Life sciences research finds new routes to solving complex problems
Forget thinking outside the box. Northeastern researchers smash through the box.
For many years, they’ve known what more and more scholars are coming to realize: That complex systems can’t be understood by looking only at the individual parts. That, in all fields, transforming knowledge comes when we study the interactive workings of the whole, in its living activity.
This is why experiential learning is so prized on Huntington Avenue, why cross-disciplinary efforts are so plentiful and productive. Northeastern researchers solve problems not by focusing narrowly on a particular issue, but by considering how this issue affects that one, and why, and what a single relationship may reveal about a whole network of connections.
Life sciences research at Northeastern is certainly no different, and for good reason. Every living organism—a cell, an oak, a mayfly, a human—is sustained by a complex set of actions and reactions, many of which remain utterly mysterious.
Those who seek to understand living organisms and their environments must plumb deep into the unknown for new understanding. In the following pages, you’ll read about a few of these quests:
Backed by money from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, biology professor Kim Lewis is unraveling a critical public-health puzzler—why tuberculosis and other infections can sometimes resist the strongest infusions of antibiotics.
Two undergraduate students, supported by provost-office research grants, are exploring important ground—finding fresh weapons in the fight against Parkinson’s disease, and helping doctors diagnose and understand mitral valve prolapse. As undergraduates, they’re actively engaged in high-level research other universities often reserve for their graduate students.
A quintet of scholars are looking for breakthroughs in the treatment of diseases and disorders. Penny Beuning, assistant professor of chemical biology and biotechnology, is decoding the mysteries of DNA damage. Assistant pharmaceutical-sciences professor Robert Campbell is trying to amp up chemotherapy’s impact on pancreatic cancer by neutralizing a protein that may help protect a cancer cell’s surface. Psychology professor Craig Ferris is investigating how brain function is affected by environmental factors, mental illness, and drug addiction, with the hope of bettering intervention strategies for people with certain diseases or addictions. Alexandros Makriyannis, the Behrakis Trustee Chair in Pharmaceutical Biotechnology, is developing ways to treat a variety of ills with compounds called endocannabinoids. And Michail Sitkovsky, the Eleanor W. Black Chair of Immunophysiology and Pharmaceutical Biotechnology, is studying the role tissue inflammation plays in fighting disease and infection, to create improved vaccines, treatments, and anticancer strategies.
Even Timothy Bickmore, an assistant professor in the College of Computer and Information Science, has gotten into the health-care act, by examining how computer animations can help people monitor and improve their physical well-being. Like his colleagues across campus, he’s examining connections—in this case, the human-computer interaction, seeing whether it’s more powerful when it includes an emotional relationship alongside the cognitive one.
These, of course, are just a handful of examples of Northeastern’s life sciences research. Many other scholars are doing world-class work—in bio-imaging, for instance, or drug discovery, or biotechnology, or disease diagnosis.
Barriers are being torn down. Knowledge acquisition is constantly being energized by the light it shines on critical problems and unanswered questions. Little happens in isolation or quietly. Nothing stays locked up in an ivory tower.
But that’s always been Northeastern’s way, linking life and the lab, the workplace and the classroom, and practice and theory.