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.
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.
The United States is approaching the one-year anniversary of the pandemic forcing the closure of offices and schools across the country, launching millions of Americans into remote work and schooling.
Johns Hopkins University experts who have been studying the short and long-term impacts of these changes are available to speak about the possible implications of WFH and SchoolFH on the future of work and education.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is expected on Friday to release guidance on the safe reopening of schools. Johns Hopkins University experts, including experts from the university’s Center for Safe and Healthy Schools, which has been studying the complex question of what it will take for the nation to safely return students to school, will be available for perspective and commentary on the CDC update.
The lack of reliable access to broadband internet service for many in Baltimore, particularly the poor, has profound economic and social consequences. The COVID-19 pandemic has made this painfully clear with an abrupt shift to online learning, remote work, and telemedicine. A new analysis from Johns Hopkins University’s 21st Century Cities Initiative says the city could move towards digital equity, with a roadmap of recommendations built on existing knowledge of Baltimore’s digital assets and the experience of other cities.
A Johns Hopkins University team of 24 undergraduate students that’s come up with a clear, adaptable face mask has won the Future Forward Award in a global challenge to design a better mask.
More than 2,000 people from 34 countries will compete in a five-day virtual design challenge to find innovative solutions to challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic. Teams will try to engineer solutions for problems ranging from how to protect front-line healthcare workers and their families to minimizing transmission of the virus to addressing shortages of critical healthcare and medical equipment to ensuring that people have accurate information to help them make informed decisions.
In a new Science Robotics editorial published today, experts discuss the potential use of robots to combat COVID-19 by decreasing risks posed to humans, safely resuming halted manufacturing and making teleoperations more efficient. Much of the work required in combatting COVID-19 requires “dull, dirty, and extremely dangerous tasks for human workers but suitable to robots,” the editorial authors say, and they point to potential uses such as disinfecting operating rooms, taking temperatures at ports of entry, delivering medications and more.
Russell (Russ) Taylor, Director of the Laboratory for Computational Sensing and Robotics at The Johns Hopkins University, and an author on the editorial, is available to talk about the future of robotics and COVID-19.
Scientists developing a rapid system for tackling outbreaks of avian influenza at their origins in Thailand are available to discuss their project and how it could potentially help improve responses to other pandemic threats such as coronavirus.