When corporate partners in the Princeton Catalysis Initiative sat down two years ago with David MacMillan, they presented him with a biological challenge at the heart of potential cancer medicines and other therapeutics: which proteins on a cell’s surface touch each other?
A quantum physicist was in a quandary.
Nathalie de Leon, an assistant professor of electrical engineering, needed to control the carbon atoms on the surface of a diamond, but the sheer hardness of the diamond was defeating all attempts — not just hers, but those of every physicist who had tried over the previous half century.
“There was very large graveyard of people who had tried and failed,” de Leon said.
As autonomous vehicles approach widespread adoption, it’s critical that diverse groups collaborate on policies and other measures that ensure the technology benefits people most in need of transportation, according to participants in a conference at Princeton last week.
Any attempt to address challenges of the future, from clean energy to a sufficient food supply, must grapple with the issues raised by the planet’s rapidly growing cities, speakers said Monday during a conference at Princeton University.
Google’s newest AI lab — located across the street from Princeton University’s Nassau Hall — officially launched on Thursday, May 2, with speeches and research presentations by state and local officials, Google executives, and University executives and students.
Materials science is an "enabling discipline,” Dean of Engineering and Applied Science Emily A. Carter told the audience gathered for the annual symposium of Princeton’s materials institute last week. It allows researchers, students and entrepreneurs from widely different fields to come together to create new technologies and solutions to difficult societal problems.
UPDATE March 11, 2019: A post for Microsoft’s Innovation Stories blog describes the Station B platform, which researchers from Princeton will test to investigate the formation of biofilms — surface-associated communities of bacteria that are the leading cause of microbial infection worldwide.
A Nov. 28, 2018, announcement of this collaboration between Princeton and Microsoft is below.
Princeton University researchers will push the limits of data science by leveraging artificial intelligence and machine learning across the research spectrum in an interdisciplinary pilot project made possible through a major gift from Schmidt Futures.
Through the Princeton Catalysis Initiative (PCI), scientists, engineers and scholars are reaching across disciplinary boundaries to create and explore new research areas at the intersection of what were once separate fields. PCI held its second annual symposium on campus Jan. 15-16, bringing researchers together to help fan the sparks of innovation and collaboration.
