The Humanity Lab
By Steve Holt For Sophie Klein, a recent discussion in her section of “The Way: Antiquity and the Medieval World” (CC 102) exemplifies the relevance of CAS’s Core Curriculum to life today. Klein’s class had been reading Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, in which the philosopher unpacks the concept of eudaimonia, which loosely... More
BU Researchers Dive Into Unexplored Waters off the Coast of Chile
By Grace Sferrazza (CAS & COM'26) On the second leg of their 55 day research expedition to the Chilean Margin, Erin Frates' exploration team had come face to face with an unavoidable obstacle: the weather. An incoming storm had prevented the crew of scientists from checking out the area they planned to visit... More
From Spaghetti to Structure: Teaching Students the Art of Molecular Visualization
On the first day of her 200-person CAS CH373: “Principles of Biochemistry” class each semester, Didem Vardar-Ulu puts up a slide with a visual representation of a molecule and asks her students to identify it. The image (see below) represents a fragment of a DNA strand bound to its partner protein, More
Found in Translation
By Steve Holt Translating a literary work from one language to another starts with a close reading of a text. Motoyuki Shibata, a Japanese translator of American literature, defines literary translation as “a report on how much I liked the book.” Anna Zielinska-Elliott started her first translation after reading Haruki Murakami’s... More
BU students use statistical analysis to find rheumatological cures
Masters students are analyzing data to understand how patients behave, what types of treatments work, and more. More
A Spark of Creativity in the Social Sciences
Kaitlin Howlett (CAS’25) had a goal of doing undergraduate research—now she’s working for her history advisor. By Marc Chalufour | Photos by Simon Simard When Deborah Carr and Ian Sue Wing published a study about the intersection of global climate change and population aging trends in May 2024, much of Asia was... More
Rewriting the Histories of Enslaved People
Cunningham on St. Helena, where she has studied the bones of enslaved people who died on the island. By Molly Callahan | Photos by Cydney Scott In the mid- to late 1800s, the remote British overseas territory of Saint Helena was home to a community of “liberated Africans”—enslaved people from ships intercepted... More
Is There Potential for Life Outside Our Solar System?
Photo by Sasha Pedro By Mara Sassoon Chuanfei Dong is looking to the stars to try to answer one of astronomers’ most vexing questions: Are there other habitable planets in our universe? Dong, an assistant professor of astronomy, specializes in the physics of plasma, the fourth state of matter. Our sun and other... More
Lessons in Evolution
Christopher Schmitt studies the genetic evolution of wild vervet monkeys in South Africa. Photo by Paul Samuels By Steve Holt Coral reefs are old. Really old. Scientists believe corals have lived in the shallows of Earth’s oceans for 160 million years, predating dinosaurs. They owe their longevity in large part to a... More
BU historian’s new book examines unlikely friendships during the Cold War
History Professor Alexis Peri studies pen friendships between US and Soviet women More