats to scientific research and funding, gathered outside the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. The demonstration, which drew approximately 2,000 participants — including Hopkins students, lab groups and over 30 speakers from academia, hospitals and government — highlighted concerns over frozen research grants, the dismissal of government scientists and rollbacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced on Monday, March 10, that the Trump administration had completed its six-week review of programs within the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and will shutter 83% of the programs. The rest of the programs will be folded into the U.S. Department of State. The News-Letter spoke with several faculty and staff members at the School of Public Health whose work has been affected by the termination of USAID grants or reductions in funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
A 2023 report from the City of Baltimore Mayor’s Office of Homeless Services estimated that around 1,500 people experienced homelessness on any given night in Baltimore City. While this marks a decrease from previous years, it still affects a significant number of residents.
Epilepsy diagnosis is an imperfect science. Approximately 30% of patients are misdiagnosed after their first visit. Consequences of these misdiagnoses can be severe: Untreated epilepsy increases seizure frequency and can be fatal, but at the same time, false positive results are equally dangerous. Patients who receive false diagnoses of epilepsy can face unnecessary discomfort and receive unnecessary treatments with significant side effects.
With spring break quickly approaching, let’s take a look at some breaking scientific discoveries and news, from a new sickle cell disease cure to continued federal funding cuts.
Despite the hardship the COVID-19 pandemic inflicted on many globally, it sparked immense progress in rapid testing for infectious disease: One could take a test quickly at home to determine whether they were infected, accelerating disease detection, treatment and recovery. Such innovation was partially championed by the Johns Hopkins University Center for Innovative Diagnostics for Infectious Diseases (JHCIDID).
A recent paper published by Johns Hopkins researchers in the Department of Computer Science details the development and use of AbdomenAtlas: an annotated public dataset containing abdominal CT scans from over tens of thousands of patients around the world. This new extensive dataset serves as the training ground for early-detection artificial intelligence programs, which have the potential to greatly improve the efficiency of cancer diagnosis and treatment.
Imagine a bustling metropolis on a weekday morning: vehicles honking, people rushing to work, street vendors setting up shop and delivery trucks weaving through the chaos. Despite the apparent asynchrony, there is order to this chaos. If we shrink this scene down to the microscopic level, we zoom into the gut microbiome, a dynamic and complex ecosystem teeming with trillions of microorganisms checking their own to-do lists to keep us alive.
On Tuesday, Feb. 4, visiting professor Derek A.T. Cummings at the Department of Epidemiology at the Bloomberg School of Public Health gave a talk entitled “Challenges in Infectious Disease Dynamics: highlighting work at Johns Hopkins Infectious Disease Dynamics” for the Institute for Computational Medicine.
Carolyn Elya gave a talk titled, "The Last of (Fung)us: Mechanisms of Fruit Fly Behavioral Manipulation by the Killer Fungus Entomophthora muscae" on Feb. 13 as part of the Department of Biology Seminar Series. Elya, an an assistant professor in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology at Harvard University, leads a lab focused on elucidating how parasites manipulate the behavior of their hosts.
As we continue to push through the spring semester, take a break and catch up with some of the latest scientific discoveries, including the transplant of a pig organ into a human and a new tool for pancreatic cancer detection.
"Who are you?" This question, in its many variations, is almost inevitable in school applications, job interviews or introspective moments. We spend years, perhaps our entire lives, unraveling the intricacies of who we are. But there exists another sense of self, of which many are unaware, that stands by 24/7 to protect us. It resides within us, a quiet but essential arbiter of identity: our immune system.
The Los Angeles (LA) wildfires began with with the Palisades fire, which erupted the morning of Jan. 7 in Pacific Palisades as a mere brush fire. Evacuation orders were issued for that fire and by evening, the Eaton fire in Altadena had begun. The Hughes fire was first reported on the morning of Jan. 22. These devastating blazes had engulfed over 47,000 acres of land by the time they were fully or nearly contained.
Following President Trump’s inauguration, the flurry of executive orders and funding freezes introduced uncertainty into the period of political transition. Researchers and health practitioners across the country faced questions about the availability of funding for new graduate students and research fellows, as well as the broader impact on their fields in the coming years.
In the coming weeks, President Donald Trump hopes his cabinet nominations will be swiftly confirmed. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (RFK Jr.) — who ran as an independent in the 2024 presidential election before dropping out and supporting President Trump — is eyeing an important position given America’s increasing prevalence of chronic conditions, as Secretary of the Department of Health & Human Services.
The University Writing Program held an event titled Rx: Conversations about Medicine and Writing on Jan. 31. The first speaker was Dr. Lakshmi Krishnan, a historian of medicine, medical humanities scholar and physician currently working at Georgetown University. Krishnan received her M.D. from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and attended the University of Oxford, receiving her D.Phil. in English Literature.
Dr. Won Jin Ho presented a talk as part of the Immunology Neighborhood Seminar on “Overcoming the tumor immune microenvironment — barriers to cancer immunotherapy” on Jan 21. Ho is a physician-scientist at the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center and director of the Mass Cytometry Director at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. Ho’s expertise centers on pancreatic and liver cancer immunology. He emphasizes that immunotherapy is a mainstay in cancer treatment.
Welcome to this week’s science news in review, where you’ll find newsworthy scientific innovations or events that have been revealed in the first month of 2025. Astronomers and space lovers across the country enjoyed a rare site throughout the month of January. After dark, stargazers could see Venus, Saturn, Jupiter and Mars. Venus and Saturn appeared in the southwest, Mars rose in the east and Jupiter was overhead. Uranus and Neptune would also be aligned. This incredible astronomical event will continue throughout February, where seven planets will be “aligned” in this way: Saturn, Mercury, Neptune, Venus, Uranus, Jupiter and Mars.
