News

By Eben Kirksey, past Member in the School of Social Science:

"Since James Watson and Francis Crick first described the structure of the DNA double helix, scientists have debated the potential for creating genetically modified babies."

"[Shafi] Goldwasser has worked to bring the same rigor to the study of vulnerabilities in machine learning algorithms. She teamed up with [Vinod] Vaikuntanathan and the postdoctoral researchers Michael Kim, of the University of California, Berkeley, and Or Zamir, of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, to study what kinds of backdoors are possible."

"Alondra Nelson stepped down last month from her role as leader of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). Today’s editorial in Science highlights her accomplishments while she served in the Biden administration."

"To examine the special history of the region, I turned to Jeffrey Gould, who has known the area well as an activist, documentary filmmaker, and scholar since the 1970s."

As an educator, he worked to put architecture on an equal footing with other disciplines. As an architect, he was known for buildings at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.

By Siobhan Roberts, frequent Director's Visitor:

"Lisanne Taams, a student at Radboud University in the Netherlands, is working on a Ph.D. about, in her words, 'computing motives of moduli stacks of vector bundles on stacky curves.'"

Alondra Nelson, Harold F. Linder Professor in the School of Social Science, and the first woman of color to lead the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) earlier in the Biden administration, is set to step down from her current post as a deputy director on February 10, 2023.

By Christina Dunbar-Hester, current Member in the School of Social Science:

"Ports in the Los Angeles region entered national headlines as a supply chain crisis unfurled during the pandemic. After an initial near-halt to commerce and shipping in early 2020, some of us saw bluer skies and enjoyed cleaner air for a fleeting moment."

By Alyssa Battistoni, current Member in the School of Social Science:

"When the multi-hyphenate scholar of science Bruno Latour died last October at the age of 75, tributes poured in from all corners of academia and many beyond. In the aughts, Latour had been a ubiquitous reference point for Anglophone social and cultural theory, standing alongside Judith Butler and Michel Foucault on the list of most cited academics in fields ranging from geography to art history."

As part of a three episode series which aims to help improve understanding of liberalism, host Justin Kempf speaks with Michael Walzer, Professor Emeritus in the School of Social Science. The podcast touches on Walzer's newest book, The Struggle for a Decent Politics: On Liberal as an Adjective.