News

John McWhorter may be best known for his magazine and newspaper writing about race, but the Philadelphia native is at heart a dyed-in-the-wool academic whose first inkling that he would spend his life studying languages came when he was still a preschooler and heard someone speaking a foreign language. 

In 2004, Marguerite Holloway, an assistant professor at the School of Journalism, found herself writing about the Mannahatta Project—an effort by environmental scientists to “recreate” Manhattan in its natural state.

Using mathematics and computer analytics, Pe’er is identifying the genetic makeup of the founding Ashkenazi Jews by analyzing the full DNA sequences of hundreds of their descendants in the New York City area.

Columbia University Medical Center has launched a new medical practice near Rockefeller Center, giving the commuters and visitors who stream into midtown Manhattan easy access to some of the city’s top practitioners.

There are about 25 to 29 Amgen Scholars on the campus each summer. The students come from Columbia, Barnard and universities like Harvard and Duke as well as smaller colleges like Carleton and Lafayette. They arrive after Memorial Day for a 10-week stay and engage in independent projects mentored by scientists from the University community.

A new study by Columbia Engineering researchers finds that the infant brain does not control its blood flow in the same way as the adult brain.

Large study in Norway finds early timing of supplements is critical

Daniel L. Doctoroff, Bloomberg LP CEO and president; David M. Rubenstein, co-CEO of The Carlyle Group; and Bloomberg Philanthropies today unveiled Target ALS, a $25 million three-year initiative to streamline discovery of new approaches to treating ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease). “Finding a cure for ALS requires that we think differently about how to tackle this debilitating disease,” said Doctoroff. “While ALS scientists have made great progress in the last few years, their research too often occurs in silos, impeding discovery. Target ALS will…

Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) researchers have identified a protein trafficking defect within brain cells that may underlie common non-familial forms of Parkinson’s disease. 

As obese Americans grow older, their heightened risk of death climbs, despite a slew of prominent research reporting that an elevated BMI doesn't shorten lifespan, and may even extend it. 

Referencing history, art and the subconscious, Paolo Ventura’s photographs function as architectural relics of the imagination, portraying characters and scenarios that are magical, poignant and strangely familiar—he calls them invented worlds. 

James D. Jordan today announced his retirement as President and Director of Columbia University Press, effective Sept. 1, 2013.

Researchers at Columbia Engineering and Georgia Institute of Technology have published a study in the February 4 online Early Edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) showing—for the first time—that certain volatile organic gases can promote cloud formation in a way never considered before by atmospheric scientists. 

Klaus Lackner’s approach to slowing global warming is to clean up the atmosphere—literally. In his lab at Columbia's Engineering School, Lackner is working on technology to scrub carbon dioxide from the air, reducing levels of the harmful greenhouse gas that plays a major role in the increase of the Earth’s temperature. “We need ways of getting the carbon dioxide, which is emitted by the combustion of fossil fuels, back,” says Lackner, the Ewing and J. Lamar Worzel Professor of Geophysics in the Department of Earth and Environmental Engineering, and the director of the Lenfest Center…