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Q&A
Q&A
When a Gene Illness Discovery Means Breaking Bad News
When scientists discover genes linked to dangerous illnesses in their samples, how should they convey that news to the study participants? The geneticist Cristen Willer had to tackle that challenge.
Q&A
The Mathematician Who Delights in Building Bridges
Ana Caraiani seeks to unify mathematics through her work on the ambitious Langlands program.
Q&A
Her Machine Learning Tools Pull Insights From Cell Images
The computational biologist Anne Carpenter creates software that brings the power of machine learning to researchers seeking answers in mountains of cell images.
Q&A
The Astronomer Who’s About to See the Skies of Other Earths
After the ultra-powerful James Webb Space Telescope launches later this year, Laura Kreidberg will lead two efforts to check the weather on rocky planets orbiting other stars.
Q&A
Anil Seth Finds Consciousness in Life’s Push Against Entropy
How does consciousness arise in mere flesh and blood? To the neuroscientist Anil Seth, our organic bodies are the key to the experience.
Q&A
Karen Miga Fills In the Missing Pieces of Our Genome
Driven by her fascination with highly repetitive, hard-to-read parts of our DNA, Karen Miga led a coalition of researchers to finish sequencing the human genome after almost two decades.
Q&A
This Physicist Discovered an Escape From Hawking’s Black Hole Paradox
The five-decade-old paradox — long thought key to linking quantum theory with Einstein’s theory of gravity — is falling to a new generation of thinkers. Netta Engelhardt is leading the way.
Q&A
The Computer Scientist Training AI to Think With Analogies
Melanie Mitchell has worked on digital minds for decades. She says they’ll never truly be like ours until they can make analogies.
Math Meets QFT
Nathan Seiberg on How Math Might Complete the Ultimate Physics Theory
Even in an incomplete state, quantum field theory is the most successful physical theory ever discovered. Nathan Seiberg, one of its leading architects, talks about the gaps in QFT and how mathematicians could fill them.