Why do implicit biases still exist in hiring decisions?

Samantha Dodson, assistant professor of organizational behavior and human resources at the University of Calgary, answers this.

Faculty Bio:

Samantha Dodson’s research program focuses on when and why women experiencing roadblocks and adversity are evaluated as deserving of opportunities and support at work.

Transcript:

Since women began joining the modern workforce after World War II, support professions such as secretaries and paralegals have been predominantly occupied by women. The more powerful professions they support, such as executives and lawyers, are predominantly held by men. These low-power support professions often involve developing efficient processes and paying close attention to detail. In contrast, individuals in high-power organizational roles tend to engage in tasks like identifying and creating values, strategies, and visions. Thus, women are more likely than men to be in roles that require concrete mindsets and less likely to be in roles that require abstract mindsets. Drawing on research linking gender role segregation to gender stereotypes, we theorized that people might believe there are innate attributes that enable women to perform well in process-based roles requiring specificity and attention to detail, whereas men have attributes that help them excel in roles that require seeing the big picture.

Six experiments showed that we do, in fact, hold implicit and explicit descriptive stereotypes – or beliefs about what men and women are – such that people tend to believe women are more concrete than men, women are more concrete than abstract, and men are more abstract than concrete. Women tend to hold these beliefs more deeply than men, and these stereotypes arose across dozens of occupations and industries. These beliefs have real-world consequences. In one study, we found that in nearly 550,000 LinkedIn recommendations, connections are more likely to use words such as “detailed and exact” to describe women and “visionary and farsighted” to describe men. Critically, we also found that these beliefs increased the likelihood of women being assigned detailed tasks at work, such as filing paperwork and proofreading, on top of their existing workload, perpetuating gender roles and organizational inequity.

Read More:

[APA PsyNet] - She sees the trees, he sees the forest: Descriptive gender stereotypes of concreteness and abstractness

Older adults are starting to use AI at home, too.

Ken Brown, Tippie Children Professor of Management and Entrepreneurship at the Tippie College of Business at the University of Iowa, says it’s not just for work anymore.

Faculty Bio:

Ken Brown, Ph.D., is Tippie Children Professor of Management in the Tippie College of Business and department executive officer of the Educational Policy and Leadership Studies Department, College of Education, both at the University of Iowa. He earned a BS in Psychology from the University of Maryland and MA and PhD degrees in Psychology from Michigan State University. Brown is the former associate dean of the undergraduate program in Tippie and served as a Fulbright Specialist at Seoul National University.

Transcripts:

We know that generative artificial intelligence tools are becoming a bigger part of peoples’ work lives, but are they using those tools at home, too?

A recent survey we conducted here at the University of Iowa shows that yes, they are.

For many, in fact, AI has become an even bigger part and is now a go-to tech tool at home as well as the office.

We surveyed more than 1,000 people in December and found that more people are using generative AI for personal activities and projects than use it for work. We found that of those familiar with generative AI, more than 50% used it for personal activities and projects; only 35% used it at work.

Even among full-time employees, more people reported they used it for personal activities than work, and more people feel that generative AI helps them personally than helps them professionally. Of those most frequently using generative AI programs, ChatGPT was the best-known, followed by CoPilot and Gemini.

One of the findings that surprised us was that more retired people than we expected use ChatGPT for projects for personal use at home. Nine percent of the more than 264 retired respondents reported they were frequent users of the technology. Only 6 percent of retirees had never used it or heard of it, suggesting a willingness on their part to embrace the new technology.

One of the study’s co-authors said that finding tracks with his own family experience, as his retired parents have started using AI as a search engine for such tasks as finding recipes or learning about things they see in the news.

While the conversation about AI so far has been focused on the technology’s impact in workplace and educational settings, our survey suggests we should be looking more closely at its impact on retirees, as well.

Brainstems are hard to image because of their size and density, but is that about to change?

Emery N. Brown, professor of neuroscience at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, says yes.

Faculty Bio:

Emery N. Brown, M.D., Ph.D. is the Edward Hood Taplin Professor of Medical Engineering and Computational Neuroscience at MIT in The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory; the Warren M. Zapol Professor of Anaesthesia at Harvard Medical School; and an anesthesiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital. Dr. Brown is a neuroscientist-anesthesiologist-statistician whose research has contributed toward understanding how anesthetics act in the brain. In his statistics research he has developed signal processing algorithms to solve important data analysis challenges in neuroscience. For his work he received the National Medal of Science in January 2025.

Transcript:

Don’t sleep on the importance of your brainstem. This part of your brain is a vital conduit between your body and the rest of the brain. The signals that flow through bundles of nerve fibers there govern essential functions such as consciousness, sleep, breathing, heart rate and motion.

While we know that the brainstem is absolutely crucial and that damage there can present patients with major problems, we haven’t had good ways to image and keep track of the health of its fiber bundles for reasons including how small and densely packed they are.

But earlier this year, my colleagues and I, led by my graduate student Mark Olchanyi, developed a new way to clearly see brainstem fiber bundles in diffusion MRI imaging. The Brainstem Bundle Tool uses AI to analyze MRI images from patients, enabling us to track the size and structural integrity of eight distinct nerve fiber bundles.

In the study we showed that the tool could reliably spot different effects on fiber bundles from Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis and traumatic brain injury. Mark even used the tool to retrospectively look at the bundles in a patient who had been in a coma for seven months before recovering. He was able to show how the bundles were healing during that time.

We are hopeful that this innovation, developed at MIT, Harvard and Massachusetts General Hospital can transform the brainstem from being something of a mystery into a brain structure essential for understanding normal brain physiology as well as brain diseases and injury.

Read More:

[The Picower Institute] - Opening a new window on the brainstem, AI algorithm enables tracking of its vital white matter pathways

[Picower People] - Emery N. Brown, innovative neuroscientist, statistician and anesthesiologist earns National Medal of Science

[MIT News] - 3 Questions: Emery Brown on improving anesthesia with neuroscience

How do we search for life beyond Earth?

Fabian Klenner, assistant professor of planetary sciences at the University of California, Riverside, explores the cosmos to find out.

Faculty Bio:

Fabian Klenner is an Assistant Professor of Planetary Sciences in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at the University of California, Riverside. He received his Ph.D. from Freie Universität Berlin (FUB) in Germany. Prior to joining UC Riverside, he held postdoctoral appointments at FUB and the University of Washington. Being involved in various space missions, Fabian Klenner’s research centers around ocean worlds in the solar system. His research group addresses astrobiological questions to advance our understanding of extraterrestrial geochemical processes and the detection of potential life beyond Earth.

Transcript:

Are we alone in the universe? This is one of the most intriguing questions of mankind. We only know of one example of life, that is, life on Earth. In order to make life, you need the right ingredients, and the main ingredients of life on Earth are liquid water, enough energy and organic chemistry. Organic chemistry refers to chemical processes that involve carbon-containing compounds. When we search for life beyond Earth, we can start by searching for liquid water and then we analyse what is in the water.
Within the solar system, so-called ocean worlds are at the forefront of the search for life. Ocean worlds are objects that harbour large bodies of liquid water. Examples include Saturn’s moon Enceladus and Jupiter’s moon Europa. The oceans on these moons do not exist at the surface and instead they are hidden below thick ice crusts in the subsurface. However, Enceladus, and maybe also Europa, emit material from their oceans through geysers into space. Such emissions provide us a unique opportunity to sample an ocean beyond Earth. This can be done by spacecraft flying to these moons and analysing the emitted material.
My research at the University of California in Riverside combines spacecraft observations, laboratory experiments and computational efforts to advance our understanding of chemical processes on ocean worlds in the solar system and the detection of potential life beyond Earth. In a recent study, we re-analysed data that was recorded by NASA’s and ESA’s Cassini spacecraft in the geysers of Enceladus. The data contained clear evidence of a variety of organic compounds that came from Enceladus’s subsurface ocean. These organic compounds open up many new pathways for chemistry that may occur inside Enceladus and bolster the case that Enceladus could support life.

Read More:

[Nature] - Detection of organic compounds in freshly ejected ice grains from Enceladus’s ocean

LinkedIn

[CBC] - Discovery on Saturn’s moon Enceladus boosts possibility it could support life

Do you feel loved?

Harry Reis, professor of psychology at the University of Rochester, examines why most do not.

Faculty Bio:

Harry Reis, a professor of psychology at the University of Rochester, is one of the world’s leading experts on relationships and connection and has studied the complexities of well-being and love in depth. His research examines the factors that influence the quantity and closeness or social interaction, and the consequences of different patterns of socializing for health and psychological well-being. Truly feeling loved, he has found, differs widely from the actions that we usually associate with loving, being loved, and falling in love.

Transcript:

Most people want to BE loved, but above all, they want to FEEL loved. Ask yourself: Do you feel loved as often as you would like? Do you feel loved by the people you want to feel loved by? A book I co-authored with Sonja Lyubomirsky, How to Feel Loved, is meant to help people find, keep, and grow the love they feel.

In our research, roughly two-¬thirds of a random sample of Americans wanted
to feel more loved or loved more often.

Studies show that not feeling loved is the root of the so-called loneliness epidemic; it hampers performance at school and work; it harms our health and well-being, and it even predicts dying sooner. Feeling loved is not a luxury, it’s a necessity.

Ironically, some of the most common ways we try to feel more loved can make things worse, not better:
For example, we try to make ourselves appear more attractive and successful;
We spotlight our positive qualities while hiding our weaknesses and vulnerabilities.

But feeling loved is not about changing yourself or making another person love you. It’s about changing the conversation.

The pathway to feeling more loved begins with conversations that help your partner feel more loved. Listen attentively to what they say and show genuine curiosity into what makes them tick. Be non-judgmental and open-hearted. This approach invites your partner to reciprocate your curiosity and caring.

When you help another person feel loved, they become interested in you. When this happens, it is important to share your full self: not just your accomplishments and strengths but also your shortcomings: the authentic person you believe yourself to be. By opening up, you allow yourself to be seen and understood.

Adopting the right mindset – the attitude with which you approach others – creates the conditions in which love and connection can flourish.

Read More:

[Amazon] - How to Feel Loved: The Five Mindsets That Get You More of What Matters Most

Harry Reis, professor of psychology at the University of Rochester, examines how to feel loved.

Tuesday

Fabian Klenner, assistant professor of planetary sciences at the University of California, Riverside, explores the cosmos to search for life beyond Earth.

Wednesday

Emery N. Brown, professor of neuroscience at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, says brainstems are hard to image because of their size and density, but that may be about to change.

Thursday

Ken Brown, Tippie Children Professor of Management and Entrepreneurship at the Tippie College of Business at the University of Iowa, says AI is not just for work anymore.

Friday

Samantha Dodson, assistant professor of organizational behavior and human resources at the University of Calgary, answers why implicit biases still exist in hiring decisions.

Catch up with The Academic Minute from 6/29 - 7/3

Monday

Nick Dorzweiler - Wheaton College
Understanding the Relationship Between Politics and Anxiety

Nick Dorzweiler joined Wheaton College in 2015, after completing doctoral work at Northwestern University. His research is guided by an overarching interest in the history of the social sciences and its impacts on political life beyond the academy. Nick has published on topics including the politics of popular culture, the history or the social sciences, democratic theory, feminist pedagogy, and the development of Critical Theory in the American academy in outlets such as Perspectives on Politics, Contemporary Political Theory, Polity, Constellations, New Political Science, and The History of the Human Sciences.

Tuesday

Naomi Baron - American University
Negotiating How Much AI Reads for Us

Naomi S. Baron is Professor Emerita of Linguistics at American University in Washington, DC. She is a Stanford PhD and has been a Guggenheim Fellow, Fulbright Fellow, and Visiting Scholar at the Stanford Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences.

Wednesday

Clinton Haarlem - Trinity College
How Ecology and Lifestyle Drives an Animal’s Speed of Sight

Dr. Clinton Haarlem’s research focuses on variation in visual perception rates, both across species and across individuals. Clinton’s work is multidisciplinary and incorporates zoology, ecology and neuroscience to explore the dynamic interplay between sensory perception, behaviour and the environment.

Thursday

Craig Clements - San Jose State University
Understanding the Science of Wildfires and Extreme Fire Behavior

Craig Clements is a professor and chair of the Department of Meteorology and Climate Science at San José State University, where he is director of the Wildfire Interdisciplinary Research Center (WIRC) and director of the Fire Weather Lab. His research focuses on the micro-meteorology and behavior of wildland fires, mountain and boundary-layer meteorology, air pollution and turbulence.

His research and teaching focus includes wildfire meteorology and fire weather, extreme fire behavior, mountain and boundary-layer meteorology, turbulence, and meteorological instrumentation.

Friday

Robert DiNapoli - Binghamton University
Easter Island Myths

Robert DiNapoli is an archaeologist who uses computational modeling and geospatial methods to study the interaction between human populations and the environment. His primary research focuses on the island societies of Polynesia, in particular questions surrounding ancient migrations, demographic patterns, emergence of social complexity, and sustainable resource use.

The Academic Minute airs on the WAMC Northeast Public Radio network at 7:30 a.m. and 3:56 p.m. weekdays.

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What happened on Easter Island?

Robert DiNapoli, post-doctoral research associate in the environmental studies program at Binghamton University, says reality may be different than long thought.

Faculty Bio:

Robert DiNapoli is an archaeologist who uses computational modeling and geospatial methods to study the interaction between human populations and the environment. His primary research focuses on the island societies of Polynesia, in particular questions surrounding ancient migrations, demographic patterns, emergence of social complexity, and sustainable resource use.

Transcript:

You probably know this story, or a version of it: On Easter Island, the people cut down every tree, perhaps to make fields for agriculture or to erect giant statues to honor their clans. This foolish decision led to a catastrophic collapse, with only a few thousand remaining to witness the first European boats landing on their remote shores in 1722.

But did the demographic collapse at the core of the Easter Island myth really happen? Traditional populations tend to be extremely conservative and avoid change unless there’s a good reason for it. After all, making the wrong decisions can have dire consequences.

Easter Island is often seen as a place where people made irrational decisions that led to their own demise. That turns out not to be the case — and not just on the statue front.

Using radiocarbon dating, we have determined that the island actually experienced steady population growth from its initial settlement until European contact in 1722. After that date, two models show a possible population plateau, while another two models show possible decline.

In short, there is no evidence that the islanders used the now-vanished palm trees for food, a key point of many collapse myths. Current research shows that deforestation was prolonged and didn’t result in catastrophic erosion; the trees were ultimately replaced by gardens mulched with stone that increased agricultural productivity. During times of drought, the people may have relied on freshwater coastal seeps.

Construction of the moai statues, considered by some to be a contributing factor of collapse, actually continued even after European arrival.

In short, the island never had more than a few thousand people prior to European contact, and their numbers were increasing rather than dwindling, research shows.

We have much to learn about wildfires.

Craig Clements, professor and chair of the Department of Meteorology and Climate Science at San Jose State University, uses a research lab on wheels to get close to the action.

Faculty Bio:

Craig Clements is a professor and chair of the Department of Meteorology and Climate Science at San José State University, where he is director of the Wildfire Interdisciplinary Research Center (WIRC) and director of the Fire Weather Lab. His research focuses on the micro-meteorology and behavior of wildland fires, mountain and boundary-layer meteorology, air pollution and turbulence.
His research and teaching focus includes wildfire meteorology and fire weather, extreme fire behavior, mountain and boundary-layer meteorology, turbulence, and meteorological instrumentation.

Transcripts:

Californians are concerned about the growing threat of extreme wildfires, such as the recent Pacific Palisades and Altadena fires, that resulted in loss of life and extensive property damage. But residents of other states, including Washington, Oregon, Texas and parts of the Midwest and Southeast are now facing increased dangers from wildfires.

My research seeks to improve accurate predictions in wildfire science, a field that wasn’t even on the map when we began our work well over a decade ago. Since then, we launched the mobile fire weather lab--which allows us to travel to the fires--similar to the ways scientists have studied hurricanes and tornadoes--learning about their formation and dynamics for better prediction models.

We’re really the only team that’s done this for wildfires, which are significantly under-sampled compared to all other atmospheric phenomena.

Our “research lab on wheels” consists of a pair of lifted pickup trucks, both four-wheel drive, with state-of-the-art equipment, including Doppler LIDAR surface weather equipment and an upper air sounding system--basically a weather balloon--satellite radio to communicate with fire personnel, a suite of laptop computers, and other useful gear. Our team drives around forests and mountains using the two trucks in tandem to study fire dynamics and wildfire plumes.

We gather, examine and provide useful data, much like that which is collected in severe weather and hurricane research, to better understand key elements of fire behavior and to test models and forecast systems. We collect information from the ground, but also from airborne assets and remote sensing satellites.

When it comes to wildfires, it’s notable that their frequency and intensity is the result of a complex interplay of climate, topography, and vegetation. Extreme wildfires bring these elements and other factors together in ways that can become so powerful that they can actually create their own weather.

Read More:

Craig’s LinkedIn

Not every animal experiences the world at the same speed.

Clinton Haarlem, postdoctoral research fellow at Trinity College, looks to visual processing speeds to explain why.

Faculty Bio:

Dr. Clinton Haarlem’s research focuses on variation in visual perception rates, both across species and across individuals. Clinton’s work is multidisciplinary and incorporates zoology, ecology and neuroscience to explore the dynamic interplay between sensory perception, behaviour and the environment.

Transcript:

Have you ever wondered why it is so difficult to swat a fly? One of the reasons is because flies can see events happening in the world more than twice as fast as we can, allowing them to react to situations with incredible speed. But why do different animals see the world at different rates, and how does this shape their interactions with the world?

These are the types of questions we aim to address with our research. Using a metric called the “critical flicker fusion threshold,” we can measure how fast the visual processing abilities of animals are. We can then compare how species with different visual processing rates differ in their physiology, their behaviour and the types of habitats they occupy.

For example, we have found that species that live fast paced lifestyles, like those that are highly manoeuvrable or those that actively chase after prey, tend to possess much faster perception than more sluggish species or species that graze on stationary foods. Flying species in particular have extremely fast vision. After all, a peregrine falcon diving at over 300 km/h through the air needs pinpoint precision and expert timing to catch its prey. A high visual temporal resolution allows it to do just that.

Our work informs how sensory systems are not only highly influenced by evolutionary background, but also by the environment and by behaviour. This helps us develop a greater understanding of how species living in similar habitats may have an entirely different experience of the world around them. Gaining a better understanding of the sensory worlds of animals is not only valuable in behavioural - and ecological research, but it can also help to improve conservation strategies and animal welfare practices by fostering more tailored - and individualized approaches.

What are the consequences of letting AI read for us?

Naomi Baron, professor emerita of linguistics at American University, explores this issue.

Faculty Bio:

Naomi S. Baron is Professor Emerita of Linguistics at American University in Washington, DC. She is a Stanford PhD and has been a Guggenheim Fellow, Fulbright Fellow, and Visiting Scholar at the Stanford Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences.

Author of eleven books, she has done research in a wide swath of areas, including child language acquisition, the history of English, writing as a form of linguistic representation, reading, and artificial intelligence. The emergence of email, mobile phones, and social media led her to explore how online and mobile communication reshape our linguistic interactions (Alphabet to Email, 2000, and Always On, 2008). Two subsequent books (Words Onscreen, 2015, and How We Read Now, 2021) drew on her empirical studies of how users view print versus digital screens as reading media.

More recently, Professor Baron has focused on the ways in which artificial intelligence is reshaping what it means to write and read. Who Wrote This? (2023) broached the challenges we face when AI becomes our writing or editing surrogate. Her new book, Reader Bot (2026), takes on the complementary issue of outsourcing human reading to a large language model.

Transcripts:

Since writing first emerged roughly 5,000 years ago, motivations for reading have proliferated. From legal declarations to religious creeds, epic poems to novels, research articles to emails, the texts we read invite us to connect with the words and thoughts of others.

Today, humans aren’t the only ones reading. As large language models (LLMs) permeate our lives, we increasingly lean on them to read on our behalf.

AI-as-reader can produce an impressive comparison of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Percival Everett’s James. It can locate, summarize, and analyze scores of research papers. Human labor is reduced, but with what consequences? The question is increasingly pressing, given worrisome declines in how much both children and adults are reading of their own volition. Documenting a related trend, my research with Anne Mangen found that 49% of the US university faculty we surveyed were assigning less reading than in the past, with 34% indicating this was because students were ignoring the assignments.

But the value of reading far supersedes completing academic or professional tasks.

My research on AI and reading probes mental consequences of outsourcing reading, along with benefits from reading ourselves. Both experiments and self-reports indicate diminished cognitive effort and potential deskilling if AI reads for us. When doing our own reading, we build human connections, perhaps leading to empathy. We relax, escape, or peer into the minds of others. Reading encourages us to contemplate whom we want to emulate or what values we might aspire to. Coming-of-age novels (including Huckleberry Finn and James) enable us to vicariously share in – and learn from – the protagonist’s journey.

Turning to AI for some reading tasks, some of the time, is a principled choice. However, in our AI-saturated world, it behooves us not to ignore the personal rewards human reading can bring.

Read More:

[Stanford University Press] - Reader Bot - What Happens When AI Reads and Why It Matters

[Stanford University Press] - Who Wrote This? - How AI and the Lure of Efficiency Threaten Human Writing

[Taylor & Francis Group] - Student Perceptions and Practices When Reading in Print and Digitally

[Duke University Press] - Doing the Reading: The Decline of Long Long-Form Reading in Higher Education

How do we best understand the relationship between politics and anxiety?

Nick Dorzweiler, professor of the practice of political science and women’s and gender studies at Wheaton College, delves into this.

Faculty Bio:

Nick Dorzweiler joined Wheaton College in 2015, after completing doctoral work at Northwestern University. His research is guided by an overarching interest in the history of the social sciences and its impacts on political life beyond the academy. Nick has published on topics including the politics of popular culture, the history or the social sciences, democratic theory, feminist pedagogy, and the development of Critical Theory in the American academy in outlets such as Perspectives on Politics, Contemporary Political Theory, Polity, Constellations, New Political Science, and The History of the Human Sciences.

Nick is a passionate teacher, and has developed courses at Wheaton that span the fields of international relations, political theory, and women’s and gender studies. In each of his classes, Nick seeks to uncover the history of our present in order to encourage his students to think deeply about who we are, how we got here, and where we can go – both as individuals and as members of larger political communities.

Transcript:

We live, we’re told, in an age of exceptional anxiety – a “polycrisis” of political polarization,
economic uncertainty, environmental collapse, and rapid technological change. But this isn’t the
first time Americans have felt this way. In the late 1930s, the US faced a similarly overwhelming
slate of challenges, from the Great Depression to the rising specter of world war to dizzying
technological innovation.

My research unearths a provocative but forgotten effort to manage Americans’ collective anxieties during this period of deep social and political uncertainty.

In 1939, the influential political scientist Harold D. Lasswell created Human Nature in Action, an
NBC radio show that presented itself as an entertaining self-help program on how to manage
personality quirks and get along better with others. Behind the friendly advice, however, was a
far more ambitious mission: training citizens to adjust themselves to their anxieties before they
could be expressed in in ways that Lasswell thought were pathological. This included everything
ranging from individual expressions of sociopathy to mass revolutionary uprisings.

In uncovering this remarkable effort to manage citizens’ mental health, my work explains why
one of the most famous scholars of the twentieth century believed the public needed this program
of mass psychotherapy – and why the nation’s largest broadcaster agreed.

Yet there is contemporary relevance here, too.

Indeed, the propagandistic methods Lasswell felt he needed to use to achieve his objectives suggests we may need new ways of understanding the relationship between politics and anxiety.

While Lasswell hoped to create a society free from anxiety, I draw on insights from existential psychiatry and related scholarship in humanistic psychology to argue that a more realistic – and democratic – approach is to nurture an appreciation for certain experiences of anxiety as inevitable yet also meaningful components of living in a world defined by pluralism, freedom, and growth.

Read More:

Nick’s LinkedIn

Nick Dorzweiler, professor of the practice of political science and women’s and gender studies at Wheaton College, delves into the relationship between politics and anxiety.

Tuesday

Naomi Baron, professor emerita of linguistics at American University, explores the consequences of letting AI read for us.

Wednesday

Clinton Haarlem, postdoctoral research fellow at Trinity College, looks to visual processing speeds to explain why not every animal experiences the world at the same speed.

Thursday

Craig Clements, professor and chair of the Department of Meteorology and Climate Science at San Jose State University, uses a research lab on wheels to get close to wildfires.

Friday

Robert DiNapoli, post-doctoral research associate in the environmental studies program at Binghamton University, says reality may be different than long thought when it comes to the myths of Easter Island.

Catch up with The Academic Minute from 6/22 - 6/26

Monday

Dimitrios Mathios - Washington University in St. Louis
Developing a Blood-Based Test to Detect Brain Cancer Using AI

Dimitrios Mathios, MD, is an assistant professor of neurosurgery and director of the Molecular Neuro-oncology Lab at WashU’s School of Medicine. His research focuses on using cancer immunology, genetics, and epigenetics to develop non-invasive early detection of brain tumors, when they are easily removable or curable with other treatments.

Tuesday

Amber Kerwin - Hartwick College
Understanding the Barriers to Recruitment of Women in Law Enforcement

Amber M. Kerwin is a professor of practice of criminal justice in the Sociology, Criminology & Social Services Department in the Division of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Hartwick College in Oneonta, New York.

A former police officer and investigator, Kerwin’s areas of expertise include criminal justice, corrections, juvenile delinquency, policing, and police investigations. Among her recent courses taught: Introduction to Criminal Justice; Corrections & Punishment; Policing in a Democratic Society; and Introduction to Law.

Wednesday

Emily Balcetis - New York University
What Motivates Runners?

Dr. Emily Balcetis is an Associate Professor of Psychology at New York University and author of Clearer, Closer, Better: How Successful People See the World. She is an award-winning behavioral scientist and author. She directs a research lab that pioneers the scientific investigation of motivation, uncovering previously unknown strategies that sustain people’s efforts to meet their goals.

Thursday

Petra Fromme - Arizona State University
Materials That Harness Humidity to Capture Carbon

Petra Fromme, Regents’ Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry and Director of the Biodesign Center for Applied Structural Discovery at Arizona State University, investigates the structure and function of biological and synthetic systems to advance solutions in energy, health, and sustainability.

Friday

Jenny M. Munson - Virginia Tech
Unraveling the Secrets of “Chemo Brain”

In the Munson Lab, we study the tumor microenvironment in cancers, including glioblastoma, the deadliest form of brain cancer. Our research focuses on the emerging research area of fluid flow.

The Academic Minute airs on the WAMC Northeast Public Radio network at 7:30 a.m. and 3:56 p.m. weekdays.

It is also carried by:

KTCU - Dallas-Ft. Worth, TX, KMPB - Dillon, CO, KUCR - Riverside, CA, KTSW - San Marcos, TX, WNAA - Greensboro, NC, WYPL - Memphis, TN, WERB - Berlin, CT, WITR - Rochester, NY, W257BL - Oneonta, NY, W226AC - Troy, NY, WAMC - Albany, NY, WCAN - Canajoharie, NY, W246BJ - Hudson, NY, WAMQ - Great Barrington, MA, WUSR - Scranton, PA, WSUM - Madison. WI, WLUR - Lexington, VA, RADIO READING SERVICE OF MS - Jackson, MS, W240CR - Peekskill, NY, W225BM - Scotia, NY, W299AG - Newburgh, NY, W280DJ - Beacon, NY, W295AA - Middletown, NY, W243BZ - Ellenville, NY,W296BD - Warwick, NY, WOSR - Middletown, NY, WLNA - Beacon, NY, WBNR - Beacon, NY,WCEL - Plattsburgh, NY, WANC - Ticonderoga, NY, KJZA - Kingman, AZ, KJZA - Kingman, AZ,KJZP - Kingman, AZ, KJZK - Kingman, AZ, WAMK - Kingston, NY, W271BF - Highland, NY, WRUN - Utica, NY, WGHQ - Beacon, NY, KAMU - College Station, TX, KRPS - Pittsburg, KS,WUIS - Springfield, IL, CISE - Wolseley, SK (Canada), KISU - Pocatello, ID, W215BG - Milford, PA, CRIS Radio - Windsor, CT, WUOW - Oneonta, NY, WRFA - Jamestown, NY, KXCV - Maryville, MO, WKCC - Kankakee, IL, WWES - Mt. Kisco, NY, KENW - Portales, NM, CISE - Wolseley, SK (Canada), W248AN - Cooperstown, NY, WRUC - Schenectady, NY, WGSU - Geneseo, NY, WAMK - Dover Plains, NY, Science Zone Radio, WSCL - Salisbury, MD, WSDL - Ocean City, MD, KRNW - Chillicothe, MO, WNUB - Northfield, VT, Armed Forces Radio, KNAU, AZ - Arizona Public Radio, KTWH, Two Harbors, MN, KTNA, Talkeetna, AK, WUFT-FM – Gainesville, FL, WBZC - Pemberton, NJ, KPBM, Poplar Bluff, MO, WLRH - Huntsville, AL, WITC - Cazenovia, NY, KUSU – Logan, UT, WRDL – Ashland, OH, KSLU-FM - Hammond, LA

Funding support comes from the American Association of Colleges and Universities:

Surviving cancer may come with neurological side effects as well.

Jenny M. Munson, professor and director at the Cancer Research Center – Roanoke at the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at Virginia Tech, determines why this is.

Faculty Bio:

Tracking fluid flow to understand cancer, aging and women’s health.

How does the pace of fluid flow affect tumor spread and memory loss?

In the Munson Lab, we study the tumor microenvironment in cancers, including glioblastoma, the deadliest form of brain cancer. Our research focuses on the emerging research area of fluid flow. Cancer’s invasion of the brain follows distinctive routes that correlate with interstitial and bulk flow pathways. In brain cancer, fluid flow increases between cells within the tissue, specifically across the invasive edge of the tumor where cells are prone to both interact with the surrounding brain tissue and to evade localized, transport-limited therapies. We believe fluid flow can alter how a tumor responds to drug therapies. Not only is fluid flow important in cancer, but also is a contributor to normal function in tissues and other diseases. To this end, we are translating many of our methods and hypotheses to understand the role of fluid flow in immunity, aging, and women’s health.

Our methods combine in vivo imaging methodology with in vitro tissue engineered models to examine the role of interstitial fluid flow and the cellular components of the microenvironment in cancer progression and treatment. We use patient-derived cells to create personalized models of disease to test hypotheses related to fluid and tissue transport in tumors and the brain and to identify new drug targets and treatment approaches.

Our goal is to find new targets in the tissue microenvironment by examining cancer and disease in the proper context, which includes dynamic fluid flows, multiple cell types, and patient-specific parameterization. By including the proper tissue environment, we believe that we can better identify underlying causes and contributors to disease and thus be better able to target and test new drugs for patients.

Transcript:

Chemotherapy saves lives, but many patients experience lingering “chemo brain” — problems with memory, focus, and mental clarity. Women, especially those treated for breast cancer, are disproportionately affected.

We investigated whether the brain’s lymphatic system — vessels that clear waste and help regulate immune function — might play a role. Using a three-tiered approach that combined animal models and the first human tissue-engineered model of meningeal lymphatics, we studied how two common chemotherapy drugs affect this system.

Both drugs disrupted lymphatic health, but the effects were strongest with docetaxel. Vessels became smaller, with fewer loops and branches — clear signs of impaired growth, regeneration, and function. To confirm functional deficit, we used advanced MRI and showed reduced movement of fluid in the brain.

When mice treated with docetaxel were given memory tests, they performed worse, linking these structural changes to cognitive dysfunction. The pattern resembles what we see in other conditions tied to poor lymphatic drainage of the brain, such as Alzheimer’s disease.

These findings suggest that chemo brain may partly arise from damage to the brain’s lymphatic system. That raises the possibility of new therapies aimed not at the cancer itself, but at preserving cognitive health — through pharmaceuticals, lifestyle changes like sleep and exercise, or other interventions.

By revealing how chemotherapy reshapes the lymphatic system, this work underscores the importance of addressing not only cancer survival, but also the long-term neurological side effects that shape quality of life.

Read More:

[VT News] - Unraveling the secrets of ‘chemo brain’

How can we use technology to clean the air around us?

Petra Fromme, Regents Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry and director of the Biodesign Center for Applied Structural Discovery at Arizona State University, examines how humidity can play a role in doing so.

Faculty Bio:

Petra Fromme, Regents’ Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry and Director of the Biodesign Center for Applied Structural Discovery at Arizona State University, investigates the structure and function of biological and synthetic systems to advance solutions in energy, health, and sustainability.
Petra Fromme, Ph.D., received her doctoral degree and habilitation in physical chemistry from the Technical University of Berlin in Germany, following her studies in biochemistry at the Free University of Berlin. She began her academic career at the Max Volmer Institute in Berlin before joining Arizona State University in 2002, where she has since become a leader in interdisciplinary research and innovation in structural biology and biophysics.
Her research focuses on uncovering the molecular mechanisms of energy conversion and biological function, particularly through studies of membrane proteins such as photosystems. She has pioneered the use of X-ray free-electron lasers for serial femtosecond crystallography, enabling high-resolution structural determination of biomolecules and capturing dynamic processes. Her work has resulted in many impactful peer-reviewed publications and has significantly advanced the fields of structural biology and renewable energy research.
Her current research also explores the development of advanced materials for direct air capture of carbon dioxide, focusing on moisture-swing systems that operate using changes in humidity. By studying nanoscale to macroscale structures, using different X-ray scattering and imaging techniques her team is working to design energy-efficient technologies to mitigate climate change.
Professor Fromme has received numerous honors for her contributions to science, including the prestigious Anfinsen Award from the Protein Society. Through her leadership at the Biodesign Institute and her mentorship of students and researchers, she continues to drive innovation at the intersection of structural biology, energy, and environmental sustainability.

Transcript:

Fighting climate change often means building bigger machines—industrial systems that pull carbon dioxide from the air using heat, pressure or a lot of energy.

But what if the air itself could do the work?

My research is looking to step a big step forward in the fight against climate change; developed together with my graduate student and the first author of this published study, Gayathri Yogaganeshan and our team.

Our work is on materials that can remove carbon dioxide directly from the air, using something as simple as changes in humidity. When the air is dry, the material captures CO₂. When the air becomes humid, it releases that CO₂ again. This process is called a moisture swing, and it allows us to capture carbon without using large amounts of energy, heat, or pressure.

What makes this research special is that we didn’t just test whether the materials work, we looked deep inside them, all the way down to the nanoscale. Using advanced imaging techniques, we discovered that tiny structural features, thousands of times smaller than a human hair, control how water and CO₂ move through the material.

We found that even small changes in humidity can subtly rearrange these structures, which in turn affects how efficiently carbon is captured and released. One of the materials we studied, a porous resin, showed particularly strong performance because its internal structure allows gases to move more easily.

This work helps us understand how to design better materials, ones that are more efficient, more durable, and capable of operating on a large scale.

Ultimately, our goal is to create technologies that can clean the air around us, helping to reduce atmospheric CO₂ and mitigate climate change.

Read More:

[ASU News] - Moisture-powered materials could make cleaning CO2 from air more efficient

What motivates runners?

Emily Balcetis, associate professor of psychology at New York University, examines this question.

Faculty Bio:

Dr. Emily Balcetis is an Associate Professor of Psychology at New York University and author of Clearer, Closer, Better: How Successful People See the World. She is an award-winning behavioral scientist and author. She directs a research lab that pioneers the scientific investigation of motivation, uncovering previously unknown strategies that sustain people’s efforts to meet their goals. Dr. Balcetis focuses on issues including diversity in leadership, disparities in health, bias in the legal system, polarization in public opinion, and safety in cyber behavior, among others. She has appeared as a host for National Geographic and has served as a consultant for General Electric, Nestle, Nike, Pixar, the New York Times, Prudential Financial, Sandoz Pharmaceutical, and other industry leaders. Her research has been supported by grants from the National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health. She has delivered two TEDx talks on motivation science and polarization in public opinion and earned her PhD from Cornell University.

Transcript:

Physical training shapes running over months and years. But what allows runners to adapt in real time? The answer is not just in their legs and lungs, it’s in their eyes. My research shows that visual attention gives runners a flexible way to support motivation and improve their performance while they’re on the move.
Visual attention works like a spotlight. It can be wide, taking in what’s on the left, right, above and below us. Or attention can be narrowly focused tightly on a single point ahead. Across multiple studies, I find that runners systematically shift the scope of this attentional spotlight as they progress through a run. And when they do, they can run farther and faster.
At the start of a run, people tend to use a wider scope of attention. They scan their environment, monitor others around them, and orient themselves to the course. But as physical demands increase and fatigue sets in, runners increasingly narrow their visual focus—often locking their gaze onto a small, goal-relevant target, like a sign, a bend in the road, or the finish line.
That shift matters. When people are experimentally instructed to narrow their attention rather than keep it wide, they move faster, investing more effort, and experience less physical pain—even though the distance and physical demands remain unchanged. Narrowing attention appears to make the goal appear closer and more attainable, increasing perceptions of their own ability to surmount the challenges that lie ahead, and helping runners persist when effort becomes costly.
Notably, more experienced and faster runners utilize this attentional narrowing strategy more than do slower runners. Faster runners focus their attention narrowly more intensely earlier on and scale up their narrowing as they progress through a run. The advantage faster runners have is not just physical conditioning—it’s also how they strategically deploy attention over time.
Together, these findings suggest that visual attention is more than a passive perceptual process. It can function as a tool runners can strategically leverage. By learning when to broaden focus and when to narrow it, runners can better match their strategies to the changing demands of a goal—and sometimes, run farther and faster simply by changing where they look.

What are the barriers to recruitment for women in law enforcement?

Amber Kerwin, professor of the practice of criminal justice at Hartwick College, looks into this question.

Faculty Bio:

Amber M. Kerwin is a professor of practice of criminal justice in the Sociology, Criminology & Social Services Department in the Division of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Hartwick College in Oneonta, New York.
A former police officer and investigator, Kerwin’s areas of expertise include criminal justice, corrections, juvenile delinquency, policing, and police investigations. Among her recent courses taught: Introduction to Criminal Justice; Corrections & Punishment; Policing in a Democratic Society; and Introduction to Law.
Her latest research, supported in part through the Hartwick College Faculty Research Grant Program, focuses on the barriers to recruitment and hiring of women in law enforcement.

Transcript:

Women police officers bring many positive benefits to their jobs in law enforcement. Studies have shown that women are better communicators, that they’re less likely to use physical force, and that victims of certain crimes feel more comfortable talking to them.

Still, women make up a small percentage of law enforcement. Only 12 to 13 percent of total law enforcement officers in the United States currently are women. As a former police officer and investigator, I am interested in understanding why this is the case.

My research focuses on the barriers to recruitment and hiring of women in law enforcement. It is important to me to identify, explore and better understand what prevents women from joining the police department or pursuing law-enforcement careers--and also understanding what makes it so hard to retain them.

Through interviews with women who currently or previously worked in law enforcement, my research looks at the challenges they encounter in what remains an historically male-dominated profession. Lack of maternity- and family-related leave policies, uniforms not specifically designed for women, lack of acceptance, and harassment are all among the issues women have expressed in these conversations.

Taking a closer look at the situation to gain more perspective will provide information to develop potential policy recommendations for police departments. This could help them create a more welcoming environment for women so they’re more comfortable working there.

Right now, young girls and women don’t see a lot of other women in law enforcement so it’s not something that they have on their radar. A solution for that would be having more women officers do outreach to high schoolers or college students to do a more targeted recruitment effort for women.

As communities across the country consider new options, this research will shed new light on the barriers to recruitment of women in law enforcement.

Can artificial intelligence help us detect brain cancer early?

Dimitrios Mathios, assistant professor of neurosurgery at Washington University in St. Louis, takes a non-invasive look.

Faculty Bio:

Dimitrios Mathios, MD, is an assistant professor of neurosurgery and director of the Molecular Neuro-oncology Lab at WashU’s School of Medicine. His research focuses on using cancer immunology, genetics, and epigenetics to develop non-invasive early detection of brain tumors, when they are easily removable or curable with other treatments.

Dr. Mathios has published more than 50 peer-reviewed articles in journals like Nature Genetics, Nature Communications, Science Translational Medicine, Cancer Discovery, the Journal of Neurosurgery, the Journal of Neuro-Oncology, and Neurosurgery. His work has resulted in numerous awards, including the Young Investigator Physician Scientist Research Award at John Hopkins University School of Medicine, where he completed his residency, in 2022, and the American Association for Cancer Research-Conquer Cancer Foundation’s ASCO Young Investigator Award for Translational Cancer Research in 2020.

Transcript:

Diagnosing brain cancer at its earliest stages, like any cancer, is critical. But there are currently no screening methods available to detect brain cancer before a patient becomes symptomatic, or when the symptoms are as commonplace as a headache or slight personality change. As a result, brain cancer often goes undetected when treatment is the easiest, most effective, and least risky.

That’s why, in 2019 I began researching a way to develop a noninvasive, blood-based test for early detection of brain cancer.

Medical researchers have been looking for and finding ways to detect different kinds of cancer through blood-based tests for more than 15 years. They do this by identifying markers or other abnormalities in the blood that signal the presence of cancerous cells.

But brain cancer is one of the most challenging cancers to detect in the blood. This is because the blood-brain barrier, a layer of cells that protects the brain from toxins and pathogens in the blood, prevents cancer markers from entering the bloodstream in as high concentrations as in other cancers. For this reason, detection of brain tumors requires developing more sensitive approaches for biomarker detection.

This year, we reached a significant milestone in our research. We found that we could use artificial intelligence to analyze DNA fragments in the bloodstream for evidence of brain cancer. With this approach, we successfully detected brain cancer in about 75% of a cohort of more than 500 patients.

The next step is to conduct a larger trial to confirm our findings in a broader population. Our end goal? To create a reliable test that emergency room doctors and primary care physicians can use when patients come to them with subtle, non-specific neurologic symptoms, giving those patients a quicker diagnosis and a better chance of survival.

Read More:

[Cancer Discovery] - Detection of Brain Cancer Using Genome-wide Cell-free DNA Fragmentomes

Dimitrios Mathios, assistant professor of neurosurgery at Washington University in St. Louis, takes a non-invasive look at detecting brain cancer with artificial intelligence.

Tuesday

Amber Kerwin, professor of the practice of criminal justice at Hartwick College, looks into the barriers for women entering law enforcement professions.

Wednesday

Emily Balcetis, associate professor of psychology at New York University, examines what motivates runners.

Thursday

Petra Fromme, Regents Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry and director of the Biodesign Center for Applied Structural Discovery at Arizona State University, examines how humidity can play a role in fighting climate change.

Friday

Jenny M. Munson, professor and director at the Cancer Research Center – Roanoke at the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at Virginia Tech, unravels the secrets of “chemo brain”.

Catch up with The Academic Minute from 6/15 - 6/19

Monday

Stephen Santa Ramirez - University at Buffalo
The Importance of Embracing Historically Marginalized Students

Stephen Santa-Ramirez is an associate professor of higher education at the University at Buffalo Graduate School of Education.

His experiences in U.S. higher education and student affairs include work in multicultural and LGBT+ affairs, residential life and housing services, and migrant student services. In addition to UB, Santa-Ramirez has taught for the Philadelphia Freedom Schools, Michigan State University, the University of Texas at Arlington, and Arizona State University.

Tuesday

Jordana Maisel - University at Buffalo
Inclusive Design is More Than Just Curb Cuts

Jordana Maisel is director of the Research for the Center for Inclusive Design and Environmental Access (IDEA Center) at the University at Buffalo School of Architecture and Planning.

Wednesday

Sambandmurthy Ganapathy - University at Buffalo
The Human Brain Offers Clues to How to Make AI More Energy Efficient

Sambandamurthy Ganapathy is a physicist who studies nanoscale materials and devices and how they relate to cutting-edge phenomena like superconductivity and resistive switching.

His experimental research group, which uses advanced nanofabrication techniques, designs and develops devices smaller than one micrometer that can explore the fundamental, microscopic mechanisms that dictate physical properties.

Thursday

Rohini Srihari - University at Buffalo
AI Can Give Voice to People Who Cannot Speak

Rohini Srihari is a scientist, educator and entrepreneur.

A professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University at Buffalo, Srihari’s research and teaching focuses on artificial intelligence for social good, conversational AI, deep learning in natural language processing and other fields.

Friday

Thomas Grant - University at Buffalo
Predicting Protein Movements to Speed Up Drug Discovery

Thomas Grant is a structural biologist whose research focuses on developing innovative analytical methods to uncover the structure and dynamics of biological macromolecules.

The Academic Minute airs on the WAMC Northeast Public Radio network at 7:30 a.m. and 3:56 p.m. weekdays.

It is also carried by:

KTCU - Dallas-Ft. Worth, TX, KMPB - Dillon, CO, KUCR - Riverside, CA, KTSW - San Marcos, TX, WNAA - Greensboro, NC, WYPL - Memphis, TN, WERB - Berlin, CT, WITR - Rochester, NY, W257BL - Oneonta, NY, W226AC - Troy, NY, WAMC - Albany, NY, WCAN - Canajoharie, NY, W246BJ - Hudson, NY, WAMQ - Great Barrington, MA, WUSR - Scranton, PA, WSUM - Madison. WI, WLUR - Lexington, VA, RADIO READING SERVICE OF MS - Jackson, MS, W240CR - Peekskill, NY, W225BM - Scotia, NY, W299AG - Newburgh, NY, W280DJ - Beacon, NY, W295AA - Middletown, NY, W243BZ - Ellenville, NY,W296BD - Warwick, NY, WOSR - Middletown, NY, WLNA - Beacon, NY, WBNR - Beacon, NY,WCEL - Plattsburgh, NY, WANC - Ticonderoga, NY, KJZA - Kingman, AZ, KJZA - Kingman, AZ,KJZP - Kingman, AZ, KJZK - Kingman, AZ, WAMK - Kingston, NY, W271BF - Highland, NY, WRUN - Utica, NY, WGHQ - Beacon, NY, KAMU - College Station, TX, KRPS - Pittsburg, KS,WUIS - Springfield, IL, CISE - Wolseley, SK (Canada), KISU - Pocatello, ID, W215BG - Milford, PA, CRIS Radio - Windsor, CT, WUOW - Oneonta, NY, WRFA - Jamestown, NY, KXCV - Maryville, MO, WKCC - Kankakee, IL, WWES - Mt. Kisco, NY, KENW - Portales, NM, CISE - Wolseley, SK (Canada), W248AN - Cooperstown, NY, WRUC - Schenectady, NY, WGSU - Geneseo, NY, WAMK - Dover Plains, NY, Science Zone Radio, WSCL - Salisbury, MD, WSDL - Ocean City, MD, KRNW - Chillicothe, MO, WNUB - Northfield, VT, Armed Forces Radio, KNAU, AZ - Arizona Public Radio, KTWH, Two Harbors, MN, KTNA, Talkeetna, AK, WUFT-FM – Gainesville, FL, WBZC - Pemberton, NJ, KPBM, Poplar Bluff, MO, WLRH - Huntsville, AL, WITC - Cazenovia, NY, KUSU – Logan, UT, WRDL – Ashland, OH, KSLU-FM - Hammond, LA

Funding support comes from the American Association of Colleges and Universities:

On University at Buffalo Week: Speeding up drug discovery will have many benefits.

Tom Grant, assistant professor in the Department of Structural Biology in the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, looks into doing so.

Faculty Bio:

Thomas Grant is a structural biologist whose research focuses on developing innovative analytical methods to uncover the structure and dynamics of biological macromolecules.

Trained at the University at Buffalo, where he earned a BS in Mathematical Physics (2007) and a PhD in Structural and Computational Biology (2013), Grant’s research combines rigorous quantitative training with experimental expertise in X-ray crystallography, small-angle scattering, and X-ray free electron laser methodologies.

His work integrates advanced computational algorithm development with cutting-edge experimental tools to generate high-resolution structural models and time-resolved “molecular movies,” illuminating how proteins and nucleic acids function within the cell and informing rational drug design.

In 2025, he was awarded a $2.18 million grant from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, part of the National Institutes of Health, to create a new artificial intelligence-powered tool that improves scientists’ understanding of how proteins move and change shape within the human body.

Transcript:

In the United States, it often takes 10 to 15 years to develop a new drug from its initial discovery to market approval. In my lab, we’re working on an artificial intelligence-driven project called SWAXSFold that we hope will dramatically speed up this process.

So let me explain what SWAXSFold is.

A few years ago, Google DeepMind released an algorithm called AlphaFold. It has had a major impact in biomedical research, winning the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. AlphaFold predicts 3D protein structures. By identifying these structures, scientists can target them with drugs that treat disease.

But the reality is that many proteins are dynamic. They move around and can have many different shapes – that’s how they function and operate. This limits AlphaFold’s usefulness for drug discovery.

That’s where our expertise in “SWAXS” comes in. SWAXS stands for small- and wide-angle X-ray scattering.

SWAXS uses X-rays to take snapshots of proteins as they move around and change shape. It can see the different conformations a protein adopts, which is exactly what AlphaFold can’t do. So we’re developing SWAXSFold to integrate SWAXS data directly into this structure prediction process.

As you can imagine, this requires intense computational resources.

Our team is utilizing New York State’s supercomputing facility, Empire AI, to train SWAXSFold with our database of nearly a half million protein structures.

As SWAXSFold learns from AI, it will give us unparalleled insight on how proteins change their shape, function and operate. In turn, this will improve our ability to predict protein structures and, thus, make it much easier and quicker to identify drug targets that treat everything from cancer to Alzheimer’s disease.

Read More:

[UBuffalo] - Researcher’s AI-powered drug discovery tool supported by Empire AI

On University at Buffalo Week: Can we use AI to help give those with motor neuron diseases their voices back?

Rohini Srihari, professor of computer science and engineering at the School of Engineering and Applied Science, looks to do so.

Faculty Bios:

Rohini Srihari is a scientist, educator and entrepreneur.

A professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University at Buffalo, Srihari’s research and teaching focuses on artificial intelligence for social good, conversational AI, deep learning in natural language processing and other fields.

Her work has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity and other agencies. She has worked extensively with the U.S. government in developing innovative multilingual text mining solutions.

Srihari’s recent research focuses on advancing the state-of-the-art in socialbots capable of engaging in empathetic, interesting and purposeful conversations. This also involves building trustworthy socialbots for combating disinformation, assisting the disabled and other purposes.

She has published over 100 research papers in computer science journals and conference proceedings. Her Google Scholar h-index is 40. She is also the author of two U.S. patents, one on multilingual text mining.

She has served as Chief Data Scientist at PeaceTech Lab, a non-profit incubated within the United States Institute of Peace in Washington, DC. She has also founded and directed technology start-ups, focusing on “big data” analytics solutions for various markets. Two of these companies were subsequently acquired by large media analytics companies.

Srihari received her B. Math degree from the University of Waterloo (Canada) and her PhD in Computer Science from the University at Buffalo.

Transcript:

People with motor neuron diseases such as ALS and cerebral palsy often lose the ability to speak. When this happens, they use modified keyboards or eyegaze tracking systems to communicate. But to speak, they rely upon augmentative and alternative communication devices. The late physicist Stephen Hawking is an example. Typically, people can generate about five words per minute with these devices due to their reduced motor abilities.

This limits them to simple exchanges such as: “I need a glass of water.” But what these people really want is to engage in meaningful conversation.

We can help with artificial intelligence, specifically an area of AI research known as personalization of large language models.

Large language models are the same technology powering ChatGPT and other popular chatbots. To personalize them, the chatbot needs to know a lot about the user. It needs to know their own experiences. It needs to understand their personality. It possibly needs to recognize the gestures that they use when communicating.

Here’s how it works. The user is talking to someone, the other person says something, the chatbot listens to what they say, and the speech is transcribed into text that’s fed into our chatbot. The chatbot then generates three possible responses for the user. The user either selects one of those responses as, “this is what I want to say,” or they can override that and say, “no, this isn’t what I meant.” So the goal is, with minimal input from the user, to be able to generate much longer responses, but also allowing the user to steer the conversation.

We’re already testing this technology with people whose communication is limited by motor neuron diseases. And we’re running the AI models through powerful supercomputers. We’re hopeful this technology will soon be ready for widespread use, improving the lives of countless people.