News & Events Science Stories

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by William Sweet

This summer three Amherst students traveled to the other end of the world to glimpse the other end of the solar system.

Carolina Carriazo '18, Jason Mackie '17 and Aaron Resnick '16, on an internship with the Southwest Research Institute, trekked to New Zealand and Australia to spend 100 seconds watching Pluto block a distant star, affording once-in-a-lifetime views of the dwarf planet’s atmosphere.

Jan. 25, 2016

By William Sweet

While he thinks “moonshot” may have not been the best word for Vice President Joseph R. Biden’s new initiative to beat cancer, Harold E. Varmus ’61, Nobel Prize-winning scientist and former director of the National Cancer Institute, told Amherst students that with the right strategy, more successes against cancer may be coming.

“Cancer is many different diseases,” he said in the keynote address for the College’s annual Gerald R. Fink ’62 Bioscience Symposium.

By Peter Rooney

On a summer afternoon in an Amherst College chemistry lab, new friends and incoming first-year students Natalia Dyer of Queens, N.Y., and Alejandra Possu of Houston take a break from writing a lab report.

They’re part of a group of admitted Amherst students selected to participate in an innovative science and math program that introduces them to some of the toughest calculus and chemistry problems they’ll face during their first year at Amherst.

by Bill Sweet

Assistant Professor of Chemistry Elizabeth Young has received a $399,900 grant from the National Science Foundation that will establish Amherst College as a go-to destination for scientists on the forefront of energy research and other disciplines measuring ultrafast molecular dynamics.

Here’s a humbling notion: the nervous system of a fruit fly larva and that of a human are remarkably similar.

Ethan Graf, assistant professor of biology at Amherst College, calls this similarity “evolutionary conservation,” and he’s been making full use of it since 2005. That’s when he first began studying the synapses, or connections, between neurons in the brain and nervous system of Drosophila melanogaster, the common fruit fly.

by William Sweet

In Patricia O’Hara’s popular new introductory chemistry course, the periodic table of elements includes nitrogen, mozzarella and prosciutto.

“Molecular Gastronomy and Food Science: From Test Tubes to Taste Buds” looks like a cross between a cooking class and a science lab—and that’s the point, said O’Hara, the Amanda and Lisa Cross Professor of Chemistry.

By Peter Rooney

In a jungle-like enclosure the size of a basketball court on one of the Caribbean’s most ecologically diverse islands, Ethan Temeles, Amherst College's Thomas B. Walton Jr. Memorial Professor of Biology, has devised an audacious experiment he hopes will help answer one of evolution’s most vexing questions once and for all.

January 29, 2014

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Physics Professor David Hall and Postdoctoral Associate Michael Ray.
Editor's note: High-resolution photos are available upon request.

AMHERST, Mass.—Nearly 85 years after pioneering theoretical physicist Paul Dirac predicted the possibility of their existence, an international collaboration led by Amherst College Physics Professor David S. Hall ’91 and Aalto University (Finland) Academy Research Fellow Mikko Möttönen has created, identified and photographed synthetic magnetic monopoles in Hall’s laboratory on the Amherst campus.

AMHERST, Mass. -- Christopher Finch ’14, Amherst College’s latest recipient of a Churchill Foundation Scholarship, intends to apply science to benefit a hungry planet, much in the way he conducted research to help fellow hockey players avoid injury.

The scholarship will allow the Steamboat Springs, Colo., native to conduct research in plant bioengineering next year at the University of Cambridge in England. For Finch, this award comes toward the end of an Amherst career noted for excellence in science and its application to real-world issues.

by William Sweet

Like many members of the recently graduated Class of 2013, Eric Lax is starting the summer in a new job. Unlike many of his counterparts, he’s starting at the top.

Putting aside his original plans to find an entry-level job for two years and go on to an economics Ph.D. program or business school, Lax is starting the summer as chief executive officer of Trext, Inc., a software firm that he founded with three students from Hampshire College.

by William Sweet

Getting help with your college expenses just became as easy as picking up a phone, thanks in part to the work of Bryson Alef ’14.

Amidst all the news about increasing higher-education costs, Scholly, a new smartphone app that helps students sniff out the best scholarships, has been catching some attention, not to mention clicks at the App Store and Google Play. Alef, a double major in computer science and psychology, designed the app.

Janurary 18, 2013 • By William Sweet

“Look both ways before crossing the street.”

It’s a lesson that most of us learn by the age of 6. But according to Leah Thompson ’15, who spent this past summer studying pedestrian behavior, it’s also a lesson that many adults have managed to unlearn or ignore.

The culprit, in many cases, is the smartphone.

November 9, 2012

Benzodiazepines. Arithmetic dynamics. Matter at the coldest temperatures of the universe. The fundamental underlying symmetries of nature. And parasites that live on tsetse flies.

What do all of these have in common? They all are faculty research topics that have recently received significant grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF) or National Institutes of Health (NIH).