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Discovery: Research at Princeton

Findings, feature articles, books and awards from Princeton University researchers

  • About
    • Dean’s welcome
  • Briefs
    • Princeton University-HBCU partnerships launch first research projects
    • Solar technology marks major milestone
    • Shark Week was every week for Megalodon
    • ‘Fantastic giant tortoise,’ believed extinct, confirmed alive in the Galápagos
    • DNA barcoding advances nanoparticle self-assembly
    • Ben Bernanke, former Princeton professor and economics department chair, receives Nobel Prize in economic sciences
    • Scientists discover exotic quantum state at room temperature
  • Focus
    • Soaking up the sun
    • Bouncing back from adversity
    • Do today: find something new about the universe
    • Our fusion future
  • Features
    • Beyond guess and check
    • Fast-tracked adaptation
    • Art History (Hx)
    • Artificial intelligence enters a new era
    • Bridging the divide
    • Shariffa Ali, theater maker
  • Books
    • Only the Clothes on Her Back: Clothing and the Hidden History of Power in the Nineteenth-Century United States
    • The Price of Slavery: Capitalism and Revolution in the Caribbean
    • A Monetary and Fiscal History of the United States, 1961–2021
    • India Is Broken: A People Betrayed, Independence to Today
    • The Matter of Black Living: The Aesthetic Experiment of Racial Data, 1880–1930
    • The Entrepreneurs: The Relentless Quest for Value
  • Awards
    • Breakthrough Prize goes to Cliff Brangwynne
    • Wolf Prize goes to Bonnie Bassler and Elizabeth Diller
    • Elliot Lieb wins American Physical Society’s highest honor, and mathematics’ Gauss Prize
    • Fields Medal and MacArthur Fellowship go to June Huh
    • Simon Gikandi and Chika Okeke-Agulu elected to British Academy for contributions to the humanities
    • Bhargava, Guenther, Schor and Weisenfeld receive 2022 Guggenheim Fellowships
    • Bryan Grenfell wins Kyoto Prize
  • Past issues
    • Discovery 2021-22
      • Audio version
      • Dean’s welcome
      • Annual Research Report
      • Briefs
        • Between living bodies and objects
        • Lasting impacts from early-life stress
        • Reaching for the stars
        • A NOBEL YEAR – Princeton scholars and alumni received an unprecedented five Nobel Prizes
      • Focus
        • Preventing the next pandemic
        • When cars no longer rule
        • Mystery on the moon
      • Features
        • Cancer connection
        • Race to the bottom
        • Climate in crisis
        • Age of intolerance?
      • Books
        • Cosmology’s Century: An Inside History of Our Modern Understanding of the Universe
        • Tolstoy Together: 85 Days of War and Peace with Yiyun Li
        • Risk on the Table: Food Production, Health, and the Environment
        • Deep Life: The Hunt for the Hidden Biology of Earth, Mars, and Beyond
        • Pushing Cool: Big Tobacco, Racial Marketing, and the Untold Story of the Menthol Cigarette
        • Magical Habits
    • Discovery 2020-21
      • Dean’s welcome
      • Annual Research Report
      • Briefs
        • Conversation spreads droplets more than six feet indoors
        • Magic Grant sparks interactive map of treasures
        • Public-private partnerships propel fusion research
        • Bacterial anti-infective defense systems could aid humans
        • Princeton to help lead new quantum science center
        • New “recycler” protein kicks cancer to the curb
        • Antarctic sea ice retreat spurs plankton blooms
      • Focus
        • Princeton COVID-19 research
        • Not JUST data
        • Tempest in a laptop
      • Features
        • Forecasting the next COVID-19
        • Race and policing in America
        • Of lava lamps and living cells
        • Deemed unfit for freedom
      • Books
        • Degenerative Realism: Novel and Nation in Twenty- First-Century France
        • Life Magazine and the Power of Photography
        • Einstein in Bohemia
        • The Little Book of Cosmology
        • Statistical Foundations of Data Science
        • Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism
    • Discovery 2019-2020
      • Dean’s Introduction
      • Briefs
        • Princeton appoints first vice dean for innovation
        • Nobel Prize awarded for discoveries in cosmology
        • Motion-capture technology assists in neuroscience studies
        • Deep learning detects mutations behind autism
        • People adapt to societal diversity
        • AI accelerates fusion energy research
        • Finding the Lost Generation
      • News
        • How wetlands contribute to climate change
        • A small number of wells produce large emissions
        • Popping the ideological bubbles of social media users
        • Mallika Randeria captures images of the quantum world
        • Focus on undergraduate research
          • ‘Fever’ and its meanings in English literature: Annabel Barry
          • Exploring free speech and corporate power: Sydney Jordan
          • Fracking and public health: Benjamin Jacobson
      • News Features
        • Deborah Vischak reveals the dynamics of ancient Egypt
      • Features
        • Quantum computing opens new realms of possibilities
        • The Torture Letters: Laurence Ralph explores Chicago’s dark history
        • Fragile Fragments: Marina Rustow unpacks daily life in medieval Egypt
        • Origin Story: Rewriting human history through our DNA
      • Books
        • BREATHE: A Letter to My Sons
        • Polarization: What Everyone Needs to Know
        • The Prosthetic Tongue: Printing Technology and the Rise of the French Language
        • The Second Kind of Impossible: The Extraordinary Quest for a New Form of Matter
        • Cervantes’ Persiles and the Travails of Romance
        • Ornamentalism
      • Faculty Awards
      • Annual Research Report
    • Discovery 2018-2019
      • Dean’s introduction
      • Briefs
        • Crowdsourced brain mapping
        • Incubator for startups opens near campus
        • New supercomputer bolsters research
        • Mental health declining among disadvantaged adults
      • News
        • Campus as Lab: Tracking campus ecology
        • Eviction Lab examines the intersection of poverty and housing
        • An overdue spotlight on an avant-garde playwright
        • When driverless ride-hailing services come to a curb near you
        • Turning up the heat on the search for better plastics
        • Finding meaning among the junk
      • News Features
        • Bold and cold: A new faculty member and a new microscope explore life’s essential molecules
        • Breathing life into the Indian Ocean by predicting ‘dead zones’
        • Treasure in ancient trash
        • Going quantum to unlock plants’ secrets
        • Engine of cosmic evolution: Eve Ostriker looks under the hood
      • Features
        • From Math to Meaning. Artificial intelligence blends algorithms and applications
        • Nature’s Nation. How American art shaped our environmental perspectives
        • Beyond Einstein: Physicists find surprising connections in the cosmos
        • Fact-checking Immigration: Professor Leah Boustan uses big data to explore myths about the past
      • Books
        • The Chinese Must Go: Violence, Exclusion, and the Making of the Alien in America
        • The Dancing Lares and the Serpent in the Garden: Religion at the Roman Street Corner
        • The Discrete Charm of the Machine: Why the World Became Digital
        • Islam in Pakistan: A History
        • Small Wars, Big Data: The Information Revolution in Modern Conflict
        • Street Players: Black Pulp Fiction and the Making of a Literary Underground
      • Faculty Honors
        • Selected Faculty Honors
        • Four Princeton faculty members win Guggenheim Fellowships
        • Tera Hunter earns awards for scholarship on slave marriage
        • Gillian Knapp receives presidential award for STEM mentorship
        • Paul Muldoon receives Her Majesty’s Gold Medal for Poetry
        • Clifford Brangwynne selected as Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator
        • Engineering professors named fellows of National Academy of Inventors
      • Annual report
    • Discovery 2017
      • Dean’s Welcome
      • Briefs
        • A challenge to help kids
        • New arts complex opens
        • New journal highlights student research
        • Self-powered system makes smart windows smarter
        • Probing the genetic basis for dog-human relationships
      • News
        • Better decision-making for the planet
        • How cancer stem cells evade the immune system
        • Historian and neuroscientist team up for podcast
        • Egyptian translation highlights the beauty of hieroglyphs
        • Discovery provides a path to safe, clean, plentiful energy
        • Professor reflects on growing up undocumented and the power of books
      • News Features
        • Money matters: An economist on the Fed, the banks and the future
        • Jane Cox on LEDs, lighting design and the role of light in storytelling
        • John Pardon on math’s power to distract and divert
        • Diamonds’ flaws hold promise for new technologies
        • Lights, camera, action – of genes in development
      • Features
        • Going green: What we can learn from a little alga
        • Coming home to document a rapidly changing China
        • Princeton project explores past ties to slavery
        • Bound in wedlock: Professor of history explores slavery’s shackles on black families
        • Let it flow: The ideas, the creativity, the findings, the impacts, the benefits to society
      • Books
        • At Home in the World: Women Writers and Public Life, from Austen to the Present
        • Designing San Francisco: Art, Land and Urban Renewal in the City by the Bay
        • New World A-Coming: Black Religion and Racial Identity During the Great Migration
        • Understanding the Digital World: What You Need to Know about Computers, the Internet, Privacy and Security
        • Unscripted America: Indigenous Languages and the Origins of a Literary Nation
        • The Little Book of Black Holes
      • Faculty Honors
        • Faculty Honors 2017-2018
        • Emily Carter awarded Langmuir Prize in Chemical Physics
        • Peter and Rosemary Grant receive Royal Medal in Biology
        • Historian of religion Elaine Pagels awarded National Humanities Medal
        • Eight win Guggenheim Fellowships
        • Tracy K. Smith named U.S. Poet Laureate
        • Charles Fefferman awarded 2017 Wolf Prize in Mathematics
      • Annual Report
    • Discovery 2016
      • Dean’s Welcome
      • Briefs
        • F. Duncan Haldane receives Nobel Prize in Physics
        • Princeton part of $40 million Simons Observatory
        • Princeton Research Day highlights student and early-career work
        • Students explore sustainable building with bamboo
      • News
        • Researcher probes the secret life of electrons
        • Exploring collective interactions of matter and antimatter
        • In cells, self-destructive behavior suggests strategy for fighting cancer
        • Cuban literature and culture are focus of Planet/Cuba
        • Exploring the emergence of Cuban consumerism
        • Bias in the machine: Internet algorithms reinforce harmful stereotypes
        • The literature of madness and how it shaped modern psychiatry
      • News Features
        • Big answers from small creatures
        • Atom catcher: With lasers and magnets, Waseem Bakr traps atoms for study under the microscope
        • Students create exotic state of matter
        • Behind the curtain: Scandal, tragedy, art and politics at the Bolshoi
      • Features
        • Bright future: Princeton researchers unlock the potential of light to perform previously impossible feats
        • Of swords, stars and superconductors
        • CITIES: Resilient • Adaptable • Livable • Smart
        • Better living through behavioral science
        • Race for profits
      • Books
        • Welcome to the Universe: An Astrophysical Tour
        • Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency Technologies: A Comprehensive Introduction
        • Postcolonial Modernism: Art and Decolonization in Twentieth-Century Nigeria
        • Ghetto: The Invention of a Place, the History of an Idea
        • The Euro and the Battle of Ideas
        • The China Challenge: Shaping the Choices of a Rising Power
      • Faculty Honors
        • All Faculty Honors
        • ROBERTO CAR receives American Chemistry Society national award
        • JANE COX receives the Ruth Morley Design Award from the League of Professional Theatre Women
        • PAUL CHIRIK receives Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Award
        • GUGGENHEIM FELLOWSHIPS awarded
        • MARINA RUSTOW, historian of the medieval Middle East, wins MacArthur Fellowship
        • SIMON LEVIN wins National Medal of Science for unraveling ecological complexity
      • Annual Report
    • Discovery 2015
      • Dean’s Welcome
      • Briefs
        • Princeton-Fung Global Forum focuses on global health
        • Elusive particles found
        • Energy and environment center opens its doors
        • Measles may weaken immune system up to three years
        • Son-o-MERMAID takes to the waters
      • News
        • Unconscious bias: Research helps break down barriers
        • Listening in on bacterial communications
        • New chemistry aids drug development
        • Baby steps: Inside the developing brain
        • Taming the network: Finding relationships in complex data sets
        • Hero explores Vietnam War experiences
        • Life among strangers: Exile in the Middle Ages
        • Energy boost: Study sheds light on mitochondrial disease
        • Student identifies difference between the dinosaur sexes
        • Nobel Prize in economics goes to Angus Deaton
        • Imaging system tracks brain activity of a freely moving worm
      • News Features
        • Cosmic background: 51 years ago, an accidental discovery sparked a big bang in astrophysics
        • The Hub: A new center opens its doors … to student entrepreneurship
        • Wild birds: A trip to the market reveals species imperiled
        • The Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory: The quest for clean energy continues
      • Features
        • Bioengineering: Unlocking the secrets of human health
          • Engineering health solutions for all
          • Computer chip for point-of-care diagnosis
          • Tiny delivery capsules for new drugs
        • Beautiful minds
        • Ashes, images and the survival of democracy
        • Janet Currie investigates the building blocks of children’s success
      • Books
        • Poetic Trespass: Writing Between Hebrew and Arabic in Israel/Palestine
        • Sailing the Water’s Edge: The Domestic Politics of American Foreign Policy
        • Beyond Greek: The Beginnings of Latin Literature
        • The Cosmic Web: Mysterious Architecture of the Universe
        • Sound Rising from the Paper: Nineteenth-Century Martial Arts Fiction and the Chinese Acoustic Imagination
        • Equal Recognition: The Moral Foundations of Minority Rights
      • Faculty Honors
        • Faculty Honors 2015-2016
        • JHUMPA LAHIRI awarded National Humanities Medal
        • MANJUL BHARGAVA awarded Fields Medal in mathematics
        • ROBERT KEOHANE receives James Madison Award in American political science
        • JEREMIAH OSTRIKER and LYMAN PAGE receive Gruber Cosmology Prize
        • BONNIE BASSLER receives Shaw Prize in life science and medicine
        • DAVID TANK receives Brain Prize for advance in microscopy
      • Annual Report
    • Discovery 2014
      • Dean’s Welcome 2014
      • Briefs 2014
        • New mineral: Steinhardtite
        • A farewell to arms? New technique could aid nuclear disarmament
        • Captured on video: Virus-sized particle trying to enter cell
        • Laser device may end pin pricks, improve health for diabetics
        • Star formation, black holes focus of new research
        • Princeton-born play makes off-Broadway debut
      • News 2014
        • No more mirrors: a new way of making molecules for tracking disease
        • Light-splitting crystals from inexpensive ingredients
        • New technology enables computing with the wave of a hand
        • Entrepreneurship at Princeton: An interview with Mung Chiang
        • Focus on undergraduate research: Power grid solutions in Nigeria
        • Math and music spark student’s research interests
        • Emotional map illuminates an iconic rock song
        • How to train your worm to explore the circuits involved in learning
        • Study casts doubt on fairness of U.S. democracy
      • News Features 2014
        • Wetlands provide solutions for agricultural runoff
        • The City Lost and Found: Exhibition examines creative responses to urban changes in ’60s, ’70s America
        • Striking resemblance: A physical law may govern very different biological activities
        • Africa’s poison ‘apple’ provides common ground for elephants and livestock
      • Features 2014
        • RESILIENT SHORES: After Sandy, climate scientists and architects explore how to co-exist with rising tides
        • Poetry in Silico: Bringing digital tools to the study of poetry
        • Computer visions: A selection of research projects in Computer Science
          • COMPUTER SCIENCE: Armchair victory: Computers that recognize everyday objects
          • COMPUTER SCIENCE: Tools for the artist in all of us
          • COMPUTER SCIENCE: Fierce, Fiercer, Fiercest: Software enables rapid creations
          • COMPUTER SCIENCE: Internet traffic moves smoothly with Pyretic
          • COMPUTER SCIENCE: Security check: A strategy for verifying software could prevent bugs
        • A RISKY PROPOSITION: Has global interdependence made us vulnerable?
      • Books 2014
        • Chigusa and the Art of Tea
        • House of Debt: How they (and you) caused the great recession, and how we can prevent it from happening again
        • Shell Structures for Architecture: Form Finding and Optimization
        • The First Civil Right: How Liberals Built Prison America
        • Evening News: Optics, Astronomy, and Journalism in Early Modern Europe
        • Stalin: Volume I: Paradoxes of Power, 1878 – 1928
      • Awards 2014
        • Faculty Honors 2014-2015
        • FOUR PROFESSORS Receive Presidential Science Awards
        • SIMON LEVIN Receives Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement
        • YING-SHIH YU Receives Inaugural Tang Prize in Sinology
        • DANIEL KAHNEMAN Receives Presidential Medal of Freedom
        • JILL DOLAN Receives Distinguished Scholar Award for Theater Research
        • PETER SARNAK Receives Wolf Prize in Mathematics
      • Annual Report
    • Discovery 2013
      • Dean’s Welcome
      • Briefs
        • Planck mission brings universe into sharp focus
        • First Princeton-Fung Global Forum held in Shanghai
        • Big hair brings to life a 17th-century satire
        • Princeton role in federal BRAIN initiative
        • Immigration policy is ripe for reform
        • Quantum computing moves forward
        • Princeton establishes strategic partnerships with three universities
        • Fragile families, fragile children
        • Globalization raises new ethical questions
        • Small RNAs fight cancer’s spread
      • News
        • Italian Master Drawings: Exhibition goes beneath the surface
        • Site-specific shades offer sun protection
        • Far from random, evolution follows a predictable pattern
        • The rising cost of health care: Students examine policy solutions
        • Explain me something: How we learn what not to say
        • Collective behavior could help animals survive a changing environment
        • Found in translation: Scholar locates source of 18th-century Quran
        • Telescopes take the universe’s temperature
        • Manuscripts spark dialogue on authorship
        • The social network: Program combats bullying
        • Race and incarceration rates: Student researcher explores solutions
        • Green roofs’ energy savings hinge on climate
      • Features
        • Secrets of the Southern Ocean
        • The Planet Hunters
        • Inventions Bridge the Gap between lab and marketplace
        • Activism Shapes Africa Scholar
        • The Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory: Blazing a path to fusion energy
      • Books
        • Kripke by John Burgess
        • Meme by Susan Wheeler
        • 360 Sound: The Columbia Records Story by Sean Wilentz
        • After the Music Stopped: The financial crisis, the response, and the work ahead by Alan Blinder
        • Small-town American: Finding community, shaping the future by Robert Wuthnow
        • Afterlives of Confinement: Spatial transition in post-dictatorship Latin America by Susana Draper
      • Faculty Honors
        • All Faculty Honors
        • William G. Bowen and Natalie Davis receive National Humanities Medal
        • David Botstein wins Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences
        • Mung Chiang wins National Science Foundation Alan T. Waterman Award
        • Jeremiah Ostriker named White House Champion of Change
        • Three win Guggenheim Fellowships
        • American Mathematical Society awards Steele Prizes to Yakov Sinai, Philip Holmes
        • A. M. Homes wins Women’s Prize for Fiction
        • Alexander Polyakov wins Fundamental Physics Prize
      • Annual Report
        • Annual Report
    • Discovery 2012
    • Discovery 2011
    • Discovery 2008
    • Blog

Discovery 2012

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