Before an assembly of Henderson-Hopkins students, Johns Hopkins University President Ron Daniels will join Maya Rockeymoore Cummings, widow of the late Congressman Elijah Cummings, and artist Christopher Batten, to honor the legacy of Cummings by unveiling his portrait, which was commissioned by Johns Hopkins University for the Homewood campus. The artist will also lead portraiture painting workshops with the students.
Recent news from The Johns Hopkins University
This section contains regularly updated highlights of the news from around The Johns Hopkins University. Links to the complete news reports from the nine schools, the Applied Physics Laboratory and other centers and institutes are to the left, as are links to help news media contact the Johns Hopkins communications offices.
Johns Hopkins Astrophysicist Charles Bennett Receives Rumford Prize
The American Academy of Arts & Sciences has awarded Johns Hopkins University astrophysicist Charles L. Bennett one of the oldest and most celebrated awards in science, the Rumford Prize, an honor Bennett now shares with Thomas Edison and the scientists that invented instant photography and the world’s first nuclear reactor.
In nominating Bennett for the award, the American Academy credited him with a singular achievement in advancing humankind’s understanding of the universe, writing “the single most significant experiment—the one that transformed our view of the Universe from a rough sketch to a remarkably precise picture—was the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe led by Chuck Bennett. “
Bill Miller Donates $50 Million to JHU’s Department of Physics and Astronomy
Legendary investor and philanthropist William H. “Bill” Miller III has made a lead gift of $50 million in a combined $75 million philanthropic effort to support Johns Hopkins University’s Department of Physics and Astronomy.
Miller’s $50 million commitment will fund endowed professorships, postdoctoral fellowships, and graduate research, and will provide ongoing support for research infrastructure. His gift also served as the impetus for two anonymous donors to support the department as well, expanding to $75 million the funding to advance key areas of physics research.
Johns Hopkins University Expands Bloomberg Distinguished Professorships
Johns Hopkins University announced today it will recruit an additional 50 Bloomberg Distinguished Professors (BDPs), doubling the current cohort of BDPs at the university. These world-class faculty members will lead research into the shared challenges facing humanity, and foster interdisciplinary collaboration across the institution. This new investment will double the total number of BDPs to 100 and make this interdisciplinary research program the largest of its kind in the nation.
Spiders’ Web Secrets Unraveled
Johns Hopkins University researchers discovered precisely how spiders build webs by using night vision and artificial intelligence to track and record every movement of all eight legs as spiders worked in the dark.
Their creation of a web-building playbook or algorithm brings new understanding of how creatures with brains a fraction of the size of a human’s are able to create structures of such elegance, complexity and geometric precision. The findings, now available online, are set to publish in the November issue of Current Biology.
Johns Hopkins Health Disparities Researcher Lisa Cooper Appointed by Biden to President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology
Lisa Cooper, MD, MPH, a pioneering public health disparities researcher, general internist, and professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and Johns Hopkins Schools of Medicine and Nursing, has been appointed to the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) by President Joe Biden. The White House announced the appointment today.
Johns Hopkins Expert Can Discuss Legality of Workplace, Government Vaccine Mandates
President Biden recently ordered that businesses with more than 100 employees require workers to get a COVID-19 shot or test negative for the virus at least once a week, joining many other workplaces nationwide that already initiated such requirements. A Johns Hopkins University expert in business law, health law, and negotiation is available to offer context and commentary about vaccination mandates.
The Science Behind the Appeal of Pumpkin Spice
Fall is still days away but at coffee shops and grocery stores, it’s already peak autumn thanks to the arrival of a certain flavor that has come to signal the season’s unofficial start. Everyone knows, it’s pumpkin spice time.
But why?
Johns Hopkins University perception researchers can say a key to understanding why people love pumpkin spice is the smell of it. Those notes of cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger trigger deeply rooted cozy memories of autumn.
School Can be Scary in a Pandemic: Johns Hopkins Team Created App to Help Teachers Know How Kids are Feeling
Two Johns Hopkins University researchers who study classroom stress and the emotional well-being of students and teachers have released an app that allows teachers to get daily reports about how their students are feeling.
Though the tool wasn’t created for the pandemic, it certainly has come in handy over the last year as educators struggle to keep tabs on students, especially if they’re teaching remotely.
Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Team Details Lack of Daily Data on COVID-19
The Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center today published a new graphic visualization and analysis detailing the troubling trend of U.S. states eliminating daily reporting of COVID-19 data.
According to Coronavirus Resource Center experts, the reduction in daily reporting on cases, hospitalizations, deaths, and other vital data is taking place at a time when more public data is needed, not less — as the highly transmissible Delta variant is driving a new surge in the pandemic.
Delta, Mask Mandates, Worried Parents: JHU Experts Can Discuss Back-to-School Concerns
Children nationwide are returning to school but not all regions are following CDC guidance on mask-wearing. Johns Hopkins University experts can offer perspective and context on the mixed messages parents, teachers and students are hearing, and what educators should be doing to prepare schools.
Motivation at an Empty Olympics? Johns Hopkins Expert Available On Mental Aspects of Top Athletic Performance
The Summer Olympics in Tokyo, which officially begin today, will be held without fans because of COVID-19. A Johns Hopkins University expert on the types of motivation that influence performance is available to discuss how that might affect outcomes at the games.
Vikram Chib, an associate professor in Johns Hopkins University’s Department of Biomedical Engineering, has studied the neural aspects behind performance, including what happens when people choke under pressure, and how having an audience can make you perform better.
JHU Awards Nearly $6 Million to Baltimore Violence Reduction Projects
Abuse intervention services for those with criminal histories of Intimate Partner Violence (IPV), arts workshops to process trauma, and a community mediation initiative that will bring together Latinx immigrant and Black youth are among nine projects chosen to receive Johns Hopkins University’s Innovation Fund for Community Safety grant awards.
Researchers Find Semimetal That Clings to a Quantum Precipice
In an open access paper published in Science Advances, Johns Hopkins physicists and colleagues at Rice University, the Vienna University of Technology (TU Wien), and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), present experimental evidence of naturally occurring quantum criticality in a material.
Mimes Help Us ‘See’ Objects That Don’t Exist
When we watch a mime seemingly pull rope, climb steps or try to escape that infernal box, we don’t struggle to recognize the implied objects — our minds automatically “see” them, a new study concludes.
To explore how the mind processes the objects mimes seem to interact with, Johns Hopkins University cognitive scientists brought the art of miming into the lab, concluding that invisible, implied surfaces are represented rapidly and automatically. The work appears today in the journal Psychological Science.
Repeating a Grade? Johns Hopkins Expert Available on Best Ways to Make Up Pandemic Learning Loss
Schools, teachers and parents nationwide are now grappling with how best to help students who might have fallen behind after more than a year of interrupted learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In some districts, parents are being asked to consider holding children back a grade.
David Steiner, director of the Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy, is available to discuss how schools can help students make up for these missed months of education, and, how retention might not be the best solution.