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Research & Discovery Archive

NASA grant offers Wake Forest students an opportunity to help develop new tools to understand gravity

NASA has awarded Wake Forest University Assistant Professor of Physics Alejandro Cárdenas-Avendaño a two-year, $374,000 grant to advance data analysis capabilities for the anticipated launch of NASA’s Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) in 2035—the world’s first space-based gravitational wave observatory. Detecting and analyzing gravitational waves offers a new window into observing and understanding our universe.…

Categories: Research & Discovery

What the neuroscience of motivation has to say about GLP-1 drugs

Even before the era of GLP-1 weight loss drugs, Wake Forest University neuroscientist Wayne Pratt dedicated his research lab to better understanding how the brain regulates food motivation. Now, with GLP-1s a household name, his research has even greater and more immediate implications: We know that drugs like Ozempic, developed to treat diabetes because they…

Categories: Experts, Research & Discovery

Beyond the Field: Wake Forest and Stanford Work Together

When Wake Forest hosts Stanford on Saturday, Oct. 3, thousands of fans will watch the Atlantic Coast Conference football clash. Here is a look at four off-the-field areas where Wake Forest and Stanford focus on collaboration instead of competition. Scientists at Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine are working with Stanford University on groundbreaking research.…

Categories: Athletics, Research & Discovery

Wake Forest-CINCIA researchers brief pope on Amazon mercury pollution

Scientists from across the Amazon have delivered to Pope Leo XIV a briefing on mercury pollution in the region—documents that include the findings from decades of research at the Center for Amazonian Scientific Innovation (CINCIA), established in partnership with Wake Forest University’s Sabin Center for Environment and Sustainability. “Today we were able to put more…

Categories: Environment & Sustainability, Research & Discovery

New Wake Forest quantum lab takes research to the next level

With the debut of its new Nano and Quantum Technologies Laboratory (NanoteQ), Wake Forest University gains a critical edge in quantum computing research. NanoteQ includes the University’s first ISO 5-certified clean room. And that provides the tightly controlled space needed for creating and studying the silicon-based qubits that make quantum computing possible. The facility hosts…

Categories: Research & Discovery

The art heist paradox: Why better police work can lead to more stolen masterpieces

When a multi-million-dollar masterpiece vanishes from a museum, the public calls for tougher criminal penalties and better-funded police task forces. But research from Wake Forest University suggests that some of these intuitive solutions can backfire, resulting in more art crime, not less. In their paper published in the Journal of Cultural Economics, Wake Forest Professor…

Categories: Experts, Research & Discovery

Temperature measurement error may cause climate-impact studies to understate impacts by 15% or more

When policymakers and city officials plan for climate change, they rely on economic studies showing how extreme heat impacts violent crime, public health, energy grids, and crop yields. However, a new study published in the Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists reveals a hidden problem in that research: the temperature proxies used…

Categories: Research & Discovery

Wake Forest partners with Historic Bethabara Park to save 18th-century artifacts

Archaeologist Terry Brock and a team of students are working to salvage artifacts from Historic Bethabara Park in Winston-Salem. Their efforts to conserve and catalog thousands of pieces of pottery and other items from Bethabara (pronounced beth-ab-uh-ruh) will shed light on the first Moravian settlement in North Carolina, which dates to the 1750s. A new…

Categories: Community Impact, Research & Discovery, Undergraduate research

How do human pathogens adapt? New Wake Forest research holds some clues

Research underway in the lab of Rebecca Alexander, professor in Wake Forest University’s Department of Chemistry, is shedding light on a peculiar human bacteria, Mycoplasma penetrans. Alexander’s work to understand how and why this unique pathogen acts as it does could one day lead to new classes of drugs that better target illnesses associated with…

Categories: Research & Discovery

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