“I believe in being strong when everything seems to be going wrong. I believe that happy girls are the prettiest girls. I believe that tomorrow is another day. And I believe in miracles.”
A lot can be gained from Audrey Hepburn’s words. In the beginning of her career, people were sure she was destined for failure. She was too skinny, did not dance well, suffered from depression and malnutrition, and the list goes on. I don’t want to compare myself or the girls and women I work with at MakerGirl and the Big Four public accounting firm where I work to her, but I do see a powerful similarity between us all. In life and work, we must learn how to fail but not stop, how to persist, and how to be resilient in order to succeed.
Thus far in my career, I have failed and persisted and generated resilience. Women like me who have not been accepted into the colleges of their choice, who have received a sub-par work review, who have not been offered a promotion, who have stuck it out in an unpleasant and unsatisfying work assignment, who have failed CPA exams — but persevered — these are the ones who pave the way for an unknown but potentially bright future for women and girls.
What is the secret to a long life with undiminished mental agility? Researchers in Northwestern University’s SuperAger project aim to discover the clues by looking at those who have aged with a sharp mind.
SuperAgers are people over age 80 who have memory performance at least as good as those in their 50’s and 60’s. The memory performance of SuperAgers never ceases to surprise the study’s lead author Dr. Emily Rogalski.
“We didn’t necessarily suspect that SuperAgers’ brains would look more like 50-year-olds than 80-year-olds,” said Rogalski, an associate professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine. “That’s pretty profound, right? To think that you’ve lived 80 years of life, but yet your brain looks like a 50-year-old brain. That’s kind of a dream come true that your brain looks that much younger.”
Imagine waking up every morning and having a device that greets you with a report on the quality of your sleep, a summary of your key health indicators, and a schedule of suggested exercises for the day tailored to your age, health and personal goals. Although a device with features like this might sound like science fiction, Professor John A. Rogers and his research team at Northwestern University are working to make this vision a reality.
Who Is John A. Rogers?
Dr. John A. Rogers is Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, and Neurological Surgery at Northwestern University. He is a leading materials science researcher creating “flexible organic electronics” that can be applied to the skin or implanted inside the human body. Some of these electronic devices will provide a steady stream of health information to patients and their doctors. Other devices will administer electrical therapy to injured parts of the body, for example, to stimulate repair of damaged nerves in spinal cords.
Rogers grew up in a science-focused family. His father has a Ph.D. in physics, and his mother is a poet whose poetry explores science and nature. As a sophomore in high school, his interest in chemistry was piqued by a homework assignment requiring students to write a one-page summary on each of the elements of the periodic table. Rogers was fascinated by the fact that elements having such different characteristics were all composed of the same three fundamental building blocks: protons, neutrons and electrons. All that varied were the number and configuration of these building blocks in each element. Rogers’s work today focuses on how the number and configuration of atoms and molecules affect the properties of materials whether the materials can be effectively and safely applied to, or implanted inside, the human body.
In the context of artificial intelligence (AI) the “singularity” refers to a fundamentally transformative time when AI becomes intelligent enough to improve itself without human assistance. When AI can improve itself, the self-improvement process leads to runaway computer-based technology that will radically change civilization. Improvement tirelessly builds on improvement leading to capabilities we can hardly imagine.
Tetsuzo Matsumoto has an excellent vantage point to observe the (probable) coming of the singularity and the consequences of it. While not a technologist himself, Matsumoto has been present at the birthing table of many of the advanced technologies that have become part of daily life. Matsumoto was on the board of Softbank, was president and chairman of Qualcomm Japan and a senior executive at one of the largest Japanese trading companies where part of his responsibilities was to monitor emerging technology with an eye to commercialization.
A recent breakthrough in our war against cancer is the development of therapies that harness our body’s immune system to seek out and destroy tumor cells. While such immunotherapies have significantly prolonged the life of some patients who had previously exhausted all treatment options, the majority of cancer patients still do not benefit from existing immunotherapies. Thus, there is an urgent need to devise new therapies that can benefit a larger population of cancer patients. A better understanding of the body’s immune system is also very important for the prevention and treatment of a growing list of autoimmune and inflammatory diseases, such as lupus, arthritis and neurodegenerative diseases. In these diseases, the immune system misfires and attacks our own tissues. Our immune system is also crucial for defending us from infections by a large variety of microbial pathogens, such as viruses, bacteria, and parasites.
A recent breakthrough in our war against cancer is the development of therapies that harness our body’s immune system to seek out and destroy tumor cells. While such immunotherapies have significantly prolonged the life of some patients who had previously exhausted all treatment options, the majority of cancer patients still do not benefit from existing immunotherapies. Thus, there is an urgent need to devise new therapies that can benefit a larger population of cancer patients. A better understanding of the body’s immune system is also very important for the prevention and treatment of a growing list of autoimmune and inflammatory diseases, such as lupus, arthritis and neurodegenerative diseases. In these diseases, the immune system misfires and attacks our own tissues. Our immune system is also crucial for defending us from infections by a large variety of microbial pathogens, such as viruses, bacteria, and parasites. Key to our understanding of the immune system is how it detects microbial pathogens and cancer cells and how it avoids attacking our own tissues in normal situations. An important mechanism of this immune detection is the detection of DNA from microbial pathogens and cancer cells. Our lab discovered the DNA sensing enzyme cGAS and the pathway through which cGAS launches immune and autoimmune responses. Dr. Chen will discuss the current status of immunotherapies and describe efforts in harnessing the cGAS pathway to fight cancer and autoimmune diseases.
This program is generously supported by the Ann Lurie Trust.
