With the coronavirus pandemic persisting, people may be tempted to increase the use of disinfectants to help stem the spread of the virus. But these products contain Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)-registered pesticides that can cause harm, especially if not used as directed.

With the help of seed funding from the Office of Research and Innovation, faculty researchers from the Kennedy College of Sciences and the Zuckerberg College of Health Sciences will conduct studies designed to address the COVID-19 pandemic.

With help from undergraduates, the Center for Public Opinion expanded its polling in 2020, measuring approval ratings for political leaders during the COVID-19 pandemic and taking the temperature of Democratic primary voters in key early voting states.

Two assistant professors of criminology have won a pair of $500,000 grants from the National Institute of Justice to study sex and labor trafficking. Ryan Shields is working on ways to better identify trafficking victims, while Amber Horning Ruf researches how people become pimps and sex traffickers.

The 23rd annual Student Research and Community Engagement Symposium went online this spring. The quality of the student projects remained as high as ever, despite the change of venue.

Prof. Stephen Balsis is part of a $3.74 million National Institutes of Health grant to improve the diagnosis and treatment of traumatic brain injuries that can lead to CTE.

With labs closed and all academic programs now online due to COVID-19, seniors are adapting their capstone projects. Some capstones have even taken on new relevance because they address aspects of the pandemic.

Civil and Environmental Engineering Asst. Prof. Danjue Chen’s research into the complex traffic interactions between self-driving and human-driven cars has won a five-year, $500,000 faculty early-career development award from the National Science Foundation.

The U.S. Department of Energy has awarded a two-year, $1.4 million grant to Mechanical Engineering Asst. Prof. Murat Inalpolat to develop and test a new, sound-based sensor system for monitoring the structural health and integrity of wind turbine blades.

Computer Science Prof. Xinwen Fu has been awarded more than $4.5 million by the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy for his research on the Internet of Things, or IoT.

Epidemiologist and Public Health Prof. David Kriebel, who is reviewing data as it becomes available on the outbreak of COVID-19, sees cautiously encouraging trends on the containment of the virus emerging in China.

Asst. Prof. Richard Gaschnig of the Department of Environmental, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences has been awarded a three-year, $222,600 grant by the National Science Foundation to study the chemical exchange that occurs between the ocean crust and the earth’s mantle during a geological process called subduction.

How zinc is distributed to tissues and cells is the root of Prof. Shannon Kelleher’s research, which aims to reveal the role that zinc plays in the development of inflammatory bowel disease and food allergies.