Q&A

Akiko Iwasaki, an immunologist who became a lifeline for the worried and the curious during the pandemic, thinks that nasal spray vaccines could be the next needed breakthrough in our fight against the coronavirus.

Daniel Spielman solves important problems by thinking hard — about other questions.

Leslie Lamport revolutionized how computers talk to each other. Now he’s working on how engineers talk to their machines.

Vijay Balasubramanian investigates whether the fabric of the universe might be built from information, and what it means that physicists can even ask such a question.

Celia Escamilla-Rivera is combining large data sets with supercomputers to test general relativity against its little-known competitors.

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.

Ana Caraiani seeks to unify mathematics through her work on the ambitious Langlands program.

The computational biologist Anne Carpenter creates software that brings the power of machine learning to researchers seeking answers in mountains of cell images.

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.