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Research Article

The Effects of Local Police Surges on Crime and Arrests in New York City

* E-mail: [email protected]

Affiliation Department of Criminology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, United States of America

Affiliation Columbia Law School, Columbia University, New York, NY, United States of America

Affiliation Department of Sociology, New York University, New York, NY, United States of America

• John MacDonald, 
• Jeffrey Fagan, 
• Amanda Geller

• Published: June 16, 2016
• https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0157223
• Reader Comments

The New York Police Department (NYPD) under Operation Impact deployed extra police officers to high crime areas designated as impact zones. Officers were encouraged to conduct investigative stops in these areas. City officials credited the program as one of the leading causes of New York City’s low crime rate. We tested the effects of Operation Impact on reported crimes and arrests from 2004 to 2012 using a difference-in-differences approach. We used Poisson regression models to compare differences in crime and arrest counts before and after census block groups were designated as impact zones compared to census block groups in the same NYPD precincts but outside impact zones. Impact zones were significantly associated with reductions in total reported crimes, assaults, burglaries, drug violations, misdemeanor crimes, felony property crimes, robberies, and felony violent crimes. Impact zones were significantly associated with increases in total reported arrests, arrests for burglary, arrests for weapons, arrests for misdemeanor crimes, and arrests for property felony crimes. Impact zones were also significantly associated with increases in investigative stops for suspected crimes, but only the increase in stops made based on probable cause indicators of criminal behaviors were associated with crime reductions. The largest increase in investigative stops in impact zones was based on indicators of suspicious behavior that had no measurable effect on crime. The findings suggest that saturating high crime blocks with police helped reduce crime in New York City, but that the bulk of the investigative stops did not play an important role in the crime reductions. The findings indicate that crime reduction can be achieved with more focused investigative stops.

Citation: MacDonald J, Fagan J, Geller A (2016) The Effects of Local Police Surges on Crime and Arrests in New York City. PLoS ONE 11(6): e0157223. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0157223

Editor: Brion Maher, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, UNITED STATES

Received: February 11, 2016; Accepted: May 26, 2016; Published: June 16, 2016

Copyright: © 2016 MacDonald et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Data Availability: The data used in our paper and underlying analytic code are posted at: https://github.com/macdonaldjohn/Impact-Zone-Data .

Funding: The authors received no specific funding for this work.

Competing interests: Jeffrey Fagan was an expert witness for the plaintiffs in the case of Floyd et al. v. City of New York, 08 Civ. 1034 (S.D.N.Y.). John MacDonald currently serves on the federal monitoring committee on the settlement agreements in Floyd et al. v. City of New York, et al., 08 Civ. 1034 (AT), Ligon, et al., v. City of New York, et al., 12-CV-2274 (AT), and Davis et al., vs. City of New York, et al., 10-CV-00699 (AT). The opinions expressed in the article reflect those of the authors only and not any other entity. This does not alter the authors' adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.

Introduction

Scholars have argued that changes in the tactics and management of police in the U.S. are a fundamental explanation for why crime rates have been low. Notable changes to police in the U.S. since the 1990s include the expansion of police forces, stronger accountability measures of command staff, the adoption of crime analytics, and the aggressive enforcement of misdemeanor and traffic laws [ 1 – 9 ]. These tactical and management innovations by police have been termed the “new policing” model [ 10 ].

The use of proactive police tactics to disrupt criminal activities is an essential element of the new policing model, and have been credited for why New York City (NYC) is now one of America’s safest cities [ 8 ].

Recent debates on the effect of the police on crime in NYC have centered on the use of investigative stops, and their role in maintaining the city’s low crime rate [ 11 – 14 ]. This approach also has been the most controversial, as investigative stops raise fundamental constitutional questions that have been the subject of government investigations [ 11 ] and numerous court cases [ 15 – 16 ].

In this paper, we examine the effects of Operation Impact, a signature New York Police Department (NYPD) program for over a decade, and a prototypical application of the “new policing” model that coupled police deployment with intensive investigative stop activity in high crime areas identified as impact zones. In the nearly two decades following NYC’s large crime decline of the 1990s [ 1 , 17 ], scholars have continued to debate how much these policing tactics–including investigative stops–have sustained the low levels of crime in the city. Zimring [ 8 ] argues that the sustained deployment of extra police to high crime city blocks in NYC was responsible for the city’s crime reduction. Other research cites the increasing use of misdemeanor arrests as an essential ingredient of NYC’s crime reduction [ 18 ]. More recently, research has claimed that intensive use of investigative stops by the NYPD on high-crime street segments produced crime declines [ 13 ].

Prior research has not conclusively identified the long-term effects of police deployment or investigative stops on crime in NYC. Studies have examined either changes in arrests [ 5 ] or changes in investigative stops and crime [ 6 , 11 ], without adequately accounting for reverse-causality (e.g., crime influences where arrests and stops are made). There is an extensive body of research that shows exogenous changes in police deployment and tactics caused by terror events [ 19 – 20 ] or warnings [ 21 ], police “crackdowns” [ 22 ], or through field experiments [ 23 – 24 ] reduce crime. Most of these studies, however, account for relatively short-term changes. With few exceptions [ 25 ], studies do not tell us whether there are enduring reductions in crime associated with surges in police deployment and the use of investigative stops. Also, few studies on police deployment and tactics estimate crime displacement. Donohue et al.’s [ 26 ] re-analysis of data from a previous study [ 19 ] on the effect of police deployment found that the crime reduction effect previously reported was due to the geographic displacement of crime.

While there is no consensus on which tactics are essential, the use of investigative stops combined with more stringent use of arrests for misdemeanor crimes (e.g., panhandling, public drinking and disorderly conduct) tend to be emphasized in the new policing model [ 27 ]. NYC is perhaps the most celebrated and closely studied city where changes in police tactics emphasized extra police deployment to high crime areas and the widespread use of investigative stops. Proponents of the use of these investigative stops by the NYPD have argued that the crime control returns were significant and uniquely attributable to this and other tactics implemented by the police [ 8 , 13 , 28 ].

Although there have been numerous accounts of the practice of investigative stops, few have carefully analyzed the effects of stops on crime. The most rigorous study to date by Weisburd and colleagues [ 13 ] using space-time interaction models estimated that weekly changes in investigative stops on street segments reduced crime by 2.0%. However, this study is not able to separate out the effects of extra deployment from the increase in investigative stops. There is the possibility that the visibility of extra police officers may have been as beneficial as the stops. Fagan [ 14 ] also estimated the effects of monthly stops, controlling for trends in two and six months before and after the current month, and found stops based on probable cause standards of criminal behavior were associated with a 5–9 percent decline in NYC crime in census block groups. Others have estimated the effects of investigative stops by assessing their impact on weapons seizure rates from police searches [ 29 ], finding that stops based on reasons that were more likely to lead to weapons seizures were less racially disparate and may have greater crime control benefits.

Knowledge about the effects of investigative stops on crime in NYC remains contradictory and incomplete. First, identification strategies in current research often lack counterfactuals of similarly situated places with high crime rates but that differ in stop activity. Nor do current studies fully avoid the potential of reverse causality, in that investigative stops can lead to crime through generating arrests and city ordinance violations. Second, the studies that use street segments as the unit of analysis [ 13 ] have to rely on the accuracy of the reporting of addresses and reconcile the ambiguity of how differences on two sides of the same street may be fundamental to stops and crime. For example, stops and crimes are often linked to a single address associated with a cluster of buildings, such as public housing projects, that are set back from the street face by anywhere from 25 feet to 50 yards. Crime markets in NYC are also likely to span more than one street segment [ 30 ]. The presence of vertical buildings in NYC also means that two sides of the same street may have completely different crime markets.

Together, research tells us quite a bit about the effects of short-term police surges on crime, but we know less about sustained deployment of extra police to high crime areas and little about the effect of investigative stops. Given the important claims of the efficacy of investigative stops that inform contemporary policing, and the contentious debates over its use in high crime areas, this study focuses on that specific tactic. NYC provides an ideal case to examine this issue. We examine the NYPD policing initiative of Operation Impact, which combined a police surge in deployment with intensified stop activity in high crime areas designated as impact zones, to identify the contributions of these activities to crimes and arrests. Operation Impact used essential features of the new policing model, including flooding high crime areas with more police officers and encouraging officers to conduct investigative stops.

This study builds on previous research in several ways. First, we exploit the temporal and spatial variation caused by Operation Impact to estimate the effect of police deployment and investigative stops on crimes and arrests at the census block group-level. Second, we examine the effects of police deployment on crime and arrests at the census block group-level while controlling for displacement to nearby areas. Third, we provide several robustness tests that examine how sensitive the results are the timing of when places were designated impact zones.

Materials and Methods

In 2003, under Operation Impact the NYPD began a major change in its deployment practices by implementing the concept of an “impact zone”–a high crime area with specific boundaries that was designated to receive additional police fresh out of the police academy. In January 2003, the NYPD deployed roughly two-thirds of its police academy graduates—about 1,500 new police officers—to impact zones. In these areas, academy graduates were encouraged to engage in investigatory street stops and to enforce misdemeanor laws [ 31 ].

To identify areas as impact zones, police commanders nominated crime “hot spots” within their precincts that they thought would benefit from additional targeted resources. Using street-level crime data presented on maps, police crime analysts produced detailed statistical reports and recommended ways of refining the targeted areas. After discussions among local commanders and headquarters analysts, the Police Commissioner initially selected 24 areas with the highest rates of crime to receive extra police officers [ 31 ].

By 2006, impact zones were present in 30 of the city’s 76 police precincts. Seventy-five precincts had at least one impact zone between 2004 and 2012. Impact zones were mostly located in high crime precincts where the majority of residents are Black and Latino. The precincts with the largest concentration of impact zones, for example, include East Harlem (23 rd ), Harlem (32 nd ), South and West Bronx (40 th , 44 th , 46 th , and 52 nd ), and Brooklyn (70 th , 75 th , and 79 th ). Fig 1 shows a map of the location of impact zones and their rollout over time.

• PPT PowerPoint slide
• PNG larger image
• TIFF original image

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0157223.g001

Saturation of officers in impact zones produced higher stop rates per block (and per 100 crimes) than in other places in the city. Fig 2 shows the trend in stop rates by impact zones and the rest of the city. Stops rose by 14.2% in impact zone areas compared to 4.2% per year in other parts of the city. This estimate underscores the fact that impact zones both deployed more officers and generated more investigative stops.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0157223.g002

The NYPD collected and geocoded reported crime complaints, arrests, and investigative stops during the time span (2004–2012) that encompasses the full implementation of Operation Impact. We geo-coded these incident data to the nearest census block group. We then aggregated the incident-level data to generate monthly census block-group counts of crimes, arrests, and stops for years 2004 to 2012. We use census block groups as the unit of analysis because the police designed impact zones using a wide circumference spanning multiple blocks, as well as clusters of public housing projects, that accompany crime markets. Thus, the census block group provides a closer approximation to the operation of police and crime markets than smaller geographic units like street segments. Aggregating the data to census block groups also minimizes NYPD mapping errors of placing crime, arrest, and stop locations at intersections or in the middle of the street when the street address is missing from officer reports.

We measure the total count of reported crimes and arrests. We also include separate counts for robbery, assault, burglary, weapons, misdemeanor offenses (e.g., criminal mischief, fraud, gambling, loitering, petty theft, and larceny), other felonies (e.g., escape 3 and forgery), drugs (e.g., dangerous drugs), property (e.g., grand larceny, burglary, and burglary tools), and violent felonies (e.g., homicide, rape, robbery, arson, felony assault, and kidnapping). We do not calculate rates of crime per population because such rates will be distortedly high in business areas of NYC, such as Times Square or Wall Street, which have daytime populations that far exceed their residential population [ 32 ]. We include an indicator for the police precinct where each block is located. Precincts are the administrative units that determine officer assignment. We also include measures for whether the census block group is located in an impact zone based on digital maps and shapefiles supplied by the NYPD.

In model (2) a dummy variable N (= 1) is assigned to census block groups that are adjacent neighbors to areas that become impact zones. β 2 captures the direct geographic displacement or spillover effect of census block groups becoming impact zones.

Model (3) includes lags (θ) and leads (β) for the two months (t) before and after the implementation for those blocks that become impact zones [ 34 ]. The lags will absorb any influence due to movements in crimes or arrests in the two months just before adoption of impact zones. The lead parameters allow us to observe the effect of impact zones in the two months after their adoption.

Model (4) includes counts of the number of investigative stops based on indicators probable cause (denoted P) and general suspicion (denoted S). β 4 captures the treatment effect of an impact zone based on the number of probable cause stops. β 5 captures the treatment effect of an impact zone based on the number of general suspicion stops. Standard errors are clustered by precinct-month-year in all models to allow for dispersion and dependence common to precincts and time.

Table 1 shows the estimated effect of impact zones on crime and arrests from models 1 and 2. The results in the top rows show a negative effect of impact zones on crime. Model 1 implies that impact zones reduce the expected monthly count of total reported crimes by 12% (i.e., e - . 124 = .88). Models that disaggregate by crime type show heterogeneity in effects. Weapons offenses and other felony offenses, which often are arrest-generated crimes, significantly increase in impact zones relative to other blocks in the same precinct at the same time of year. The increase in weapons offenses reflects primarily the seizure of knives from suspects. Gun possession arrests and gun seizures from street stops remained rare in NYC throughout this period, representing less than 1% of stops [ 35 ]. The largest proportional reduction in crimes occurs for burglary offenses, with an expected 46% reduction. Relatedly, the expected reduction in property felonies for burglary and theft is proportionally greater than violent felony offenses.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0157223.t001

The results from model 2 that include controls for adjacent neighbors show that impact zones still realize significant marginal crime reductions. The results also show that impact zone neighbors themselves see some crime reduction benefits. Model 2 implies that impact zones reduce the expected monthly count of total reported crimes in neighboring census block groups by 7% (i.e., e - . 07 = .93). For specific crimes, the one exception is for robbery offenses, where there is evidence that the reduction in these offenses in impact zones is associated with an increase in adjacent census block groups. These findings suggest that impact zones may have displaced robberies to nearby areas.

The results for models 1 and 2 of arrests show that total arrests increase significantly in impact zones. Model 1 implies that the total amount of arrests increases by an expected 53%. The large increase in weapons, misdemeanor offenses, and burglary related arrests are the main drivers of the total arrest increase. Model 2 also shows a similar picture of impact zones increasing arrests. Total, robbery, weapons, and other felonies arrests also increase significantly in neighboring census block groups, suggesting some spillover of arrest actions to locations nearby impact zones.

Fig 3 shows the results from model 3, which includes leads and lags for the two months before and after the formation of impact zones. S1 Table shows the complete results for all crime and arrest models. The total crime reduction attributable to impact zone designation is now 10% and sets in by the second month. The largest reductions occur for burglary, robbery, and property felony offenses, whereas weapons and other felony offenses related to arrests increases significantly. For each crime outcome, the coefficients are smaller in magnitude than model 1 and 2 suggesting that the formation of impact zones were partially determined by the crime rates in the two months preceding their implementation. For arrests, model 3 shows a significant increase of 61% that is similar in size to models 1 and 2. The significant increase in arrest counts are driven primarily by increases in arrests for burglary, weapons, misdemeanor offenses, and other property felonies offenses.

Month Since Impact Zone.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0157223.g003

Table 2 shows the results from model 4 that estimates the dose-response of impact zones and probable cause (P) and general suspicion (S) stops. The results (not shown) indicate that both types of stops are more frequent where crimes are higher. However, the primary focus of this analysis is whether the timing of the impact zones and stop activity are associated with shifts in crime counts. For ease of interpretation, Table 2 only shows the coefficients from the interaction of stop types and impact zone implementation. The results indicate that increases in probable cause stops, after the formation of impact zones, are associated with reductions across several types of crime.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0157223.t002

The estimates, however, suggest statistically significant results with little practical importance. The average number of total crimes in impact zones census block groups was 5.05 per month. This means that for 100 probable cause stops a month there would be roughly 3 fewer crimes [exp(-.01*100)*5.05]-[exp(-.01*0)*5.05] = -3.19]. There were 4.15 probable cause stops in an average month for impact zone census block groups. This indicates that there would need to be a five-fold increase in the number of probable cause stops made in an impact zone to avert more than one crime. By contrast, the increase in stops based on general suspicion has no consistent association with reductions in crimes. These stops appear to be both unproductive for reducing crime and may be constitutionally problematic. General suspicion stops are 50% more common on average than probable cause stops in impact zones.

The results for arrests show that stops for probable cause and general suspicion indicators are associated with fewer arrests in impact zones. These findings are consistent with other work showing that most investigative stops do not result in arrests [ 36 ].

Robustness Checks

We conducted several robustness tests to examine the sensitivity of estimates to the selection of impact zones and the timing of their formation.

First, we re-estimated model 1, removing all census block groups that were initially part of Operation Impact Era 3 (January-June 2004), since we have no prior crime or arrest data for these areas. The results (not shown) are similar to those reported in Table 1 , indicating that the findings are not sensitive to the inclusion of Impact Zone Era 3 locations, the baseline period when active offenders might have been caught off guard by the new surge in police.

Second, to address whether the estimates are at least partially attributable to autocorrelation in the timing of impact zones and the secular trends in crime and arrests citywide, we used a permutation test that randomly reassigned the timing of impact zone blocks 1,000 times and re-estimated model 1. The results show that neither crime nor the arrest estimates appear in the distributions of the permutation tests. The largest estimated reduction in crime is -.020 in the 1,000 shuffled timings compared to -.124 in our actual estimate. The largest estimated arrest increase is .035 in the 1,000 shuffled timings compared to .426 in our estimate. These findings confirm that autocorrelation in timing of impact zones is not driving the main results.

Third, models 1 to 4 all specify the changes in crime and arrests in impact zone block groups compared to other census block groups in the same precincts at the same month of a given year. To examine whether the effects observed in model 1 for crime and arrests were robust to the unit of comparison, we estimated a fifth model that included a fixed effect for each census block group and 4 cubic basis spline parameters for each precinct to capture the local smoothed time trend over the 96 months (Jan 2004-Dec 2012). The results from this analysis are similar but the effects are substantially smaller. Total reported crimes is negatively associated with impact zones, but is no longer statistically significant. Robbery, assault, and burglary remain negatively and significantly associated (p < .05) with impact zone formation. Weapons offenses also remain positively associated with impact zone formation. For arrests, the results also show that overall counts increase significantly with impact zones. The significant rise in weapons, misdemeanors, and property felony arrests is the leading cause of the overall increase in arrests. However, this model treats census blocks groups as independent units, when in fact census blocks groups within the same precincts become impact zones at the same time. Therefore, we think the original models (1–4) provide a closer approximation of the effects of impact zones on crimes and arrests.

Conclusions

The U.S. Supreme Court in Terry v . Ohio [ 37 ] ruled police officers based on their experience and training had the power to stop, question, and frisk an individual when they had reasonable suspicion that a crime had just occurred, was in progress, or was about to take place. Officers were required to form “reasonable suspicion” based on specific, articulable, and individualized factors that were observable. The policy of relying heavily on investigative stops as a crime control program under Operation Impact created the conditions for a rigorous test of the effect of both targeted police deployment and investigative stops on crime. Operation Impact also presented an opportunity to test the claims that investigative stops were the likely cause of steadily declining crime rates over the past two decades in New York [ 8 , 13 ].

The results suggest a complicated set of effects that present both good and bad news for concentrated police deployment and investigative stops as a crime reduction strategy in high crime areas. We found that Operation Impact had a statistically significant but relatively small association with a reduction in total crimes. The formation of impact zones had the largest effect on reducing robbery and burglary offenses. The data, however, do not distinguish a clear mechanism for this effect. The increase in probable cause-related stops after the formation of impact zone had the strongest association with reduced burglary and robbery reports, suggesting that physical presence of more police and enhanced apprehension may have generated a deterrent effect specific to those crimes. If officers were aware of the signs and indicia of crime, then the suppression of personal and property crimes by their presence and the use of investigative stops is a welcome byproduct of the surge of officers assigned to impact zones. However, probable cause-related stops were a relatively small fraction of the total number of investigative stops, suggesting that there were excess stops that had little crime suppression benefits. The scale of deployment and the level of stop activity suggest that this program may have been more productive if it placed more emphasis on probable cause stops more directly related to observable criminal activity. These findings are important for they suggest that more police activity and deployment to high crime areas can reduce criminal activity when constitutionally sound investigative tactics are used.

Operation Impact also appears to have significantly increased reported weapons and other felony-related offenses generated from arrests made by officers. The increase in weapons offenses are an artifact of arrests for this crime. This particular result is a positive outcome given the animating logic of the stop program generally, and Operation Impact in particular, to remove weapons from the streets.

Crime reduction is no doubt an important policy goal of police deployment, and investigative stops are an essential tool. There appears to have been some benefits of Operation Impact in reducing burglary and robbery crimes, and in increasing arrests for weapons. Deploying extra police to high crime areas and asking them to be vigilant appears to have some crime benefits—but only when vigilance is linked to articulable behaviors of suspected crimes occurring. Police interventions of the sort undertaken by Operation Impact should pay careful attention that increased vigilance does not come at the cost of extra intrusion and burdens on local residents that have no crime reduction benefit.

Supporting Information

S1 table. supplementary table showing results from model 4..

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0157223.s001

Acknowledgments

The opinions expressed in the article reflect those of the authors only and not any other entity. The authors received no compensation for this work from outside parties. For helpful comments and suggestions, we thank Phil Cook, Mark Kleiman, Jens Ludwig, Justin McCrary, and other participants at the NBER Summer Institute. We also thank Sonja Starr and other participants at the Tenth Conference on Empirical Legal Studies. We are particularly grateful to Justin McCrary for his insightful suggestions on econometric models.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: JM JF. Performed the experiments: JM JF. Analyzed the data: JM JF AG. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: JM JF. Wrote the paper: JM JF.

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Research Briefs

Cutting-edge enzyme research fights back against plastic pollution

From catalysis today.

NYU Tandon study exposes failings of measures to prevent illegal content generation by text-to-image AI models

From iclr conference paper.

NYC ranks safest among big U.S. cities for gun violence, new research from NYU Tandon School of Engineering reveals

From nature cities, briefs listing.

Unveiling biochemical defenses against chemical warfare

In the clandestine world of biochemical warfare, researchers are continuously seeking innovative strategies to counteract lethal agents. Researchers led by Jin Kim Montclare , Professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, have embarked on a pioneering mission to develop enzymatic defenses against chemical threats, as revealed in a recent study.

The team's focus lies in crafting enzymes capable of neutralizing notorious warfare agents such as VX, renowned for their swift and devastating effects on the nervous system. Through meticulous computational design, they harnessed the power of enzymes like phosphotesterase (PTE), traditionally adept at detoxifying organophosphates found in pesticides, to target VX agents. 

The study utilized computational techniques to design a diverse library of PTE variants optimized for targeting lethal organophosphorus nerve agents. Leveraging advanced modeling software, such as Rosetta, the researchers meticulously crafted enzyme variants tailored to enhance efficacy against these formidable threats. When they tested these new enzyme versions in the lab, they found that three of them were much better at breaking down VX and VR. Their findings showcased the effectiveness of these engineered enzymes in neutralizing these chemicals.

A key problem in treating these agents lies in the urgency of application. In the event of exposure, rapid intervention becomes paramount. The research emphasizes potential applications, ranging from prophylactic measures to immediate administration upon exposure, underscoring the imperative for swift action to mitigate the agents' lethal effects.

Another key issue is protein stability — ensuring that the proteins can stay intact and at the site of affected tissue which is  crucial for therapeutic applications. Ensuring enzymes remain stable within the body enhances their longevity and effectiveness, offering prolonged protection against chemical agents.

Looking ahead, Montclare's team aims to optimize enzyme stability and efficacy further, paving the way for practical applications in chemical defense and therapeutics. Their work represents a beacon of hope in the ongoing battle against chemical threats, promising safer and more effective strategies to safeguard lives.

Kronenberg, J., Chu, S., Olsen, A., Britton, D., Halvorsen, L., Guo, S., Lakshmi, A., Chen, J., Kulapurathazhe, M. J., Baker, C. A., Wadsworth, B. C., Van Acker, C. J., Lehman, J. G., Otto, T. C., Renfrew, P. D., Bonneau, R., & Montclare, J. K. (2024). Computational design of phosphotriesterase improves v‐agent degradation efficiency. ChemistryOpen. https://doi.org/10.1002/open.202300263

• Jin Kim Montclare

Since the 1950s, the surge in global plastic production has paralleled a concerning rise in plastic waste. In the United States alone, a staggering 35 million tons of plastic waste were generated in 2017, with only a fraction being recycled or combusted, leaving the majority to languish in landfills. Polyethylene terephthalate (PET), a key contributor to plastic waste, particularly from food packaging, poses significant environmental challenges due to its slow decomposition and pollution.

Efforts to tackle this issue have intensified, with researchers exploring innovative solutions such as harnessing the power of microorganisms and enzymes for PET degradation. However, existing enzymes often fall short in terms of efficiency, especially at temperatures conducive to industrial applications.

Enter cutinase, a promising enzyme known for its ability to break down PET effectively. Derived from organisms like Fusarium solani , cutinase has shown remarkable potential in degrading PET and other polymeric substrates. Recent breakthroughs include the discovery of leaf and branch compost cutinase (LCC), exhibiting unprecedented PET degradation rates at high temperatures, and IsPETase, which excels at lower temperatures.

In a recent study, researchers from NYU Tandon led by Jin Kim Montclare , Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, presented a novel computational screening workflow utilizing advanced protocols to design variants of LCC with improved PET degradation capabilities similar to those in isPETase. By integrating computational modeling with biochemical assays, they have identified promising variants exhibiting increased hydrolysis behavior, even at moderate temperatures.

This study underscores the transformative potential of computational screening in enzyme redesign, offering new avenues for addressing plastic pollution. By incorporating insights from natural enzymes like IsPETase, researchers are paving the way for the development of highly efficient PET-hydrolyzing enzymes with significant implications for environmental sustainability.

Britton, D., Liu, C., Xiao, Y., Jia, S., Legocki, J., Kronenberg, J., & Montclare, J. K. (2024). Protein-engineered leaf and branch compost cutinase variants using computational screening and ispetase homology. Catalysis Today, 433, 114659. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cattod.2024.114659

Data science can be a valuable tool for analyzing social determinants of health and help solve root causes of health inequities

Data science methods can help overcome challenges in measuring and analyzing social determinants of health (SDoH), according to a paper published in Lancet Digital Health, helping mitigate the root causes of health inequities that are not fully addressed through health care spending or lifestyle choices.

The paper came out of the NYU-Moi Data Science Social Determinants Training Program (DSSD), a collaboration between New York University, the NYU Grossman School of Medicine, Moi University, and Brown University that is funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Through interdisciplinary training at NYU, DSSD aims to build a cohort of data science trainees from Kenya. 

Rumi Chunara , associate professor at both NYU Tandon School of Engineering and NYU School of Global Public Health, is a DSSD Program Principal Investigator and wrote the paper with colleagues from DSSD’s collaborating institutions and the NIH.

SDoH are the diverse conditions in people's environments that affect their health, such as racism and climate. These conditions can negatively impact quality of life and health outcomes by shaping economic policies, social norms, and other environmental factors that consequently influence individual behaviors.

According to the researchers, the three main challenges — and potential solutions — in studying SDoH are:

• SDoH data is hard to measure, especially at multiple levels like individual, community, and national, with racism being one notable example. Data science methods can help capture social determinants of health not easily quantified, like racism or climate impacts, from unstructured data sources including social media, notes, or imagery. For example, natural language processing can extract housing insecurity from medical notes, and deep learning can parse environmental factors from satellite imagery. These unstructured sources provide diverse insights compared to tabular, structured data, but also may contain biases requiring careful inspection. Incorporating social determinants from flexible, unstructured sources into analyses can better capture the heterogeneity of health effects across different populations.
• SDoH impact health through complex, nonlinear pathways over time. Social factors like income or education are farther removed from health outcomes than medical factors. They affect health through complicated chains of intermediate factors that can also flow back to influence the social factors. For instance, income provides resources for healthy behaviors that improve health, while poor health hinders income. Advanced modeling techniques like machine learning can handle these tangled relationships between many variables better than simpler statistical models. Models that simulate individuals' behaviors and interactions allow studying how health patterns emerge from social factors. This captures the real-world complexity traditional models may miss between broad social conditions and individual health.
• It takes a long time, sometimes decades, to observe how SDoH ultimately affect health outcomes . For example, lack of fresh produce and recreation options leads to poor nutrition, but chronic diseases take decades to develop. Longitudinal data over such time spans is rare, especially globally. Collecting representative surveys is resource-intensive. But novel digital data like mobile usage, purchases, or satellite imagery can provide longitudinal views at granular place and time scales. With proper privacy protections and population considerations, these new data managed with data science methods can help model social determinants' long-term health impacts.

Fully leveraging data science for SDoH research requires diverse experts working collaboratively across disciplines, according to the researchers. Training more data scientists, especially from underrepresented backgrounds, in SDoH is pivotal. Developing local data science skills grounded in community knowledge and values is also vital.

Along with Chunara, the paper’s authors are: Jessica Gjonaj from NYU School of Global Public Health and NYU Grossman;  Rajesh Vedanthan from NYU Grossman; Eileen Immaculate, Iris Wanga, Judith Mangeni and Ann Mwangi from the College of Health Sciences at Moi University (Eldoret, Kenya);  James Alaro and Lori A. J. Scott-Sheldon from the National Institutes of Health; and Joseph Hogan from Brown University.

Chunara, R., Gjonaj, J., Immaculate, E.  et al.  Social determinants of health: the need for data science methods and capacity.  The Lancet Digital Health ,  6 (4), e235–e237 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1016/S2589-7500(24)00022-0

• Rumi Chunara

How can music choices affect productivity?

Human brain states are unobserved states that can constantly change due to internal and external factors, including cognitive arousal, a.k.a. intensity of emotion, and cognitive performance states. Maintaining a proper level of cognitive arousal may result in being more productive throughout daily cognitive activities. Therefore, monitoring and regulating one’s arousal state based on cognitive performance via simple everyday interventions such as music is a critical topic to be investigated. 

Researchers from NYU Tandon led by Rose Faghih — inspired by the Yerkes-Dodson law in psychology, known as the inverted-U law — investigated the arousal-performance link throughout a cognitive task in the presence of personalized music. The Yerkes-Dodson law states that performance is a function of arousal and has an inverted-U shaped relationship with cognitive arousal, i.e., a moderate level of arousal results in optimal performance, on the other hand, an excessively high level of arousal may result in anxiety, while a deficient level of arousal may be followed by boredom. 

In this study, participants selected music with calming and exciting music components to mimic the low and high-arousing environment. To decode the underlying arousal and performance with respect to everyday life settings, they used peripheral physiological data as well as behavioral signals within the Bayesian Decoders. In particular, electrodermal activity (EDA) has been widely used as a quantitative arousal index. In parallel, behavioral data such as a sequence of correct/incorrect responses and reaction time are common cognitive performance observations. 

The decoded arousal and performance data points in the arousal-performance frame depict an inverted U shape, which conforms with the Yerkes-Dodson law. Also, findings present the overall better performance of participants within the exciting background music. Considering the Yerkes-Dodson law, we develop a performance-based arousal decoder that can preserve and account for the cognitive performance dynamic. Such a decoder can provide a profound insight into how physiological responses and cognitive states interplay to influence productivity.

Although several factors, such as the nature of the cognitive task, the participant’s baseline, and the type of applied music, can impact the outcome, it might be feasible to enhance cognitive performance and shift one’s arousal from either the left or right side of the curve using music. In particular, the baseline of arousal level varies among humans, and the music may be selected to set the arousal within the desired range. The outcome of this research can advance researchers closer to developing a practical and personalized closed-loop brain-computer interface for regulating internal brain states within everyday life activities.

S. Khazaei, M. R. Amin, M. Tahir and R. T. Faghih, "Bayesian Inference of Hidden Cognitive Performance and Arousal States in Presence of Music," in IEEE Open Journal of Engineering in Medicine and Biology, doi: 10.1109/OJEMB.2024.3377923.

• Rose Faghih

New bioengineered protein design shows promise in fighting COVID-19

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, scientists have been racing to develop effective treatments and preventatives against the virus. A recent scientific breakthrough has emerged from the work of researchers aiming to combat SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for COVID-19.

Led by Jin Kim Montclare and her team, the study focuses on the design and development of a novel protein capable of binding to the spike proteins found on the surface of the coronavirus. The goal behind this innovative approach is twofold: first, to identify and recognize the virus for diagnostic purposes, and second, to hinder its ability to infect human cells.

The engineered protein, resembling a structure with five arms, exhibits a unique feature—a hydrophobic pore within its coiled-coil configuration. This feature enables the protein not only to bind to the virus but also to capture small molecules, such as the antiviral drug Ritonavir.

Ritonavir, already utilized in the treatment of SARS-CoV-2 infections, serves as a logical choice for integration into this protein-based therapeutic. By incorporating Ritonavir into the protein, the researchers aim to enhance the treatment's efficacy while simultaneously targeting the virus directly.

The study marks a significant advancement in the fight against COVID-19, showcasing a multifaceted approach to combating the virus. Through a combination of protein engineering and computational design, the team has devised a promising strategy that may revolutionize current treatment modalities.

Although the research is still in its early stages, with no human or animal trials conducted as yet, the findings offer a proof of principle for the therapeutic potential of the designed protein. The team has demonstrated its ability to enhance the protein's binding affinity to the virus spike protein, laying the groundwork for future investigations.

The potential applications of this protein-based therapeutic extend beyond COVID-19. Its versatility opens doors to combating a range of viral infections, offering a dual mode of action—preventing viral entry into human cells and neutralizing virus particles.

Furthermore, the success of this study underscores the importance of computational approaches in protein design. By leveraging computational tools such as Rosetta, the researchers have accelerated the process of protein engineering, enabling rapid iterations and optimization.

The development of this novel protein represents a significant step forward in the ongoing battle against COVID-19. As research progresses, the integration of computational design and protein engineering holds promise for the development of innovative therapeutics with broad-spectrum antiviral capabilities. While challenges remain, this study offers hope for a future where effective treatments against emerging viral threats are within reach.

People’s everyday pleasures may improve cognitive arousal and performance

UPDATE March 4, 2024: The data set that Faghih’s lab collected for this research is now available to the global research community on the PhysioNet platform. This dataset is unique, offering real-world insights into how common pleasures affect our physiological responses and cognitive performance.

The potential of this dataset is vast. It opens new avenues for research into the influence of everyday experiences on cognitive performance, potentially leading to smarter work environments or personalized life-enhancing strategies. Imagine tailoring your work environment with specific sounds or scents to boost productivity and creativity. By analyzing this dataset, researchers can discover patterns and connections previously unseen. This could lead to breakthroughs in understanding how to harness everyday experiences to enhance cognitive abilities. Ultimately, this research could pave the way for innovative applications in workplace productivity enhancement and educational method improvement.

“This dataset is more than a collection of data points; it is a window into the intricate relationship between daily pleasures and our brain's performance,” says Fekri Azgomi, Faghih’s former PhD student who collected this data. “As our lab, the Computational Medicine Laboratory , shares this dataset with the world, we are excited about the endless possibilities it holds for advancing our understanding of the human mind and enhancing everyday life.”

Original story below.

Listening to music and drinking coffee are the sorts of everyday pleasures that can impact a person’s brain activity in ways that improve cognitive performance, including in tasks requiring concentration and memory.

That’s a finding of a new NYU Tandon School of Engineering study involving MINDWATCH, a groundbreaking brain-monitoring technology.

Developed over the past six years by NYU Tandon's Biomedical Engineering Associate Professor Rose Faghih , MINDWATCH is an algorithm that analyzes a person's brain activity from data collected via any wearable device that can monitor electrodermal activity (EDA). This activity reflects changes in electrical conductance triggered by emotional stress, linked to sweat responses.

In this recent MINDWATCH study, published in Nature Scientific Reports , subjects wearing  skin-monitoring wristbands and brain monitoring headbands completed cognitive tests while listening to music, drinking coffee and sniffing perfumes reflecting their individual preferences. They also completed those tests without any of those stimulants. 

The MINDWATCH algorithm revealed that music and coffee measurably altered subjects’ brain arousal, essentially putting them in a physiological “state of mind” that could modulate their performance in the working memory tasks they were performing. 

Specifically, MINDWATCH determined the stimulants triggered increased “beta band” brain wave activity, a state associated with peak cognitive performance. Perfume had a modest positive effect as well, suggesting the need for further study. 

“The pandemic has impacted the mental well-being of many people across the globe and now more than ever, there is a need to seamlessly monitor the negative impact of everyday stressors on one's cognitive function,” said Faghih. “Right now MINDWATCH is still under development, but our eventual goal is that it will contribute to technology that could allow any person to monitor his or her own brain cognitive arousal in real time, detecting moments of acute stress or cognitive disengagement, for example. At those times, MINDWATCH could ‘nudge’ a person towards simple and safe interventions — perhaps listening to music  — so they could get themselves into a brain state in which they feel better and perform job or school tasks more successfully.”

The specific cognitive test used in this study — a working memory task, called the n-back test — involves presenting a sequence of stimuli (in this case, images or sounds) one by one and asking the subject to indicate whether the current stimulus matches the one presented "n" items back in the sequence. This study employed a 1-back test — the participant responded "yes" when the current stimulus is the same as the one presented one item back — and a more challenging 3-back test, asking the same for three items back.

Researchers tested three types of music - energetic and relaxing music familiar to the subject, as well as novel AI-generated music that reflected the subject’s tastes.  Consistent with prior MINDWATCH research, familiar energetic music delivered bigger performance gains — as measured by reaction times and correct answers — than relaxing music. While AI-generated music produced the biggest gains among all three, further research is needed to confirm those results.

Drinking coffee led to notable but less-pronounced performance gains than music, and perfume had the most modest gains.

Performance gains under all stimulations tended to be higher on the 3-back tests, suggesting interventions may have the most profound effect when “cognitive load” is higher.

Ongoing experimentation by the MINDWATCH team will confirm the efficacy of the technology’s ability to monitor brain activity consistently, and the general success of various interventions in modulating that brain activity. Determining a category of generally successful interventions does not mean that any individual person will find it works for them.

The research was performed as a part of Faghih’s National Science Foundation CAREER award on the Multimodal Intelligent Noninvasive brain state Decoder for Wearable AdapTive Closed-loop arcHitectures (MINDWATCH) project.  The study's diverse dataset is available to researchers, allowing additional research on the use of the safe interventions in this study to modulate brain cognitive states.

Faghih served as the senior author for this paper. Its first author is Hamid Fekri Azgomi, who earned his Ph.D. under Faghih and is now a postdoctoral scholar of neurological surgery at the University of California San Francisco School of Medicine.

Fekri Azgomi, H., F. Branco, L.R., Amin, M.R.  et al.  Regulation of brain cognitive states through auditory, gustatory, and olfactory stimulation with wearable monitoring.  Sci Rep   13 , 12399 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-37829-z

New York City ranks in the top 15 percent safest of more than 800 U.S. cities, according to a pioneering new analysis from researchers at NYU Tandon School of Engineering, suggesting  the effectiveness of the city’s efforts to mitigate homicides there.

In a paper published in Nature Cities , a research team explored the role that population size of cities plays on the incidences of gun homicides, gun ownership and licensed gun sellers. 

The researchers found that none of these quantities vary linearly with the population size. In other words, higher population did not directly equate to proportionally higher rates of gun homicides, ownership, or gun sellers in a predictable straight-line way across cities. The relationships were more complex than that.

This finding prompted the researchers to apply a data analytics measure called Scale-Adjusted Metropolitan Indicators (SAMIs), to filter out population effects, allow a fair comparison between cities of different sizes, and support principled analyses of the interplay between firearm violence, ownership, and accessibility.

“People often cite per capita rates of gun violence as evidence about whether gun laws work in any given metropolis — or even how safe cities are compared to each other — but that actually isn't completely accurate,” said Maurizio Porfiri , the paper’s senior author. Porfiri is Director of the NYU Tandon Center for Urban Science and Progress (CUSP) and an Institute Professor in the Departments of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and Biomedical Engineering. 

“SAMI shows us that some large cities with higher per capita rates of gun violence might actually be doing a better job of curtailing gun harms than their smaller counterparts with lower per capita rates.” 

Porfiri and Rayan Succar, a Ph.D. candidate in Mechanical Engineering and CUSP, collected and analyzed data on the amount of gun homicides and armed robberies, gun ownership, and licensed gun sellers in about 800 cities ranging in size from about 20 million (metro area) to 10,000. 

With SAMI, they uncovered that firearm homicide and robbery rates scale superlinearly, disproportionately concentrating in larger cities like NYC. 

In contrast, gun ownership scales sublinearly, with larger cities having fewer guns per capita than their smaller counterparts. Gun violence rates are higher per capita in cities with bigger populations due to the presence of causative factors there, including bigger income disparities and the proximity of people to each other. 

By studying cities' deviations from scaling laws, the researchers established rising homicide rates quantitatively cause more firearm ownership, likely due to self-protection concerns. Easier access to licensed gun sellers also directly drives up ownership, with more access in smaller cities. 

"Our research finds evidence for the theory of self-protection, wherein people will buy firearms out of fear for their own and their loved ones' lives,” said Succar.

The per capita homicide rates in New York City are significantly lower than what urban scaling laws models anticipate, considering  the city's size  and its gun ecosystem, researchers found.

"So while many people see New York as unsafe, our population-adjusted analysis makes it clear the city is doing far better on homicide prevention than you'd probably guess. In fact, it comes out on top of the country’s 10 biggest metros,” said Succar.

“Our study provides a robust quantitative basis for evaluating the effectiveness of local policies to reduce shootings,” said Porfiri. “We plan to expand this urban scaling theory and causal discovery approach globally to decode complex dynamics shaping cities worldwide.”

This study contributes to Porfiri’s ongoing data-based research related to U.S. gun prevalence and violence, which he is pursuing under a $2 million National Science Foundation grant he received in 2020 to study the “ firearm ecosystem ” in the United States. This is the first of his studies that examines data at the city level. Previous projects looked at data at the state and national level. His published research has focused on motivations of fame-seeking mass shooters ,  factors that prompt gun purchases , state-by-state gun ownership trends , and forecasting monthly gun homicide rates . 

To see the ranked lists of all cities in this study, visit Github . A summary is below:

HOMICIDE SCORES - SAMI

Highest: cities that experience higher homicide rates than what their size would predict

• Helena-West Helena, AR
• Clarksdale, MS
• Greenville, MS
• Indianola, MS
• Grenada, MS
• Blytheville, AR
• Greenwood, MS
• Pine Bluff, AR
• Bennettsville, SC

Lowest: cities that experience lower homicide rates than what their size would predict

• Mount Pleasant, MI
• Rexburg, ID
• Huntingdon, PA
• Willmar, MN
• Fremont, NE
• Dickinson, ND
• Kearney, NE
• Lincoln, IL

FIREARM OWNERSHIP SCORES - SAMI

Highest: cities that experience higher ownership rates than what their size would predict

• Natchitoches, LA 
• Bastrop, LA 
• Cleveland, MS 
• Tuscaloosa, AL 
• Statesboro, GA 
• Americus, GA 
• Brenham, TX 
• Anniston-Oxford-Jacksonville, AL 
• Albany, GA 

Lowest: cities that experience lower ownership rates than what their size would predict

• Gallup, NM 
• Kahului-Wailuku-Lahaina, HI
• Auburn, NY 
• Eagle Pass, TX 
• Ithaca, NY 
• New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ-PA 
• Lamesa, TX 
• Freeport, IL 

LICENSED FIREARM DEALER SCORES - SAMI

Highest : cities that have more licensed dealers in them than what their size would predict

• Prineville, OR 
• Spearfish, SD 
• Fredericksburg, TX 
• Helena, MT 
• Prescott, AZ 
• Kalispell, MT 
• La Grande, OR 
• Jefferson City, MO 
• Enterprise, AL 
• Greeley, CO 

Lowest:  cities that have fewer licensed dealers in them than what their size would predict

• Raymondville, TX
• Eagle Pass, TX
• El Centro, CA
• Crescent City, CA
• New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ-PA
• Santa Cruz-Watsonville, CA
• San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward, CA
• Salinas, CA

High-profile incidents of police brutality sway public opinion more than performance of people’s local law enforcement, new study from NYU Tandon reveals

National media coverage of police brutality influences public perceptions of law enforcement more than the performance of people’s local police departments, according to data analysis from NYU Tandon School of Engineering, challenging the assumption that public confidence in police depends mostly on feeling safe from local crime.

In a study published in Communications Psychology , a NYU Tandon research team tracked media coverage of police brutality in 18 metropolitan areas in the United States — along with coverage of local crimes  — and analyzed tweets from those cities to tease out positive attitudes from negative ones towards the police. 

Led by Maurizio Porfiri , Institute Professor and Director of the Center for Urban Science and Progress (CUSP) , the team found when high-profile cases of police brutality make the news, negative sentiment and distrust towards police spikes across cities, even if the incident occurred in another state. 

In contrast, local media coverage of crimes in people's own cities had little sway over their views of the police. Porfiri discussed the research and its implications in a blog post . 

“Our research shows that police misconduct occurring anywhere reverberates across the country, while performance of police in their own communities contribute minimally towards attitudes around those local police departments,” said Rayan Succar , a Ph.D. candidate in Mechanical Engineering and CUSP who is the paper’s lead author. “The pattern holds steady across diverse cities.”

To reach their conclusions, researchers employed transfer entropy — an advanced statistical technique that allowed them to detect causal relationships within complex systems that change over time — in their analysis of more than 2.5 million geo-localized tweets. The approach allows for significantly more time-sensitive analysis of public sentiment than standard surveys which are constrained to the point in time at which they are fielded.

“By comparing this time series tracking shifts in sentiment to parallel time series documenting volumes of media coverage about local crime and national police brutality news, transfer entropy quantified causal relationships between media coverage and Twitter discourse about law enforcement,” said Salvador Ramallo, Fulbright Scholar from the University of Murcia in Spain and a visiting member of CUSP who is part of the research team.

The researchers assembled their data from the period October 1, 2010 to December 31, 2020. With a time resolution of one minute, the team collected tweets in each metropolitan area that contained the words “police,” “cop,” or the local police department name abbreviation of the main city in the metropolitan area (“NYPD” for New York Police Department).

In that same time frame, researchers collected coverage of police brutality and of local crime from 17 of the 20 most circulated newspapers.

To better detail the interplay between media coverage and public sentiment, the researchers also zeroed in on a two-week period around the heavily-covered George Floyd murder, a notorious example of extreme police brutality. Specifically, they scraped the Twitter feeds of the top 10 most-followed newspaper profiles and created a time series of police brutality coverage from May 29, 2020 until June 13, 2020.  

This highly resolved time series was examined in conjunction with the time series of negative tweets about the police for each of the 18 metropolitan areas during the same two-week time window.

“The research reveals how profoundly a single incident of police violence can rupture public trust in police everywhere,” said CUSP postdoctoral fellow Roni Barak Ventura, a member of the research team. “The findings suggest that to improve perceptions, police departments may need to prioritize transparency around misconduct allegations as much as local crime fighting. More community dialogue and balanced media coverage may also help build understanding between police and the public they serve.”

This study is the latest in a series that Porfiri is pursuing under a 2020 National Science Foundation grant awarded to study the “ firearm ecosystem ” in the United States. His research employs sophisticated data analytics to investigate the firearm ecosystem on three different scales. On the macroscale, research illuminates cause-and-effect relationships between firearm prevalence and firearm-related harms. On the mesoscale, the project explores the ideological, economic, and political landscape underlying state approaches to firearm safety. On the microscale, research delves into individual opinions about firearm safety.

Porfiri’s prior published research has focused on motivations of fame-seeking mass shooters ,  factors that prompt gun purchases , state-by-state gun ownership trends , and forecasting monthly gun homicide rates .  

CUSP postdoctoral fellow Rishita Das also contributed to the study.

Succar, R., Ramallo, S., Das, R.  et al.  Understanding the role of media in the formation of public sentiment towards the police.  Commun Psychol   2 , 11 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44271-024-00059-8

• Maurizio Porfiri

Researchers at NYU Tandon School of Engineering have revealed critical shortcomings in recently proposed methods aimed at making powerful text-to-image generative AI systems safer for public use. 

In a paper that will be presented at the Twelfth International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR), taking place in Vienna from May 7-11, 2024, the research team demonstrates how techniques that claim to "erase" the ability of models like Stable Diffusion to generate explicit, copyrighted, or otherwise unsafe visual content can be circumvented through simple attacks.

Stable Diffusion is a publicly available AI system that can create highly realistic images from just text descriptions.  Examples of the images generated in the study are on GitHub . 

"Text-to-image models have taken the world by storm with their ability to create virtually any visual scene from just textual descriptions," said the paper’s lead author Chinmay Hegde , associate professor in the NYU Tandon Electrical and Computer Engineering Department and in the Computer Science and Engineering Department. "But that opens the door to people making and distributing photo-realistic images that may be deeply manipulative, offensive and even illegal, including celebrity deepfakes or images that violate copyrights.”

The researchers investigated seven of the latest concept erasure methods and demonstrated how they could bypass the filters using "concept inversion" attacks. 

By learning special word embeddings and providing them as inputs, the researchers could successfully trigger Stable Diffusion to reconstruct the very concepts the sanitization aimed to remove, including hate symbols, trademarked objects, or celebrity likenesses. In fact the team's inversion attacks could reconstruct virtually any unsafe imagery the original Stable Diffusion model was capable of, despite claims the concepts were "erased."

The methods appear to be performing simple input filtering rather than truly removing unsafe knowledge representations. An adversary could potentially use these same concept inversion prompts on publicly released sanitized models to generate harmful or illegal content.

The findings raise concerns about prematurely deploying these sanitization approaches as a safety solution for powerful generative AI. 

“Rendering text-to-image generative AI models incapable of creating bad content requires altering the model training itself, rather than relying on post hoc fixes,” said Hegde. “Our work shows that it is very unlikely that, say, Brad Pitt could ever successfully request that his appearance be "forgotten" by modern AI. Once these AI models reliably learn concepts, it is virtually impossible to fully excise any one concept from them.” 

According to Hegde, the research also shows that proposed concept erasure methods must be evaluated not just on general samples, but explicitly against adversarial concept inversion attacks during the assessment process.

Collaborating with Hegde on the study were the paper’s first author, NYU Tandon PhD candidate Minh Pham; NYU Tandon PhD candidate Govin Mittal; NYU Tandon graduate fellow Kelly O. Marshall and NYU Tandon post doctoral researcher Niv Cohen.

The paper is the latest research that contributes to Hegde’s body of work focused on developing AI models to solve problems in areas like imaging, materials design, and transportation, and on identifying weaknesses in current models. In another recent study, Hegde and his collaborators revealed they developed an AI technique that can change a person's apparent age in images while maintaining their unique identifying features, a significant step forward from standard AI models that can make people look younger or older but fail to retain their individual biometric identifiers.

Circumventing Concept Erasure Methods For Text-To-Image Generative Models Minh Pham, Kelly O. Marshall, Niv Cohen, Govind Mittal, Chinmay Hegde Published: 16 Jan 2024. Conference paper at ICLR 2024

• Chinmay Hegde

Asylum seekers’ mental health benefits from sheltering in refugee centers, new study reveals

Sheltering in refugee centers can positively impact asylum seekers’ mental health, according to a new study published in Communications Medicine , underscoring the benefits of providing migrants safe and welcoming transitional environments in which professionals in the host countries monitor their psychological and physical needs. 

The study’s multidisciplinary research team, coordinated by Emanuele Caroppo — Head of International Projects and Researches at the Department of Mental Health Asl Roma 2 — administered a battery of six questionnaires, ranging from demographic surveys to comprehensive psychological assessments, to a cohort of 100 asylum-seekers in 14-day COVID-19-related quarantines in Italy between August 2020 and September 2021. 

Maurizio Porfiri , NYU Tandon Institute Professor and Director of the Center for Urban Science and Progress (CUSP), designed the framework for the statistical analysis and led the interpretation of the results. He and Pietro De Lellis, associate professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology at University of Naples Federico II, are the corresponding authors on the paper.

The study’s aim was to understand the impact of the first contact with the reception system on the mental health of asylum-seekers, and to delve into predictors of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) among that population. 

Twenty-three percent of asylum-seekers in the study had PTSD — higher than the 4 to 10% incidence previously reported among the general global population. Pre-migration traumatic experiences were the key influencers in the the development of PTSD, including the infliction of bodily injury and torture, and witnessing violence. The study found no specific demographic factors that played a crucial role in predicting PTSD. Social ties and education levels did not emerge as salient features to predict the onset of PTSD. 

Despite the incidence of PTSD, the authors also observed that a 14-day stay in reception facilities appeared to positively impact asylum-seekers’ mental health, with the proportion of participants needing to undergo further psychological assessments decreasing from 51% to 21% throughout the quarantine period.

The study offers a significant step towards understanding the relationship between migration, mental health, and the reception environment. Asylum-seekers, who have already endured tremendous hardship, may find a glimmer of hope in the notion that a supportive and secure environment can significantly contribute to their psychological well-being.

Along with Porfiri, De Lellis and Caroppo, the study’s researchers are Carmela Calabrese, Department of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology, University of Naples Federico II and the Institut de Neurosciences des Systèmes (INS), Aix Marseille Université; Marianna Mazza, Institute of Psychiatry and Psychology, Department of Geriatrics, Neuroscience and Orthopedics, Fondazione Policlinico Universitario A. Gemelli IRCCS and Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Department of Psychiatry, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore; Alessandro Rinaldi, Migrant Health Unit, Local Health Authority Roma;  Daniele Coluzzi, Migrant Health Unit, Local Health Authority Roma; Pierangela Napoli, Migrant Health Unit, Local Health Authority Roma;  Martina Sapienza, Department of Life Sciences and Public Health, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore; and the UOC Salute Mentale Asl Roma 2 in Rome, Italy.

Caroppo, E., Calabrese, C., Mazza, M.  et al.  Migrants’ mental health recovery in Italian reception facilities.  Commun Med   3 , 162 (2023)

Henri Bella Schaeffer and the Women of 1950s New York City

As a processing intern with the Archives of American Art, I organized donated collections into a standardized arrangement, to make them accessible to researchers. I personally think processing archivists have the best job in the field; we get to immerse ourselves in stories and shape how the materials which hold them will be understood. I get to see an artist’s process, from journaled ideas to preliminary sketches to exhibition. I get to read their most intimate self-reflections. I get to hold snapshots of their community.

Of the collections which I processed this past summer, my favorite was the papers of Henri Bella Schaeffer . Despite being a relatively obscure artist without—as of this writing—her own Wikipedia page, Schaeffer led an impressive life, both as an artist and a philanthropist. Born in 1908, she studied at the Académie André Lhote and the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris, and under the tutelage of muralist William A. Mackay. She would go on to become an admired postimpressionist painter, notably included in the International Women’s Salon and the Salon d'Automne.

Much of Schaeffer’s collection surrounds her dedication to the Artists Equity Association (AEA) , a national organization that, according to their constitution and by-laws , “formed to advance, foster, and promote the interests of those who work in the Fine Arts.” Schaeffer began this philanthropic commitment in 1950 as a member of the AEA New York Chapter’s Welfare Committee. She would advance steadily within the organization over the next decade, serving as a member of the National Welfare Committee from 1953 to 1959; director of the New York Chapter from 1954 to 1956; AEA director-at-large from 1956 to 1959; and AEA national secretary from 1961 to 1963.

The AEA formed its chapter-level and national welfare committees during a period of political change and American artistic redefinition; in New York City where Schaeffer worked, this change was embodied in the invention of Abstract Expressionism. Following the end of World War II and the uptick of the Cold War, the United States’ new status as a strong ally led many European Modernists to immigrate to New York City. Art historian Michael Leja argues that American artists in New York City were influenced by this imported Modernism, a broad genre that embraces experimentation, to create art that encapsulated individualistic reactions to America’s rising role as an imperialist force. The rise of this new artistic genre in combination with America’s increasing global influence lifted New York City as a new center of the art world art scene, supported by a booming postwar economy and the Works Progress Administration’s recent federal legitimization of artistic careers.

Using the example of abstract expressionism, we can gain insight into how women artists fared in 1950s New York City. In her book, Abstract Expressionism: Other Politics , Ann Eden Gibson argues that Abstract Expressionism labels is remembered as a “triumph of the outsider,” a daring venture by artists to take their political messages from the margins to the global art scene. However, because Abstract Expressionism fundamentally relies on the personhood of the artist, those with societal advantages ironically became the dominant voices in a genre defined by its supposed marginalization. As Joan Marter notes in her essay “Missing in Action: Abstract Expressionist Women,” women abstract expressionists in New York City were largely excluded from the commercial art scene, limited in their participation within key artist clubs, and their portrayals of postwar existentialism were largely dismissed. With white women experiencing this level of discrimination, it is no surprise that artists of color saw even less recognition within the budding genre of abstract expressionism.

Due to professional dismissal, some women artists in 1950s New York City were desperate for work. As a member of the New York Chapter’s Welfare Committee, Schaeffer received many letters from women artists or the wives of artists, asking for financial and professional assistance. Common stressors included debt, medical access, and housing insecurity. The women writing to Schaeffer and the New York Welfare Committee expressed their lack the references and connections needed to apply for jobs and their desperation to support their families.

Schaeffer heard the pleas of these women and with the help of the New York Chapter Welfare Committee provided support in a variety of ways. Oftentimes this took the form of loans, to cover the rent and debts of recipients. When the situation was less immediate, the Committee connected women to job opportunities that could provide immediate cash. When a Mr. Loius Ferstad was sent to a sanitorium, the Welfare Committee covered the cost and, unable to find artistic employment on such short notice, set his wife up with “some typewriting work to do at home” to support their children in his absence. The Committee’s support always came with the expectation that its recipients would work hard to better their situations and would repay the AEA in time.

The Committee also supported women artists when the strain of poverty and personal losses to war became too much to bear. When Mrs. Dasha, the wife of a deceased veteran, wrote in requesting a same-day loan to purchase coal and clothes for her son, the Committee provided loans, artistic employment, and relocation assistance, hoping that the support would create “a possible incentive to her to try and help herself.” And when sculptor Irma Rothstein lived through a suicide attempt after losing her brother in World War II, the Committee covered her hospital bill, sold some of her artwork, and kept her company, as she had no family in the country. Schaeffer and the AEA stood with these women when they had no one else to which they could turn.

Henri Bella Schaeffer would continue to support artists through her other roles with the AEA, but her work with the New York Welfare Committee allowed her compassionate nature to directly reach women creatives in need. In the words of Schaeffer, “the right human relationship is … of utmost importance.” People like Henri Bella Schaeffer, a woman and an artist and an impactful philanthropist with a small digital footprint, are the reason I am training to be an archivist: to discover their stories, to place their legacies in the hands of others.

Emma Eubank is earning an M.A. in Public History at North Carolina State University and a M.S. in Library Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She interned with the Collections Processing department of the Archives of American Art in 2023.

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Finding Dissertations

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NYU Dissertations Online

All dissertations completed at NYU are indexed in the online database  Dissertations and Theses Global. Users who wish to access NYU dissertations, especially dissertations completed since 1997, would be best served by searching this database. Many (but not all) dissertations will be available in full-text.

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When dissertation authors submit their work to Dissertations and Theses Global , they have the option to  embargo the full-text for up to two years from that point. Authors may choose to embargo their dissertations for several reasons, for example, if they are planning to publish the dissertation (or a version of it) as a book. There are currently no options for NYU students to access the full-text of a dissertation if the author has chosen to embargo.  In some cases, the author can extend the embargo beyond 2 years. It is estimated that approximately 50% of dissertation authors at NYU choose to embargo.

Dissertations that have been embargoed will appear with the note, " At the request of the author, this graduate work is not available to view or purchase" in the upper right-hand corner of record.

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NYU dissertations completed before 2007 are available in both print and microform at Bobst.

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Call number ranges for NYU dissertations (Dissertations from Tisch and Courant are under GSAS):

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Dissertations published before 2008 at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Wagner School of Public Administration, Stern School of Business, Silver School of Social Work, and Steinhardt School of Education are available on microform .

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Dissertations completed at NYU through 2007 are available on microform. Microform copies are located in the Microforms Center on LL2 of Bobst Library. These are arranged chronologically by school. Some of the older rolls of film contain more than one dissertation. These copies are each given a thesis number in chronological, alphabetical order. The thesis numbers are listed on each roll, corresponding to the cataloged location in the Library Catalog.

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Why Scientific Fraud Is Suddenly Everywhere

Junk science has been forcing a reckoning among scientific and medical researchers for the past year, leading to thousands of retracted papers. Last year, Stanford president Marc Tessier-Lavigne resigned amid reporting that some of his most high-profile work on Alzheimer’s disease was at best inaccurate. (A probe commissioned by the university’s board of trustees later exonerated him of manipulating the data).

But the problems around credible science appear to be getting worse. Last week, scientific publisher Wiley decided to shutter 19 scientific journals after retracting 11,300 sham papers. There is a large-scale industry of so-called “paper mills” that sell fictive research, sometimes written by artificial intelligence, to researchers who then publish it in peer-reviewed journals — which are sometimes edited by people who had been placed by those sham groups. Among the institutions exposing such practices is Retraction Watch, a 14-year-old organization co-founded by journalists Ivan Oransky and Adam Marcus. I spoke with Oransky about why there has been a surge in fake research and whether fraud accusations against the presidents of Harvard and Stanford are actually good for academia.

Give me a sense of how big a problem these paper mills are. 

I’ll start by saying that paper mills are not the problem; they are a symptom of the actual problem. Adam Marcus, my co-founder, had broken a really big and frightening story about a painkiller involving scientific fraud , which led to dozens of retractions. That’s what got us interested in that. There were all these retractions, far more than we thought but far fewer than there are now. Now, they’re hiding in plain sight.

That was 2010. Certainly, AI has accelerated things, but we’ve known about paper mills for a long time. Everybody wanted to pretend all these problems didn’t exist. The problems in scientific literature are long-standing, and they’re an incentive problem. And the metrics that people use to measure research feed a business model — a ravenous sort of insatiable business model. Hindsight is always going to be 20/20, but a lot of people actually were predicting what we’re seeing now.

Regarding your comment that paper mills are symptoms of a larger problem, I read this story in Science and was struck by the drive for credentialing — which gets you better jobs, higher pay, and more prestige. In academia, there aren’t enough jobs; are the hurdles to these jobs impossibly high, especially for people who may be smart but are from China or India and may not have entry into an American or European university? 

I actually would go one step higher. When you say there aren’t enough jobs, it’s because we’re training so many Ph.D.’s and convincing them all that the only way to remain a scientist is to stay in academia. It’s not, and that hasn’t been true for a long time. So there’s definitely a supply-and-demand problem, and people are going to compete.

You may recall the story about high-school students who were paying to get medical papers published in order to get into college. That’s the sort of level we’re at now. It’s just pervasive. People are looking only at metrics, not at actual papers. We’re so fixated on metrics because they determine funding for a university based on where it is in the rankings. So it comes from there and then it filters down. What do universities then want? Well, they want to attract people who are likely to publish papers. So how do you decide that? “Oh, you’ve already published some papers, great. We’re gonna bring you in.” And then when you’re there, you’ve got to publish even more.

You’re replacing actual findings and science and methodology and the process with what I would argue are incredibly misleading — even false — metrics. Paper mills are industrializing it. This is like the horse versus the steam engine.

So they’re Moneyballing it. 

Absolutely. They’ve Moneyballed it with a caveat: Moneyball sort of worked. The paper mills have metricized it, which is not as sexy to say. If you were to isolate one factor, citations matter the most, and if you look at the ranking systems, it’s all right there. The Times Higher Education world-university rankings , U.S. News — look at whichever you want, and somewhere between like 30 percent and 60 percent of those rankings are based on citations. Citations are so easy to game. So people are setting up citation cartels: “Yes, we will get all of our other clients to cite you, and nobody will notice because we’re doing it in this algorithmic, mixed-up way.” Eventually, people do notice, but it’s the insistence on citations as the coin of the realm that all of this comes from.

Your work gets to the heart of  researchers’ integrity. Do you feel like you’re a pariah in the scientific community?

I’m a volunteer. Adam is paid a very small amount. We use our funding to pay two reporters and then two people work on our database side. We approach these things journalistically; we don’t actually identify the problems ourselves. It’s very, very rare for us to do that. Even when it may appear that way on a superficial read — we’ve broken some stories recently about clear problems in literature — it’s always because a source showed us the way. Sometimes those sources want to be named, sometimes they don’t.

We’ve been doing this for 14 years. There are various ways to look at what the scientific community thinks of us. We’re publishing 100 posts a year about people committing bad behavior and only getting, on average, one cease-and-desist letter a year. We have never been sued, but we do carried defamation insurance. Our work is cited hundreds of times in the scientific literature. I definitely don’t feel like a pariah. Me saying I’m a pariah would be a little bit like, you know, someone whose alleged cancellation has promoted them to the top of Twitter.

People are unhappy that we have do what we do. If you talk to scientists, the things we’re exposing or others are exposing are well known to them. Because of the structures, the hierarchies, and the power differentials in science, it’s very difficult for them as insiders to blow the whistle. There’s a book out by Carl Elliott about whistleblowers , mostly in the sort of more clinical fields. That’s the vulnerable position. That’s where you end up being a pariah even though you should be considered a hero or heroine.

Are some fields better at policing their own research than others?

Yes. Going back to the origin story of Retraction Watch, Adam broke a story about this guy named Scott Reuben, who came from anesthesiology. We have a leaderboard of the people with the most retractions in the world, and at least three out of the top ten right now are anesthesiologists. That is a much higher percentage than one might expect. Some people may say, “Oh, does anesthesiology have a problem?” No, in fact, anesthesiology has been doing something about this arguably longer than any other field has.

What is it about anesthesiology that makes it so anesthesiologists are more willing to scrutinize the work in their own field?

It had a crisis earlier than others, and it’s small. Journal editors are generally considered pretty august personages, leaders in the field. They got together and it was like a collective action by the journal editors when they realized they had problems. I’m not saying anesthesiologists are better, but they’re a more tight-knit community, which I do think is important. The same thing happened in social psychology and in psychology writ large. There’s a higher number than you would expect of people on leaderboards in that field. So it’s a question of, When did they get there, and how did they react to it? There are fields that haven’t actually gotten there, even though it’s been a while. So maybe there are some sociologists who could tell you better than me why that might be the case.

That wasn’t the reason I expected. I thought you would say something along the lines of, well, it’s life or death and anesthesiologists don’t want to see people dying on the table. 

If anything, sometimes when the stakes are higher, fields are more resistant.

There’s a guy named Ben Mol. Ben is an OB/GYN, and he is a force to be reckoned with. Fascinating character. He’s a pit bull, and he has found tons and tons of problems in the OB/GYN literature. I would characterize the leaders in that field now as still a bit more reluctant to engage with these issues than some of the other fields I mentioned.

Can you tell me how you go about authenticating real language from AI, especially in papers that can be hard to parse and are laden with jargon to begin with? 

We rely on experts. We’re not really doing that ourselves. You don’t need to be an expert; you just need to know how to use Ctrl+F if you see certain phrases in a paper. And by the way, a lot of journals are perfectly fine with people using chat GPT and other kinds of AI. It’s just whether you disclose it or not. These are cases where they didn’t disclose it.

With the resignation of Stanford’s and Harvard’s presidents, do you worry about the way the general public has been using these tools?

The fact that they’re giving speeding tickets to certain groups of people doesn’t mean we’re not all speeding. It means they’re getting targeted in, I would argue, an unfair way. We’re in a great reckoning with Harvard’s Claudine Gay being the key example. Former Stanford president Marc Tessier-Lavigne is not an example of that. The targeting is a concern. And clearly, there are false positives. The flip side of this is that AI is being used to find these problems.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. The story was updated to include that a probe found that Tessier-Lavigne didn’t manipulate data.

• just asking questions

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9 Undergraduate Research Projects That Wowed Us This Year

The telegraph. The polio vaccine. The bar code. Light beer. Throughout its history, NYU has been known for innovation, with faculty and alumni in every generation contributing to some of the most notable inventions and scientific breakthroughs of their time. But you don’t wind up in the history books—or peer-reviewed journals—by accident; academic research, like any specialized discipline, takes hard work and lots of practice. 

And at NYU, for students who are interested, that training can start early—including during an undergraduate's first years on campus. Whether through assistantships in faculty labs, summer internships, senior capstones, or independent projects inspired by coursework, undergrad students have many opportunities to take what they’re learning in the classroom and apply it to create original scholarship throughout their time at NYU. Many present their work at research conferences, and some even co-author work with faculty and graduate students that leads to publication. 

As 2023-2024 drew to a close, the NYU News team coordinated with the Office of the Provost to pull together a snapshot of the research efforts that students undertook during this school year. The nine featured here represent just a small fraction of the impressive work we encountered in fields ranging from biology, chemistry, and engineering to the social sciences, humanities, and the arts. 

These projects were presented at NYU research conferences for undergrads, including Migration and Im/Mobility , Pathways for Discovery: Undergraduate Research and Writing Symposium , Social Impact: NYU’s Applied Undergraduate Research Conference , Arts-Based Undergraduate Research Conference , Gallatin Student Research Conference ,  Dreammaker’s Summit , Tandon’s Research Excellence Exhibit , and Global Engagement Symposium . Learn more about these undergrad research opportunities and others.

Jordan Janowski (CAS '24)

Sade Chaffatt (NYU Abu Dhabi '24)

Elsa Nyongesa (GPH, CAS ’24 )

Anthony Offiah (Gallatin ’26)

Kimberly Sinchi (Tandon ’24) and Sarah Moughal (Tandon ’25)

Rohan Bajaj (Stern '24)

Lizette Saucedo (Liberal Studies ’24)

Eva Fuentes (CAS '24)

Andrea Durham (Tandon ’26)

Jordan Janowski (CAS ’24) Major: Biochemistry Thesis title: “Engineering Chirality for Functionality in Crystalline DNA”

Jordan Janowski (CAS '24). Photo by Tracey Friedman

I work in the Structural DNA Nanotechnology Lab, which was founded by the late NYU professor Ned Seeman, who is known as the father of the field. My current projects are manipulating DNA sequences to self-assemble into high order structures.

Essentially, we’re using DNA as a building material, instead of just analyzing it for its biological functions. It constantly amazes me that this is possible.

I came in as a pre-med student, but when I started working in the lab I realized that I was really interested in continuing my research there. I co-wrote a paper with postdoc Dr. Simon Vecchioni who has been a mentor to me and helped me navigate applying to grad school. I’m headed to Scripps Research in the fall. This research experience has led me to explore some of the molecules that make up life and how they could be engineered into truly unnatural curiosities and technologies.

My PI, Prof. Yoel Ohayon , has been super supportive of my place on the  NYU women’s basketball team, which I’m a  member of. He’s been coming to my games since sophomore year, and he’ll text me with the score and “great game!”— it’s been so nice to have that support for my interests beyond the lab.

Anthony Offiah (Gallatin ’26) Concentration: Fashion design and business administration MLK Scholars research project title: “project: DREAMER”

Anthony Offiah (Gallatin '26). Photo by Tracey Friedman

In “project: DREAMER,” I explored how much a person’s sense of fashion is a result of their environment or societal pressures based on their identity. Certain groups are pressured or engineered to present a certain way, and I wanted to see how much of the opposing force—their character, their personality—affected their sense of style. 

This was a summer research project through the MLK Scholars Program . I did ethnographic interviews with a few people, and asked them to co-design their ideal garments with me. They told me who they are, how they identify, and what they like in fashion, and we synthesized that into their dream garments. And then we had a photo shoot where they were empowered to make artistic choices. 

Some people told me they had a hard time conveying their sense of style because they were apprehensive about being the center of attention or of being dissimilar to the people around them. So they chose to conform to protect themselves. And then others spoke about wanting to safeguard the artistic or vulnerable—or one person used the word “feminine”—side of them so they consciously didn’t dress how they ideally would. 

We ended the interviews by stating an objective about how this co-designing process didn’t end with them just getting new clothes—it was about approaching fashion differently than how they started and unlearning how society might put them in a certain box without their approval.  

My concentration in Gallatin is fashion design and business administration. In the industry some clothing is critiqued and some clothing is praised—and navigating that is challenging, because what you like might not be well received. So doing bespoke fashion for just one person is freeing in a sense because you don’t have to worry about all that extra stuff. It’s just the art. And I like being an artist first and thinking about the business second.

Lizette Saucedo (Global Liberal Studies ’24) Major: Politics, rights, and development Thesis title: “Acknowledging and Remembering Deceased Migrants Crossing the U.S.-Mexican Border”

Lizette Saucedo (Global Liberal Studies '24). Photo by Tracey Friedman

My thesis project is on commemorating migrants who are dying on their journey north to cross the U.S.–Mexican border. I look at it through different theoretical lenses, and one of the terms is necropolitics—how politics shapes the way the State governs life and especially death. And then of the main issues aside from the deaths is that a lot of people in the U.S. don’t know about them, due to the government trying to eschew responsibility for migrant suffering. In the final portion of the thesis, I argue for presenting what some researchers call “migrant artifacts”—the personal belongings left behind by people trying to cross over—to the public, so that people can become aware and have more of a human understanding of what’s going on. 

This is my senior thesis for Liberal Studies, but the idea for it started in an International Human Rights course I took with professor Joyce Apsel . We read a book by Jason De León called The Land of the Open Graves , which I kept in the back of my mind. And then when I studied abroad in Germany during my junior year, I noticed all the different memorials and museums, and wondered why we didn’t have the equivalent in the U.S. My family comes from Mexico—my parents migrated—and ultimately all of these interests came together.

I came into NYU through the Liberal Studies program and I loved it. It’s transdisciplinary, which shaped how I view my studies. My major is politics, rights, and development and my minor is social work, but I’ve also studied museum studies, and I’ve always loved the arts. The experience of getting to work one-on-one on this thesis has really fortified my belief that I can combine all those things.

Sade Chaffatt (Abu Dhabi ’24) Major: Biology Thesis title: “The Polycomb repressive component, EED in mouse hepatocytes regulates liver homeostasis and survival following partial hepatectomy.”

Sade Chaffatt (NYU Abu Dhabi '24). Photo courtesy of NYUAD

Imagine your liver as a room. Within the liver there are epigenetic mechanisms that control gene expression. Imagine these epigenetic mechanisms as a dimmer switch, so that you could adjust the light in the room. If we remove a protein that is involved in regulating these mechanisms, there might be dysregulation—as though the light is too bright or too dim. One such protein, EED, plays a crucial role in regulating gene expression. And so my project focuses on investigating whether EED is required in mouse hepatocytes to regulate liver homeostasis and to regulate survival following surgical resection.

Stepping into the field of research is very intimidating when you’re an undergraduate student and know nothing. But my capstone mentor, Dr. Kirsten Sadler , encourages students to present their data at lab meetings and to speak with scientists. Even though this is nerve-wracking, it helps to promote your confidence in communicating science to others in the field.

If you’d asked 16-year-old me, I never would’ve imagined that I’d be doing research at this point. Representation matters a lot, and you often don't see women—especially not Black women—in research. Being at NYUAD has really allowed me to see more women in these spaces. Having had some experience in the medical field through internships, I can now say I’m more interested in research and hope to pursue a PhD in the future.

Kimberly Sinchi (Tandon ’24) Major: Computer Science Sarah Moughal (Tandon ’25) Major: Computer Science Project: Robotic Design Team's TITAN

Sarah Moughal (Tandon '25, left) and Kimberly Sinchi (Tandon '24). Photo by Tracey Friedman

Kimberly: The Robotic Design Team has been active at NYU for at least five years. We’re 60-plus undergrad and grad students majoring in electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, computer science, and integrated design. We’ve named our current project TITAN because of how huge it is. TITAN stands for “Tandon’s innovation in terraforming and autonomous navigation.”

Sarah: We compete in NASA’s lunatics competition every year, which means we build a robot from scratch to be able to compete in lunar excavation and construction. We make pretty much everything in house in the Tandon MakerSpace, and everyone gets a little experience with machining, even if you're not mechanical. A lot of it is about learning how to work with other people—communicating across majors and disciplines and learning how to explain our needs to someone who may not be as well versed in particular technologies as we are. 

Kimberly: With NYU’s Vertically Integrated Project I’ve been able to take what I was interested in and actually have a real world impact with it. NASA takes notes on every Rover that enters this competition. What worked and what didn’t actually influences their designs for rovers they send to the moon and to Mars.

Eva Fuentes (CAS ’24) Major: Anthropology Thesis title: “Examining the relationship between pelvic shape and numbers of lumbar vertebrae in primates”

Eva Fuentes (CAS '24). Photo by Tracey Friedman

I came into NYU thinking I wanted to be an art history major with maybe an archeology minor. To do the archeology minor, you have to take the core classes in anthropology, and so I had to take an intro to human evolution course. I was like, this is the coolest thing I’ve learned—ever. So I emailed people in the department to see if I could get involved. 

Since my sophomore year, I’ve been working in the Evolutionary Morphology Lab with Scott Williams, who is primarily interested in the vertebral column of primates in the fossil record because of how it can inform the evolution of posture and locomotion in humans.

For my senior thesis, I’m looking at the number of lumbar vertebrae—the vertebrae that are in the lower back specifically—and aspects of pelvic shape to see if it is possible to make inferences about the number of lumbar vertebrae a fossil may have had. The bones of the lower back are important because they tell us about posture and locomotion.

I committed to a PhD program at Washington University in St. Louis a few weeks ago to study biological anthropology. I never anticipated being super immersed in the academic world. I don’t come from an academic family. I had no idea what I was doing when I started, but Scott Williams, and everyone in the lab, is extremely welcoming and easy to talk to. It wasn't intimidating to come into this lab at all.

Elsa Nyongesa (GPH, CAS ’24 ) Major: Global Public Health and Biology Project: “Diversity in Breast Oncological Studies: Impacts on Black Women’s Health Outcomes”

Elsa Nyongesa (GPH, CAS '24). Photo by Tracey Friedman

I interned at Weill Cornell Medicine through their Travelers Summer Research Fellowship Program where I worked with my mentor, Dr. Lisa Newman, who is the head of the International Center for the Study of Breast Cancer Subtypes. I analyzed data on the frequency of different types of breast cancer across racial and ethnic groups in New York. At the same time, I was also working with Dr. Rachel Kowolsky to study minority underrepresentation in clinical research. 

In an experiential learning course taught by Professor Joyce Moon Howard in the GPH department, I created a research question based on my internship experience. I thought about how I could combine my experiences from the program which led to my exploration of the correlation between minority underrepresentation in breast oncological studies, and how it affects the health outcomes of Black women with breast cancer.

In my major, we learn about the large scope of health disparities across different groups. This opportunity allowed me to learn more about these disparities in the context of breast cancer research. As a premedical student, this experience broadened my perspective on health. I learned more about the social, economic, and environmental factors influencing health outcomes. It also encouraged me to examine literature more critically to find gaps in knowledge and to think about potential solutions to health problems. Overall, this experience deepened my philosophy of service, emphasizing the importance of health equity and advocacy at the research and clinical level.

Rohan Bajaj (Stern ’24) Major: Finance and statistics Thesis title: “Measuring Socioeconomic Changes and Investor Attitude in Chicago’s Post-Covid Economic Recovery”

Rohan Bajaj (Stern '24). Photo by Tracey Friedman

My thesis is focused on understanding the effects of community-proposed infrastructure on both the socioeconomic demographics of cities and on fiscal health. I’m originally from Chicago, so it made a lot of sense to pay tribute back to the place that raised me. I’m compiling a list of characteristics of infrastructure that has been developed since 2021 as a part of the Chicago Recovery Plan and then assessing how neighborhoods have changed geographically and economically. 

I’m looking at municipal bond yields in Chicago as a way of evaluating the fiscal health of the city. Turns out a lot of community-proposed infrastructure is focused in lower income areas within Chicago rather than higher income areas. So that makes the research question interesting, to see if there’s a correlation between the proposed and developed infrastructure projects, and if these neighborhoods are being gentrified alongside development.

I kind of stumbled into the impact investing industry accidentally from an internship I had during my time at NYU. I started working at a renewable energies brokerage in midtown, where my main job was collecting a lot of market research trends and delivering insights on how these different energy markets would come into play. I then worked with the New York State Insurance Fund, where I helped construct and execute their sustainable investment strategy from the ground up. 

I also took a class called “Design with Climate Change” with Peter Anker in Gallatin during my junior year, and a lot of that class was focused on how to have climate resilient and publicly developed infrastructure, and understanding the effects it has on society. It made me start thinking about the vital role that physical surroundings play in steering communities.

In the short term I want to continue diving into impact-focused investing and help identify urban planners and city government to develop their communities responsibly and effectively.

Andrea Durham (Tandon, ’26)  Major: Biomolecular science Research essay title: “The Rise and Fall of Aduhelm”

Andrea Durham (Tandon '26). Photo by Tracey Friedman

This is an essay I wrote last year in an advanced college essay writing class with Professor Lorraine Doran on the approval of a drug for Alzheimer’s disease called Aduhelm—a monoclonal antibody therapy developed by Biogen in 2021, which was described as being momentous and groundbreaking. But there were irregularities ranging from the design of its clinical trials to government involvement that led to the resignation of three scientists on an advisory panel, because not everybody in the scientific community agreed that it should be approved.

When I was six years old, my grandmother was diagnosed. Seeing the impact that it had over the years broke my heart and ignited a passion in me to pursue research. 

When I started at NYU, I wasn’t really sure what I was going to do in the future, or what opportunities I would go after. This writing class really gave me an opportunity to reflect on the things that were important to me in my life. The September after I wrote this paper, I started volunteering in a lab at Mount Sinai for Alzheimer's disease research, and that’s what I’m doing now—working as a volunteer at the Center for Molecular Integrative Neuroresilience under Dr. Giulio Pasinetti. I have this opportunity to be at the forefront, and because of the work I did in my writing class I feel prepared going into these settings with an understanding of the importance of conducting ethical research and working with integrity.

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Now on decider, ‘the view’: joy behar says she “got so excited” after trump’s guilty verdict she “started leaking a little bit” .

Economic Budgeting for Endowment-Dependent Universities

To understand their financial position, universities need to understand the long-term implications of their operating revenues and costs in relation to the financial assets they have available. Standard budgeting procedures that focus on one or two years at a time and use generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) do not do this. We present an alternative framework that discounts cash flow forecasts over the infinite future and compares the present value of operating obligations to the value of the university’s endowment net of any debt it has issued. We illustrate the potential of this framework using recent data from Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS).

This paper was presented at the NBER Conference on the Financing of Higher Education, funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, on April 4-5, 2024, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. We are grateful to Jay Herlihy, Scott Jordan, Susan Duda and the financial staff of the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences for their consistent support of this project, and to Antoinette Schoar for her discussion at the conference. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Outside Activities

Jeremy C. Stein

Outside (Non-Harvard) Activities Since 2006

A. Compensated Activities*

Speaking Engagements

I have given paid talks for a number of financial firms, investor groups, academic institutions, and central banks.

Key Square Capital Management: consultant, July 2016-December 2019.

BlueMountain Capital Management: consultant, 2015.

Guggenheim Partners: consultant, 2005-2007.

Commissioned Research

The Clearing House Association: “An Analysis of the Impact of ‘Substantially Heightened’ Capital Requirements on Large Financial Institutions,” unpublished paper with Anil Kashyap and Samuel Hanson, 2010.

Honoraria for Papers

Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, for “Rethinking Capital Regulation,” with Anil Kashyap and Raghuram Rajan, 2008.

Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, for “The Federal Reserve’s Balance Sheet as a Financial Stability Tool,” with Robin Greenwood and Sam Hanson, 2016.

Brookings Institution, for “Strengthening and Streamlining Bank Capital Regulation,” with Robin Greenwood, Sam Hanson and Adi Sunderam, 2017.

Public Service

Federal Reserve Board: Governor, May 2012-May 2014.

U.S. Treasury Department: Senior Advisor to the Secretary and concurrently, staff of National Economic Council, February-July 2009.

Quarterly Journal of Economics: co-editor, 2011-2012.

Journal of Economic Perspectives: co-editor, 2007-2008.

Study Center, Gerzensee, Switzerland: summer-school course, 2011.

Northwestern University: visiting scholar, 2009.

B. Significant Non-Compensated Activities

Harvard Management Company: Board of Directors, 2015-present.

American Finance Association: President, 2008 President-Elect, 2007 Vice-President, 2006 Board of Directors, 2009-2011.

Financial Advisory Roundtable, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, 2006-2012, 2019-present

Squam Lake Group, 2008-2012.

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Discovery, the process where crucial evidence is shared, is impacting public safety, NYC DAs say

By Mahsa Saeidi

Updated on: May 23, 2024 / 11:45 PM EDT / CBS New York

NEW YORK -- A lot has been said about bail reform and its impact on New York City since its launch in 2019 , but prosecutors across the five boroughs say there's another reform having an even bigger impact on their office.

It's called discovery -- the process where the government shares crucial evidence with defense attorneys -- and some say it's impacting public safety.

"Discovery is destroying people"

The new discovery law took effect at the same time as bail reform. Now, prosecutors have to submit all evidence to the defense by a strict deadline. District attorneys say that deadline is unreasonable and one group it is having an impact on is survivors of domestic violence.

"I was home and I heard the door open. I thought that he was there to kill us. He was back in the house because I no longer had an order of protection," one survivor said.

The mother, who didn't want to reveal her identity but wanted to share her experience, told CBS New York the case against her alleged abuser was tossed on a technicality.

"I fear for somebody to be in a position that I was in," she said. "Discovery is destroying people."

"What happened to this client that you just spoke to is by no means an isolated incident," attorney Anne Glatz said.

Glatz helps domestic violence survivors apply for orders of protection in family court. She said she's seeing an uptick in dismissals in criminal court.

"I just assume that when a client's abuser is arrested, it's not going to proceed to conviction," she said.

Nearly 70% of misdemeanors are being tossed out in NYC, data shows

Prosecutors always had to give the defense records, but since the discovery laws changed they now have to turn over everything, including audio, videos, and even lab tests on a strict timeline. Prosecutors say if one piece of paper is late, even if it's not meaningful, the case can be tossed out.

"Before I was in office, right after the law changed, significant spike in dismissals state-wide," Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg said.

Court data analyzed by CBS New York shows that dismissals have jumped more than 10% statewide, and it's double that across the five boroughs. Now, nearly 70% of misdemeanors are being tossed out in New York City.

"DUI cases and our misdemeanor domestic violence docket. Those are significant cases," Bragg said.

The Manhattan DA said attorneys should have information to prepare a proper defense, but there needs to be more flexibility. He said if the accused wasn't harmed by the omission, the case should not be dismissed.

"Judges are interpreting the statute differently. That's why I think we need some clarity. Clarity would help," Bragg said. "We should be looking at all the circumstances, and coming up with what's fair, under those circumstances, fair to the defense, allow them time to prepare for trial, fair to the people, so that we're not having cases that affect public safety dismissed, reflexively."

The Kalief Browder case

"I believe that many of these cases should never have existed to begin with," said Kalle Condliffe of the Legal Aid Society.

The discovery laws changed after the Kalief Browder case. The teen, accused of stealing a backpack, was held on Rikers Island for three years before charges were dropped. He later took his own life. Defense attorney Condliffe said she fears reforms will undo the progress.

"It's very emotional, yeah, because, you know, I was working there at the time. This was the experience of my clients. This is what I experienced with my clients every single day," Condliffe said.

Glatz said the law should be fair to defendants without putting her clients at risk.

"It doesn't have to revert to the same way it was before, but this is unsustainable," Glatz said.

As for how it is impacting crime overall, it's not impacting felonies. DA's offices are focused on getting discovery for those cases. NYPD data shows, citywide, homicides are down 15% and shootings are down 16%.

Prior to the discovery changes, New York's system was one of the most restrictive. Prosecutors could withhold information until the eve of trial. Now, prosecutors say no other state requires you to turn over so much on a deadline.

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Study demonstrates the advantages of S/U grades for D.V.M. students

While S/U grading has been used at other institutions, it has not been widely applied at CVM, and the research team took advantage of the opportunity to explore the effects of an alternative system. Photo: Chris Montgomery/Unsplash

Researchers from the Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine (CVM) found that a satisfactory/unsatisfactory (S/U) grading system used during the early months of COVID-19 increased veterinary students’ well-being and time for self-care without sacrificing academic performance. According to their paper, published in the Journal of Veterinary Medical Education , D.V.M. students performed similarly on letter-graded and S/U coursework, offering the opportunity to consider alternative grading systems that support both students’ health and learning.

Research has shown that workplace burnout is prevalent among veterinarians, highlighting the importance of promoting well-being during training and beyond. “In our profession we have a responsibility to investigate ways to improve the lives of our D.V.M. students as they transition into their professional careers,” said study co-author and assistant clinical professor in the Department of Population Medicine and Diagnostic Sciences Ashleigh Newman ‘06.

Pandemic grading alternative offers research opportunity

After stay-at-home orders were issued in New York, Cornell temporarily offered an S/U grading system for the spring 2020 semester before returning to standard-letter grading in the fall. First author Kelly Lyboldt, D.V.M. ‘05, an associate professor of practice in the Department of Biomedical Sciences, said that professors were concerned about the impacts the rapid conversion to online courses might have on students’ stress levels and learning. The college ultimately decided to institute S/U grading for DVM students.

While pass/fail grading isn’t common in academia, human medicine programs have experimented with S/U grading since the 1960s to allay students’ anxiety. Studies showed that S/U grading positively affected students’ well-being without altering academic outcomes. Opponents have argued that alternatives to letter grades could undermine the rigor of medical training. Still, human medical students have received S/U grades on United States Medical Licensing Examinations since 2022, shifting the emphasis from numerical scores to clinical excellence and interpersonal skills.

While S/U grading has been used at other institutions, it has not been widely applied at CVM,, and thus the team took advantage of the opportunity to explore the effects of an alternative system. A cohort of veterinary students took a core course that spanned the spring and fall 2020 semesters, and faculty were able to compare the results of S/U and letter-graded classes. According to Lyboldt, the research team hypothesized that the S/U system would alleviate students’ stress over their GPAs without sacrificing motivation or academic success.

The team used academic performance data from the 2020 Foundation Course III — a two-part course on animal organ systems covering physiology, pharmacology, clinical pathology, and anatomic pathology — along with a questionnaire about students’ educational experiences and well-being during the course. While students received S/U grades for the spring 2020 course, administrative support kept track of their numerical and letter grades for both semesters, since a “Satisfactory” grade requires a final score above C –. Out of 118 students in the cohort, 68% responded to the questionnaire.

Gaining time for self-care while maintaining motivation to learn

In terms of academic performance, the grading system made little difference in students’ final numerical grades: 83.7% and 84.3% for the spring and fall 2020 semesters, respectively. Data also supported the team’s prediction that, without the pressure of achieving a particular letter grade, 95% of students reported redirecting some of their energy to achieving a healthier balance between academics and caring for their physical and mental wellbeing.

A majority of students saw S/U grading and the open-book exams that accompanied it positively.

One critique around S/U grading in educational literature involves motivation: will students still work hard if they’re not striving for a high GPA? Fortunately, students said their motivation to study was unchanged by the grading system. Around half of those who agreed that S/U grading contributed to their well-being on the survey reported improved learning and enjoyment of the material.

“A lot of us noticed our conversations with students in the spring S/U semester were drastically different than those in the fall,” said Lyboldt. “They seemed more curious about the material, and asked about content instead of points on a quiz.”

Not everyone enjoyed the temporary grading system. Almost 50% of questionnaire responders would have preferred a final letter grade in the spring 2020 class. The authors suspect that’s because grades are important for internships, and their spring 2020 grades would have enhanced their overall GPAs.

The future of S/U grading at CVM

While CVM isn’t throwing in the towel on letter grades, the college did move to S/U grading for fourth-year D.V.M. students performing clinical rotations. Foundation Course III is now hybrid, with weekly S/U quizzes and built-in reflection opportunities for graded assignments, along with a letter-graded final exam and letter for the final grade.

Eleni Casseri, M.P.H. ’19, D.V.M. ’24, took a hybrid version of Foundation Course III. “The pass/fail grading on the quizzes took a lot of pressure off me,” she said. “It wasn’t about whether I got 80% or 85%; it was about learning material because I’m going to be a doctor someday. I felt like I wasn’t just trying to pass another class.”

The research team also believes that S/U grading allows students the space for low-stakes failures and learning resilience. “Our veterinary students are very intelligent and motivated individuals,” said Kathryn D. Bach ‘04, M.S. ‘09, Ph.D. ‘19, paper co-author and lecturer in the Department of Population Medicine and Diagnostic Sciences. “We want them to focus on growing after their mistakes instead of stressing about impacts to their GPAs.”

Antonia Jameson Jordan, D.V.M. ‘99, Ph.D. ’08, is a senior lecturer in the Department of Biomedical Sciences and paper co-author who sees S/U grades within a larger context. “Our students have been pushing for years for the college to support their wellness,” she explained. “It’s great to find systems that support students’ learning, health, and ability to be great veterinarians.”

As CVM continues to examine and refine its curriculum, these findings will help in establishing approaches that optimize long-term learning and healthy habits for sustaining a lifetime of career satisfaction in veterinary medicine.

Written by Jennifer DeMoss

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Guest Essay

The Long-Overlooked Molecule That Will Define a Generation of Science

By Thomas Cech

Dr. Cech is a biochemist and the author of the forthcoming book “The Catalyst: RNA and the Quest to Unlock Life’s Deepest Secrets,” from which this essay is adapted.

From E=mc² to splitting the atom to the invention of the transistor, the first half of the 20th century was dominated by breakthroughs in physics.

Then, in the early 1950s, biology began to nudge physics out of the scientific spotlight — and when I say “biology,” what I really mean is DNA. The momentous discovery of the DNA double helix in 1953 more or less ushered in a new era in science that culminated in the Human Genome Project, completed in 2003, which decoded all of our DNA into a biological blueprint of humankind.

DNA has received an immense amount of attention. And while the double helix was certainly groundbreaking in its time, the current generation of scientific history will be defined by a different (and, until recently, lesser-known) molecule — one that I believe will play an even bigger role in furthering our understanding of human life: RNA.

You may remember learning about RNA (ribonucleic acid) back in your high school biology class as the messenger that carries information stored in DNA to instruct the formation of proteins. Such messenger RNA, mRNA for short, recently entered the mainstream conversation thanks to the role they played in the Covid-19 vaccines. But RNA is much more than a messenger, as critical as that function may be.

Other types of RNA, called “noncoding” RNAs, are a tiny biological powerhouse that can help to treat and cure deadly diseases, unlock the potential of the human genome and solve one of the most enduring mysteries of science: explaining the origins of all life on our planet.

Though it is a linchpin of every living thing on Earth, RNA was misunderstood and underappreciated for decades — often dismissed as nothing more than a biochemical backup singer, slaving away in obscurity in the shadows of the diva, DNA. I know that firsthand: I was slaving away in obscurity on its behalf.

In the early 1980s, when I was much younger and most of the promise of RNA was still unimagined, I set up my lab at the University of Colorado, Boulder. After two years of false leads and frustration, my research group discovered that the RNA we’d been studying had catalytic power. This means that the RNA could cut and join biochemical bonds all by itself — the sort of activity that had been thought to be the sole purview of protein enzymes. This gave us a tantalizing glimpse at our deepest origins: If RNA could both hold information and orchestrate the assembly of molecules, it was very likely that the first living things to spring out of the primordial ooze were RNA-based organisms.

That breakthrough at my lab — along with independent observations of RNA catalysis by Sidney Altman at Yale — was recognized with a Nobel Prize in 1989. The attention generated by the prize helped lead to an efflorescence of research that continued to expand our idea of what RNA could do.

In recent years, our understanding of RNA has begun to advance even more rapidly. Since 2000, RNA-related breakthroughs have led to 11 Nobel Prizes. In the same period, the number of scientific journal articles and patents generated annually by RNA research has quadrupled. There are more than 400 RNA-based drugs in development, beyond the ones that are already in use. And in 2022 alone, more than $1 billion in private equity funds was invested in biotechnology start-ups to explore frontiers in RNA research.

What’s driving the RNA age is this molecule’s dazzling versatility. Yes, RNA can store genetic information, just like DNA. As a case in point, many of the viruses (from influenza to Ebola to SARS-CoV-2) that plague us don’t bother with DNA at all; their genes are made of RNA, which suits them perfectly well. But storing information is only the first chapter in RNA’s playbook.

Unlike DNA, RNA plays numerous active roles in living cells. It acts as an enzyme, splicing and dicing other RNA molecules or assembling proteins — the stuff of which all life is built — from amino acid building blocks. It keeps stem cells active and forestalls aging by building out the DNA at the ends of our chromosomes.

RNA discoveries have led to new therapies, such as the use of antisense RNA to help treat children afflicted with the devastating disease spinal muscular atrophy. The mRNA vaccines, which saved millions of lives during the Covid pandemic, are being reformulated to attack other diseases, including some cancers . RNA research may also be helping us rewrite the future; the genetic scissors that give CRISPR its breathtaking power to edit genes are guided to their sites of action by RNAs.

Although most scientists now agree on RNA's bright promise, we are still only beginning to unlock its potential. Consider, for instance, that some 75 percent of the human genome consists of dark matter that is copied into RNAs of unknown function. While some researchers have dismissed this dark matter as junk or noise, I expect it will be the source of even more exciting breakthroughs.

We don’t know yet how many of these possibilities will prove true. But if the past 40 years of research have taught me anything, it is never to underestimate this little molecule. The age of RNA is just getting started.

Thomas Cech is a biochemist at the University of Colorado, Boulder; a recipient of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1989 for his work with RNA; and the author of “The Catalyst: RNA and the Quest to Unlock Life’s Deepest Secrets,” from which this essay is adapted.

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