At Omenn-Darling Bioengineering Institute, quest for better lives starts with curiosity

By Jeffrey Labrecque and Steven Schultz Princeton’s new Omenn-Darling Bioengineering Institute will promote new directions in research, education and innovation at the intersection of engineering and the life sciences while serving as the home for Continue Reading →

Public-private partnership grants to speed the arrival of fusion energy

By John Greenwald An unprecedented six new public-private partnership grants have been awarded to the U.S. Department of Energy’s Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, which is managed by Princeton University, for research on the science and Continue Reading →

Climate research collaboration grows with renewed support

By Samantha Schuh A highly successful 50-year collaboration between Princeton’s Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences (AOS) Program and the nearby Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL) has been renewed for another five years by the National Oceanic Continue Reading →

Princeton Language and Intelligence initiative pushes the boundaries of large AI models

By Liz Fuller-Wright A new initiative aims to enhance our fundamental understanding of AI, enable its use in academic disciplines, and examine AI’s safety, policy and ethical implications. The Princeton Language and Intelligence (PLI) initiative, Continue Reading →

Simon Gikandi and Chika Okeke-Agulu elected to British Academy for contributions to the humanities

By Jamie Saxon Simon Gikandi, the Class of 1943 University Professor of English, and Chika Okeke-Agulu, professor of art and archaeology and African American studies, have been elected corresponding fellows of the British Academy, in Continue Reading →

Elliot Lieb wins American Physical Society’s highest honor, and mathematics’ Gauss Prize

By Liz Fuller-Wright Elliott Lieb, Princeton’s Eugene Higgins Professor of Physics, Emeritus, and professor of mathematical physics, emeritus, received the 2022 American Physical Society (APS) Medal for Exceptional Achievement in Research for “major contributions to Continue Reading →

Dean’s welcome

Pablo Debenedetti

Expanding spaces, expanding knowledge

Visiting Princeton today, you’ll see a landscape of expansion. At construction sites across campus, we are adding four science and engineering buildings, a new home for the Princeton Art Museum, and new residences and facilities for graduate and undergraduate students.

Physical growth often mirrors other types of growth that are essential to what it means to be a university – a place that fosters the expansion of the boundaries of knowledge, as well as personal and professional growth through research, teaching and learning. Over the years, Princeton has balanced its comparatively small size with a remarkable level of research impact, as measured by journal citations and other metrics that indicate the degree to which its contributions to human knowledge influence the scholarly community and the world at large. Princeton is consistently ranked as one of the top 10 research universities in the world.

Research spending at Princeton on awards funded by the federal government, industry and foundations has increased steadily over the past decade, enabling new projects and research directions across the humanities, the social sciences, the natural sciences and engineering. Reflecting this exciting growth in the scope and intellectual diversity of our research programs, Princeton is now home to the Space Physics laboratory, which is developing NASA-funded instruments to study the sun and solar corona, with the goal of understanding the universe and helping to protect earthly communications against solar storms. Growth is also occurring in research areas such as the humanities; artificial intelligence, through the hiring of new faculty in the Department of Computer Science; and development economics, as reflected by the joint program between the Department of Economics and the School of Public and International Affairs.

Through these pages, we invite you to meet our faculty members and their teams who work to expand knowledge, and in so doing strengthen the vitality of Princeton’s commitment to education, research and service. As the jackhammers and construction vehicles continue their work, we look forward to the new opportunities that our campus expansion will bring to reaffirming and strengthening Princeton’s commitment to research in the service of humanity.

Pablo G. Debenedetti
Dean for Research
Class of 1950 Professor in Engineering and Applied Science
Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering

Wolf Prize goes to Bonnie Bassler and Elizabeth Diller

By Liz Fuller-Wright and Jamie Saxon Bonnie Bassler, the Squibb Professor in Molecular Biology and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, shares the Wolf Prize in Chemistry with Carolyn Bertozzi of Stanford University and Benjamin Continue Reading →

Breakthrough Prize goes to Cliff Brangwynne

By Scott Lyon Princeton bioengineer Clifford Brangwynne won the 2023 Breakthrough Prize for Life Sciences in recognition of his contributions to the study of living cells. Brangwynne’s research has changed how scientists understand cellular organization, Continue Reading →

Bhargava, Guenther, Schor and Weisenfeld receive 2022 Guggenheim Fellowships

By Jamie Saxon Four Princeton University faculty members received 2022 Guggenheim Fellowships: Manjul Bhargava, the Robert C. Gunning *55 and R. Brandon Fradd ’83 Professor in Mathematics, was awarded the Guggenheim in the field of Continue Reading →

‘Fantastic giant tortoise,’ believed extinct, confirmed alive in the Galápagos

By Liz Fuller-Wright A tortoise from a Galápagos species long believed extinct has been found alive and now confirmed to be a living member of the species. The tortoise, named Fernanda after her Fernandina Island Continue Reading →

Solar technology marks major milestone

By Scott Lyon Researchers have developed the first perovskite solar cell with a commercially viable lifetime, marking a major milestone for an emerging class of renewable energy technology. The research team projects their device can Continue Reading →

Ben Bernanke, former Princeton professor and economics department chair, receives Nobel Prize in economic sciences

By Denise Valenti Ben Bernanke, a Princeton professor of economics and public affairs from 1985 to 2002, chairman of the economics department from 1996 to 2002, and founder of the Bendheim Center for Finance, is Continue Reading →

The Matter of Black Living: The Aesthetic Experiment of Racial Data, 1880–1930

University of Chicago Press, April 2022 Autumn Womack, Assistant Professor of African American Studies and English As the nineteenth century came to a close and questions concerning the future of African American life reached a Continue Reading →

India Is Broken: A People Betrayed, Independence to Today

Stanford University Press, Feb. 2023 Ashoka Mody, Charles and Marie Robertson Visiting Professor in International Economic Policy When Indian leaders first took control of their government in 1947, they proclaimed the ideals of national unity Continue Reading →