Comics Artist Joel Christian Gill Launches BU’s New Visual Narrative MFA Degree
Joel Christian Gill is the director and a faculty member—along with Paul Karasik, lecturer in art—of BU’s new Master of Fine Arts in Visual Narrative program. There are about 10 such MFA programs in the country, he says. The program drew 11 students for last fall’s debut. They study with Gill in a third-floor classroom at the 808 Gallery. The degree is for illustrators interested in producing media such as comics and graphic books, picture books, and animation.
Boston University Opens New LGBTQIA+ Student Resource Center
Following months of preparation, and years of student advocacy, Boston University will soon be opening a professionally staffed campus resource center for LGBTQIA+ students. The center, tentatively named the LGBTQIA+ Student Resource Center, will be housed at 808 Commonwealth Avenue, near existing spaces like the Howard Thurman Center for Common Ground and the LGBTQIA+ Center for Faculty & Staff.
BU Researchers Join $100 Million Effort to Fight Future Deadly Pathogens
Boston University researchers are joining a $100 million effort to advance our understanding of dangerous pathogens—and help spur new ways to defeat or at least contain them. The Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Emerging Pathogens Initiative, which is pulling in 70 scientists from 29 organizations, will include 7 BU researchers, who will be part of teams working on the next generation of RNA-based antiviral therapies and investigating microscopic pathogenic parasites called protozoa. BU’s share of the funding will be $16 million.
BU Finds CTE in Nearly 92 Percent of Ex-NFL Players Studied
According to new figures released by the Boston University CTE Center, 345 former NFL players were diagnosed with chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), out of 376 former players who were studied, a rate of 91.7 percent. To put those numbers in perspective, a 2018 BU study of 164 brains of men and women donated to the Framingham Heart Study found that only 1 of 164 (less than 1 percent) showed signs of the progressive degenerative brain disease. And that lone CTE case? A former college football player.
BU Researchers Named AAAS Fellows
Every year, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) honors scientists across the country for their pioneering or outstanding contributions to their disciplines. BU’s 2023 honorees are astrophysicist Catherine Espaillat, chemist Malika Jeffries-EL, and electrical engineer Vivek Goyal.
BU’s Christopher Chen Elected a National Academy of Inventors Fellow
Christopher Chen, a Boston University biomedical engineer, has been named a National Academy of Inventors fellow in recognition of a career filled with patents and inventions—many building toward potentially lifesaving breakthroughs. In 2022 alone, Chen cofounded a regenerative medicine company—securing $110 million in funding to boost its organ-healing technology—and helped build a miniature beating heart that could speed efforts to repair damage from a heart attack. To be nominated for a fellowship, inventors must have a track record of “outstanding contributions to innovation” and be a named inventor on patents.
NEIDL Researchers Discover New SARS-CoV-2 Weak Spot—Which Could Inspire Improved Vaccines
In a Boston University–led paper published online in Nature, an international team of researchers identify the mutations that help Omicron dodge prior immunity and show that a previously unheralded virus protein—known as NSP6—might be an essential factor in the variant’s lower disease-causing potential, or its pathogenicity. A draft containing some of the paper’s early results previously made international headlines when a series of false reports sensationally misconstrued its findings. But the study’s senior author, BU virologist Mohsan Saeed, says this research could have a major positive impact, potentially helping provide a new target for vaccines and therapeutics.
Two BU Researchers Receive over $1 Million Each from Chan Zuckerberg Initiative
In an effort to take biological imaging to the next level, two Boston University College of Engineering researchers are spearheading projects aimed at finding better ways to visualize the cellular mechanisms that drive our everyday life. Ji-Xin Cheng and Lei Tian will each receive more than $1 million in funding from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, a highly competitive program, to develop new methods for seeing cells, molecules, proteins, and neuron networks in real time.
Mayors Address Climate Crisis in Report from BU’s Initiative on Cities
A report released January 17 by Boston University’s Initiative on Cities (IoC), titled “Mayors and the Climate Crisis,” asked elected city leaders about their views on climate change and what, if anything, their communities should do to address the issue. The report is the first in a two-part series of survey results from the 2022 Menino Survey of Mayors. For the survey, IoC staff interviewed mayors of 118 cities across the United States with populations of more than 75,000 residents.
BU Online Programs among the Nation’s Best, for Tenth Consecutive Year
A trio of online master’s degree programs—criminal justice, computer information technology, and business—at Boston University’s Metropolitan College have been ranked by U.S. News & World Report among the country’s best for the 10th year in a row. U.S. News bases its rankings on students’ opportunities to interact online with professors and one another; faculty’s academic credentials; diversity of online learning technologies, coupled with out-of-class resources for learning, career guidance, and financial aid; assessments from academic peers; and the “proven aptitudes, ambitions, and accomplishments” of students in the programs.
