Tag Archives: Columbia University

LASIK, one of the most popular vision-correction procedures, has long been marketed as a quick, safe way to achieve 20/20 vision. However, Dr. Cynthia MacKay, an ophthalmologist at Columbia University, has raised serious concerns about its long-term safety. She describes LASIK as “taking a healthy eye and making it sick,” warning that it can permanently alter the cornea and leave …

Harvard University is reportedly prepared to spend up to $500 million to resolve its dispute with the Trump administration—more than double the amount Columbia University agreed to pay last week to settle similar federal investigations. Sources cited in the report indicated that financial terms are still under negotiation. However, Harvard is resisting the inclusion of an external monitor as part …

Late yesterday, Sethuraman Panchanathan, whom President Trump hired to run the National Science Foundation five years ago, quit. He didn’t say why, but it was clear enough: Last weekend, Trump cut more than 400 active research awards from the N.S.F., and he is pressing Congress to halve the agency’s $9 billion budget. The Trump administration has targeted the American scientific …

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has spoken of an “existential threat” that he said can destroy the nation. “We have the highest chronic disease burden of any country in the world,” Mr. Kennedy said at a hearing in January before the Senate confirmed him as the secretary of Health and Human Services. And on Monday he is starting a tour in …

In October 2023, three days before Hamas fighters attacked Israel, Columbia University’s new president stood outside Low Library and posed a foundational question. “What,” she asked, “does the world need from a great university in the 21st century?” The president, Nemat Shafik, argued that the world required much. Rigorous thinkers who were grounded in the age’s great debates. Researchers whose …

Cancer researchers examining the use of artificial intelligence to detect early signs of breast cancer. Pediatricians tracking the long-term health of children born to mothers infected with the coronavirus during pregnancy. Scientists searching for links between diabetes and dementia. All these projects at Columbia University were paid for with federal research grants that were abruptly terminated following the Trump administration’s …

Dickson Despommier, a microbiologist who proposed that cities should grow food in high-rises, popularizing the term “vertical farming” — an idea that crossed over from the realm of the purely fanciful to become a reality around the globe — died on Feb. 7 in Manhattan. He was 84. His wife, Marlene Bloom, confirmed the death, in a hospital. He lived …