Science (Audio)

Human brain organoids help researchers study neurodevelopmental disorders that are difficult to examine directly in developing brain tissue. Giorgia Quadrato, USC, uses cortical organoids derived from human pluripotent stem cells to examine SYNGAP1, an autism risk gene associated in the transcript with intellectual disability, epilepsy, and global developmental delay. Quadrato describes how SYNGAP...

As chatbots trained on Large Language Models become more sophisticated, their responses can sometimes seem uncanny, as if they come from a source that is mysterious, inexplicable, or even divine. Webb Keane, Professor of Anthropology at the University of Michigan, examines what happens when people treat artificial intelligence as a kind of “metahuman.” He explains how this reflects a broader human...

Hard optimization problems often look impossible through worst-case analysis, but real-world problems can contain structure that helps algorithms work faster. Ellen Vitercik, Ph. D., of Stanford University explains how machine learning can improve algorithm design for NP-hard optimization problems while preserving the formal guarantees that make solvers useful. She discusses beyond worst-case anal...

Heart regeneration faces two connected challenges: replacing lost muscle and keeping transplanted cells safe and accepted by the body. Charles Murry, M.D., Ph. D., of USC explains why the adult heart heals major cardiomyocyte loss with scar tissue rather than new muscle, leading to progressive heart failure. Murry describes how stem cell derived cardiomyocytes can be manufactured at scale, transpl...

Hematopoietic stem cells make blood across the lifespan, but they do not all behave the same way. Stephanie Xie, Ph. D., Scientist at Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, University of Toronto, examines how these rare cells self-renew, differentiate, and respond to inflammatory stress, asking whether differences in the stem cell pool help explain why aging affects people so differently. Xie identifies...

Rare disease research is creating new paths for diagnosis, treatment, and broader medical discovery. Gene therapy can repair or replace faulty genes, and work on cystinosis has led to a stem cell platform now being applied to Danon disease, Sanfilippo syndrome C, Friedreich’s ataxia, and Alzheimer’s research. Funding programs support gene therapy, clinical trials, and new platform approaches for r...

Health data affects artificial intelligence in important ways. Camille Nebeker, Ed. D., M.S., UC San Diego, explains why ethically sourced data is foundational to building trustworthy, AI-ready health data repositories. Nebeker examines how ethical sourcing applies across the full data lifecycle, including consent, governance, transparency, data quality, privacy, stewardship, and community engagem...

Pre-cancer and cancer can begin when stressed blood-forming stem cells lose their normal controls. Catriona Jamieson, M.D., Ph. D., UC San Diego, explains how inflammation-linked editing enzymes, repetitive elements in the genome, and stem cell stress shape the progression from myeloproliferative neoplasms to acute myeloid leukemia. Jamieson examines how spaceflight accelerates stem cell aging, ho...

Space healthcare depends on connected health data that can follow people wherever care happens. Peter DeVault, Epic, explains how electronic health record tools built for hospitals, labs, and patients can also support healthcare in space. DeVault describes patient-facing tools like MyChart, interoperability across health systems, structured genomics and pharmacogenomics in the patient record, and...

Brain aging and disease research can gain new insights from space. Aline M.A. Martins, Ph. D., UC San Diego, explains how neuroscience studies in space use brain organoids, proteomics, and single-cell analysis to understand cognition decline, space-induced neurosenescence, and disease-related changes. Martins examines molecular markers of senescence, mitochondrial impairment, and neuroinflammation...

Environmentalist and author Bill McKibben has helped shape how the world understands climate change. In this conversation with Marco Werman, host of The World, McKibben offers a clear-eyed look at the climate crisis and the solutions that could help reduce the damage of a warming planet. As part of the Burke Lectureship at UC San Diego, McKibben also explores the moral and spiritual questions at t...

How does global warming connect to the extreme weather people experience close to home? Drawing on the work of the Weather Extremes and Climate Impacts Analytics group, Sasha Gershunov of Scripps Institution of Oceanography outlines the accelerating warming trend, the role of fossil fuels and carbon dioxide, and the greenhouse effect, and how it relates to extreme weather. He also traces key miles...

Microgravity can change biological systems in ways that may open new paths for biomedical research and commercialization in space. Twyman Clements, Space Tango, explains how “middleware” helps connect research use cases with space infrastructure by adapting terrestrial processes and supply chains for a spaceflight environment. Clements examines how long-duration microgravity creates different phys...

Stem cell health in space matters for astronaut health and cancer research. Jessica Pham, UC San Diego, explains how spaceflight shapes normal hematopoietic stem cells and cancer stem cells through nano bioreactor studies, astronaut blood analysis, and tumor organoid work in low-Earth orbit. Pham examines increased cycling and reduced dormancy in space, reduced self-renewal after return, and ongoi...

Privacy-preserving computation can help hospitals and researchers use sensitive health data without exposing it. Farinaz Koushanfar, Ph. D., UC San Diego, explains how secure computation and distributed learning make it possible to collaborate on medical data while protecting patient privacy. Koushanfar examines secure multi-party computation, zero-knowledge proofs, and federated and split learnin...

Computer-based assessment can change how students practice, test, and learn. Craig Zilles, Ph. D., University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, explains how PrairieLearn supports mastery-oriented teaching through immediate feedback, auto-grading, randomized question generators, and repeat practice. Zilles examines asynchronous exams, frequent small tests, retake opportunities, and question banks desig...

Architect Drew Hubbell explores the intersection of sustainable design and architectural artistry, highlighting how thoughtful, aesthetically rich structures can also embody strong environmental principles. He presents several recent projects, with particular attention to their fire-resistant strategies and materials. Against the backdrop of increasingly destructive wildfires across California, Hu...

Artificial intelligence affects how we understand the behavior of machine learning systems. Stefano Soatto, VP of Applied Science, Amazon Web Services, explains how ideas from information geometry shape emerging theories of how these artifacts work. Soatto examines the natural gradient, the connections between geometry and concepts such as probability distributions, entropy, mutual information, an...

Youth mental health is increasingly shaped by how teens use AI for emotional support outside clinical care. Cinnamon Bloss, Ph. D., UC San Diego, explains how growing use of conversational AI reflects major gaps in care and changing preferences for support. Bloss examines the appeal of AI’s accessibility and nonjudgmental responses, concerns about replacing human connection, and the need to monito...

Brain aging and neurological disease are hard to study because living human brain tissue is difficult to access. Alysson Muotri, Ph. D., UC San Diego, explains how brain organoids sent to space can model accelerated aging, reveal changes in neural networks, and help test potential treatments for brain disorders. Muotri examines space-induced senescence, fragmented network activity linked to dement...

Shun-ichi Amari received the Kyoto Prize in Advanced Technology, specifically in the field of Information Technology, for his work on neural network dynamics and learning theory. His studies also elucidate our understanding of brain activity in perceptual systems such as vision. Amari established a new academic field that he named “information geometry,” which considers statistical models and prob...

Humans live in a world of ideas—born in the brain, shared through language, accumulated in culture across generations, and made reality. From the first flaked stone tools to the building of shelters, from figurative and symbolic art to abstract thought, our brains are engines of imagination—an “idea organ” that has transformed both our species and the planet itself. The distinct biology of the hum...

Bias in health AI can shape who gets care, how fairly risk is measured, and whether automation helps or harms patients. Karandeep Singh, M.D., M.M.S.C. explains that predictive AI can reflect historical, representation, measurement, learning, evaluation, and deployment bias, especially when models are trained on limited populations or use flawed proxies for illness and access to care. Singh also d...

The extraordinary abilities of the cerebral cortex are central to what sets humans apart from other species. A defining feature of the cortex is its organization along a sensorimotor-to-association (S–A) axis, extending from primary sensorimotor areas to transmodal association regions that support abstract cognition. This axis varies across species and has been profoundly remodeled in humans. Nena...

Human brain expansion is often discussed in terms of the genetic and molecular innovations that drove uniquely human cognitive abilities. Yet evolution is fundamentally a process of tradeoffs. Disproportionate expansion of forebrain structures increases the demands placed on long-range connectivity, metabolism, and cellular maintenance, imposing costs that scale with brain size. Alex Pollen, assoc...