Research

The Physical Chemistry Division of the American Chemical Society has named Xiaoji Xu as the winner of the prestigious 2025 Richard Van Duyne Early Career Award in Experimental Physical Chemistry. The award recognizes outstanding contributions in experimental physical chemistry by a young investigator. Xu will accept the award and present an award lecture at the 2025 Fall ACS National Meeting.

How a vision for Jewish studies transformed a community and inspired generations.

A 10-member team with participants from Lehigh, Colorado State University, the University of California Irvine and Mongolia dug into the question of how the Altai Mountains influence the climate in the arid Mongolian desert. The Altai, an ancient mountain range, is at the convergence point of four countries: China, Kazakhstan, Mongolia and Russia.

Mark Bickhard, Henry R. Luce Professor of Cognitive Robotics and the Philosophy of Knowledge, challenges traditional metaphysical frameworks in his latest book, The Whole Person: Toward a Naturalism of Minds and Persons. Bickhard critiques the historical divide between the material world and mental phenomena, rooted in ancient Greek philosophy, and argues for a shift from substance-based metaphysics to process metaphysics. His model, called interactivism, emphasizes the evolutionary and developmental emergence of normative phenomena—such as representation, cognition, and language—through dynamic interactions, rather than static structures or substances.

Throughout history, political candidates have utilized falsehoods to sway voters, leveraging mistruths to discredit opponents or bolster their image. This age-old tactic has long been protected under the First Amendment's right to free speech. Today, artificial intelligence (AI) has transformed these strategies, enabling the creation of hyper-realistic fake images, videos, and audio, further complicating the landscape of political misinformation. Fake images, though fabricated, are protected under the same legal principles as traditional political lies, according to research by journalism professors Jeremy Littau and Daxton R. Stewart. Their study, The Right to Lie with AI?, delves into the First Amendment's implications on AI-driven false political speech.

While people are growing more accustomed to AI-driven personal assistants, customer service chatbots and even financial advisors, when it comes to healthcare, most still want it with a human touch. Given that receiving healthcare is a deeply personal experience, it’s understandable that patients prefer it to come from, well, a person. But with AI’s vast potential to increase the quality, efficacy and efficiency of medicine, a push toward greater acceptance of artificial intelligence-driven medicine could unlock benefits for patients and providers.

Bruce Whitehouse studies polygamy in Mali for a decade and publishes a book on why it has endured in West Africa.

Anna Chupa, Professor of design and associate chair of ADD, combines photography montages with textiles to create unique quilts.

Working together, a deep-sea robot and human occupied submarine led the discovery.

A new interdisciplinary project in the College of Arts and Sciences creates a home for community-facing, action-oriented urban research.