Research & Discovery

This page highlights the astonishing amount of scientific discovery happening at Columbia, one of the world’s leading research universities. 

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Clockwise from top left: An iceberg stranded on a submerged rock in northwest Greenland (Karl Zinglersen); homo erectus crania from the Turkana Rift (John Rowan); a mosquito feeding (Alex Wild); a shell of thick gas and dust (red) expelled from the outer layers of a star as its core collapses into a black hole. The inner regions show a heated ball of gas (white) continuing to fall into the central black hole. (Keith Miller, Caltech/IPAC - SELab)
Columbia University Discoveries in 2025-26 to Know About

Here are some of the top scientific research findings of the past academic year.


 

RECENT STORIES

In a 22-year study in Tanzania, researchers at Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health show children who sleep under bed nets at an early age are more likely to survive into adulthood.

Researchers at the Zuckerman Institute tease out the mechanisms that underlie one of the virus's signature symptoms.

Columbia professor Johan de Jong has spent the last 15 years gathering the foundational theorems of algebraic geometry in one place. His creation, the Stacks Project, offers a new model for organizing and visualizing mathematical information.

Drugs to treat glaucoma have saved the sight of millions of people but there may be a simpler fix: nutrient supplements. Columbia ophthalmologist Simon John explains.

Higher carbon dioxide levels boost plant growth, but the benefits could be offset by other factors altered in a warming climate.

Columbia neuroscientists have figured out how to visually map memory formation.

It could be a money and a climate saver, writes David Goldberg, a geophysicist at Columbia’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.

With new funding, Columbia’s ICAP will conduct follow up interviews with older New Yorkers on their health and wellbeing amid the ongoing pandemic.

A single type of neuron is responsible for keeping our legs in lockstep, new research shows.

Columbia Business School professor Bruce Usher explains what goes into creating an effective carbon market.

Computer scientist David Blei, with co-authors Matthew Hoffman and Francis Bach, is recognized with a Test of Time Award at NeurIPS, the world’s top machine learning conference, for scaling his topic modeling algorithm to billions of documents. 

Tessa Montague, a postdoc at the Zuckerman Institute, studies the neural basis of camouflage in cuttlefish.