By Siena Giljum

BU Arts & Sciences faculty members don’t just publish in academic journals; they bring new ideas and perspectives to the public through news outlets, TV, magazines, and social media, giving their research and ideas broader reach. If you heard something about deep fakes lately, or the depiction of Asian Americans in video games, it may have been thanks to Arts & Sciences faculty. Here’s a rundown of recent appearances in the media: 

• Long-running PBS science docuseries NOVA featured Malika Jeffries-EL, Associate Professor in Chemistry and the Associate Dean of the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences, for expert insight into the molecular chemistry of household plastic products. You can watch Malika’s clip, which is part of the series “Beyond the Elements,” and read a transcript on the PBS website.
• Are you worried you forgot about how to socialize during quarantine? Director of the Psychotherapy and Emotion Research Laboratory and Professor of Psychology Stefan G. Hofmann spoke to the New York Times about why you shouldn’t worry about social anxiety and how to get your small-talk game back in fighting shape.
• Ever-intrigued by the intersection of the Asian American experience and digital media, Assistant Professor of English Takeo Rivera was interviewed for a piece in Wired about a controversial new video game, connecting its orientalist tropes with recent cultural history. Additionally, Takeo spoke about how Asian Americans have been othered in American media throughout the 1900s and 2000s on Al Jazeera as part of their program “The Listening Post.” You can watch the entire clip on the Al Jazeera YouTube page.
• The Atlantic heavily featured the words and work of biological anthropologist Cheryl Knott from CAS’s Biology Department, who works closely with researchers in Indonesia, in an article reexamining “parachute science” during the pandemic.
• Mario Kart, a video game staple for millennials, can teach you more than just how to avoid bananas in the road. Assistant Professor of Earth & Environment Andrew Bell recently published a paper on what the video game can tell us about building a more equitable society for farmers. Read more in Futurity.
• If you’ve ever seen a well-known image that seems just a bit off, it could be a deep fake. A team of BU computer scientists looked into this digital phenomenon, developing a shared algorithm to help combat this spread of misinformation online. 
• Sam Sarkisian, a lecturer of writing in CAS and COM, sat down with BU Today for a Q&A about his new dystopian novel, The Institute, a chilling look at government surveillance and censorship set just 15 years into the future.
• After you watch the Oscar-winning film Mank and need more Hollywood history, check out Hill Of Beans: A Novel of War and Celluloid by Professor of English Leslie Epstein, which is a fictionalized take on the production of Casablanca, with a deep dive on the book in BU Today and a detailed review in WBUR.
• Out in the deep sea, you never know what you’ll encounter, and new research, featured here in Gizmodo and coauthored by Research Assistant Professor of Biology Randi Rotjan, indicates there’s more invisible bacteria out there than originally thought.

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