COMPUTER SCIENCE: Armchair victory: Computers that recognize everyday objects

JIANXIONG XIAO TYPES “CHAIR” INTO GOOGLE’S search engine and watches as hundreds of images populate his screen. He isn’t shopping — he is using the images to teach his computer what a chair looks like. Continue Reading →

COMPUTER SCIENCE: Fierce, Fiercer, Fiercest: Software enables rapid creations

A NEW SOFTWARE PROGRAM MAKES IT EASY for novices to create computer-based 3-D models using simple instructions such as “make it look scarier.” The software could be useful for building models for 3-D printing and Continue Reading →

COMPUTER SCIENCE: Internet traffic moves smoothly with Pyretic

AT 60 HUDSON ST. IN LOWER MANHATTAN, a fortress-like building houses one of the Internet’s busiest exchange points. Packets of data zip into the building, are routed to their next destination, and zip out again, Continue Reading →

COMPUTER SCIENCE: Security check: A strategy for verifying software that could prevent bugs

IN APRIL 2014, INTERNET USERS WERE SHOCKED to learn of the Heartbleed bug, a vulnerability in the open-source software used to encrypt Internet content and passwords. The bug existed for two years before it was Continue Reading →

Annual Report

RESEARCH BY THE NUMBERS Fiscal year 2014   Sponsored Research Projects $199.8 M  Princeton University campus expenditures $79.5 M U.S. Department of Energy’s Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) expenditures 1,373 Total sponsored research projects 262 Projects supported by corporate or foundation funding   Continue Reading →

RESILIENT SHORES: After Sandy, climate scientists and architects explore how to co-exist with rising tides

AFTER THE WIND, RAIN AND WAVES of Hurricane Sandy subsided, many of the modest homes in the Chelsea Heights section of Atlantic City, New Jersey, were filled to their windows with murky water. Residents returned Continue Reading →

Poetry in Silico: Bringing digital tools to the study of poetry

ONCE UPON A MIDNIGHT DREARY, an English professor at Princeton sat in her office, musing over many volumes of forgotten lore about the right way to read a poem. There were handbooks, essays, letters from Continue Reading →

Computer visions: A selection of research projects in Computer Science

Princeton’s Department of Computer Science has strong groups in theory, networks/systems, graphics/vision, programming languages, security/policy, machine learning, and computational biology. Find out what the researchers have been up to lately in these stories: Armchair victory: Computers Continue Reading →

A RISKY PROPOSITION: Has global interdependence made us vulnerable?

RISK IS EVERYWHERE. There’s a risk, for example, that volcanic ash will damage aircraft engines. So when a volcano erupted in Iceland in April 2010, concerns about the plume of volcanic ash disrupted air travel Continue Reading →

FOUR PROFESSORS Receive Presidential Science Awards

Four professors received the 2013 Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, the highest honor bestowed by the U.S. government on science and engineering professionals in the early stages of their research careers. Associate Continue Reading →

SIMON LEVIN Receives Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement

Simon Levin, the George M. Moffett Professor of Biology, was awarded the 2014 Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement for bridging ecological research and environmental policy, economics and social science. Levin received an award of $200,000 Continue Reading →

YING-SHIH YU Receives Inaugural Tang Prize in Sinology

Ying-shih Yu, the Gordon Wu ’58 Professor of Chinese Studies, Emeritus, was awarded the inaugural Tang Prize in Sinology in 2014. The Tang Prize Foundation selection committee recognized Yu for his “mastery of and insight Continue Reading →

DANIEL KAHNEMAN Receives Presidential Medal of Freedom

Daniel Kahneman, the Eugene Higgins Professor of psychology, emeritus, and a Nobel laureate in economics, is one of 16 people who received the Presidential Medal of Freedom — the highest civilian honor in the United Continue Reading →

JILL DOLAN Receives Distinguished Scholar Award for Theater Research

Jill Dolan, the Annan Professor in English, professor of theater in the Lewis Center for the Arts, and director of the Program in Gender and Sexuality Studies, received the 2013 Distinguished Scholar Award from the Continue Reading →

PETER SARNAK Receives Wolf Prize in Mathematics

Peter Sarnak, the Eugene Higgins Professor of Mathematics, was awarded the 2014 Wolf Prize in Mathematics. The Wolf Prizes are awarded annually by the Wolf Foundation in the fields of agriculture, chemistry, mathematics, medicine, physics Continue Reading →

House of Debt: How they (and you) caused the great recession, and how we can prevent it from happening again

Authors: Atif Mian and Amir Sufi Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 2014 The Great American Recession resulted in the loss of 8 million jobs between 2007 and 2009. More than 4 million homes were lost Continue Reading →

Shell Structures for Architecture: Form Finding and Optimization

Edited by: Sigrid Adriaenssens, Philippe Block, Diederik Veenendaal and Chris Williams, with a foreword by Pritzker Prize Winner Shigeru Ban Publisher: Routledge: Taylor and Francis, 2014 This book presents contemporary design methods for shell and Continue Reading →

The First Civil Right: How Liberals Built Prison America

Author: Naomi Murakawa Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2014 The explosive rise in the U.S. incarceration rate in the second half of the 20th century, and the racial transformation of the prison population from mostly white Continue Reading →

Evening News: Optics, Astronomy, and Journalism in Early Modern Europe

Author: Eileen Reeves Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014 Professor of Comparative Literature Eileen Reeves examines a web of connections between journalism, optics and astronomy in early modern Europe, devoting particular attention to the ways Continue Reading →

Wetlands provide solutions for agricultural runoff

A PATCHWORK OF SMALL LAKES, forests and marshes surrounded by farms and suburbs, the Assunpink Wildlife Management Area in central New Jersey is an ideal place to track the effects of agricultural nitrogen runoff on Continue Reading →

The City Lost and Found: Exhibition examines creative responses to urban changes in ’60s, ’70s America

THE AMERICAN CITY OF THE 1960S AND 1970S witnessed seismic physical changes and social transformations, including shifting demographics and political protests as well as the aftermath of decades of urban renewal. In this climate of Continue Reading →

Striking resemblance: A physical law may govern very different biological activities

FLOCKS OF BIRDS FLY ACROSS THE SKY in shifting configurations. In the retina of an eye, millions of neurons ignite in ever-changing combinations, translating light into meaningful images. Yet both of these seemingly random behaviors Continue Reading →

Africa’s poison ‘apple’ provides common ground for elephants and livestock

AFRICAN WILDLIFE OFTEN RUN AFOUL of ranchers securing food and water resources for their animals, but the interests of fauna and farmer might finally be unified by the “Sodom apple,” a toxic invasive plant that Continue Reading →

No more mirrors: a new way of making molecules for tracking disease

RADIOACTIVITY IS USUALLY ASSOCIATED with nuclear fallout or comic-book spider bites, but in very small amounts it can be a useful tool for diagnosing diseases. Small molecules containing a radioactive isotope of fluorine, called 18F, Continue Reading →

Light-splitting crystals from inexpensive ingredients

HIGHLY PURIFIED CRYSTALS that split light with uncanny precision are key parts of high-powered lenses, specialized optics and, potentially, computers that manipulate light instead of electricity. But producing these crystals by current techniques, such as Continue Reading →

New technology enables computing with the wave of a hand

A FORWARD-THINKING TEAM of electrical engineering students has designed an interactive display surface that allows users to control objects on a screen simply by gesturing in the air. The SpaceTouch surface can either replace an Continue Reading →

Entrepreneurship at Princeton: An interview with Mung Chiang

PROFESSOR MUNG CHIANG has integrated fundamental research on computer network optimization with several successful business ventures. As director of the Keller Center, which expands the scope of engineering education to include leadership and societal issues, Continue Reading →

Focus on undergraduate research: Power grid solutions in Nigeria

GROWING UP IN LAGOS, NIGERIA, Oladoyin Phillips was accustomed to the power outages that struck just as she was about to use her computer or charge her cellphone. “I was frustrated on those afternoons,” she Continue Reading →

Philosophical differences: What does physics tell us about the real world?

IN COLLEGE, PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY Hans Halvorson was dismayed by the idea of having to choose between science and the humanities, so he blazed his own path, combining philosophy with physics and mathematics. Why are Continue Reading →

Math and music spark student’s research interests

WHILE PRINCETON SENIOR Alexander Iriza, of Astoria, New York, credits his parents for sparking his interest in math — his mother gave him math workbooks when he was a toddler — that was merely “a Continue Reading →

Emotional map illuminates an iconic rock song

IN A TYPICAL ROCK SONG, a few chords and a simple rhythm form the foundation for catchy lyrics that carry the listener along for three or four minutes. Expand these elements into a 20-minute song, Continue Reading →

How to train your worm to explore the circuits involved in learning

AS AN UNDERGRADUATE, Angelina Sylvain was fascinated to learn that devastating declines in cognition and muscle coordination could be caused by changes in a single gene — the cause of Huntington’s disease. She was intrigued Continue Reading →

Study casts doubt on fairness of U.S. democracy

AFFLUENT INDIVIDUALS AND BUSINESS CORPORATIONS have vastly more influence on federal government policy than average citizens, according to research by Princeton University and Northwestern University. The researchers used a data set comprised of 1,779 policy Continue Reading →

New mineral: Steinhardtite

A MINERAL DISCOVERED to be of meteoritic origin has been named “steinhardtite” in honor of Paul Steinhardt, Princeton’s Albert Einstein Professor in Science and a professor of physics. The name was approved by the Commission Continue Reading →

A farewell to arms? New technique could aid nuclear disarmament

SCIENTISTS at Princeton University and the U.S. Department of Energy’s Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) are developing a system to verify the presence of nuclear warheads without collecting classified information, as a step toward the Continue Reading →

Captured on video: Virus-sized particle trying to enter cell

RESEARCHERS AT PRINCETON UNIVERSITY achieved an unprecedented look at a virus-like particle as it tries to break into and infect a cell. The video reveals the particle zipping around in a rapid, erratic manner until Continue Reading →

Laser device may end pin pricks, improve health for diabetics

PRINCETON RESEARCHERS have developed a way to use a laser to measure people’s blood sugar, and, with more work to shrink the laser system to a portable size, the technique could allow diabetics to check Continue Reading →

Star formation, black holes focus of new research

TWO NEW RESEARCH NETWORKS IN ASTROPHYSICS got off the ground this year, one to explore how stars form and the other to study how black holes accumulate matter, with the goal of answering fundamental questions Continue Reading →

Princeton-born play makes off-Broadway debut

A MUSICAL ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE that was born at Princeton made its New York City debut in April 2014. Both entertaining and informative, The Great Immensity focuses on the quintessential question of our time: How Continue Reading →