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

It’s an unlikely place to build a NASA telescope: a leafy estate in Irvington, N.Y., that once belonged to the son of Alexander Hamilton. Inside a hangar-like building on the site, which is home to Columbia’s Nevis Laboratories for experimental physics, Charles Hailey assembled mirrors for NuSTAR, the most sensitive X-ray telescope ever constructed. Its mission: to conduct a census of black holes, map exploding stars known as supernovae and observe other dynamic events in space.