Dean of the Faculty Deborah Prentice will take office as Princeton University’s provost on July 1, succeeding Provost David Lee. Lee has decided to return to full-time teaching and research after serving since 2013 as the University’s second-ranking officer.

Pollution from the controlled fires that burn across Brazil’s São Paulo state during the sugarcane-harvesting season has a negative impact on infant health nearby. But the health of those same infants likely benefits from the economic opportunities the fires bring to their parents.

A delegation of Princeton faculty members — led by President Christopher L. Eisgruber and including the University’s 2015 and 2016 Nobel laureates —took part in and led discussions on major global issues at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum that concluded Friday, Jan. 20, in Davos, Switzerland.

Raising further questions about privacy on the internet, researchers from Princeton and Stanford universities have released a study showing that a specific person’s online behavior can be identified by linking anonymous web browsing histories with social media profiles.

As Professor Joshua Shaevitz piped a few drops of methanol into a 35 mm film canister, students plugged their ears with their fingers in anticipation of the imminent bang. The “Piezo Popper,” a small bottle rocket ignited by a piezoelectric spark, is one of the hands-on projects in Shaevitz’s freshman seminar, “The Science of Mythbusters.”

Meg Urry was the first tenured physics professor at Yale University and was often the only woman in her physics classes, including her graduate class at MIT, but she still heard a fellow student complain that women were unfairly given advantages over their male colleagues. “That’s when I realized there was something fishy going on,” she said. Urry spoke at the 2017 APS Conference for Undergraduate Women in Physics (CUWiP) Mid-Atlantic Regional Conference at Princeton University.

The bacteria that cause the life-threatening disease cholera may initiate infection by coordinating a wave of mass shapeshifting that allows them to more effectively penetrate the intestines of their unwitting victims, according to a study led by Princeton University.

Earlier this fall, Wallace Best, professor of religion and African American studies at Princeton, took the students in his “African American Religious History” course on a walking tour of Harlem. “It was truly an educational highlight of my time at Princeton,” said senior Adam Hudnut-Beumler. Best’s course is one of the 24 undergraduate courses offered by Department of African American Studies this fall.

Is the American socioeconomic ladder sturdy, offering a good chance for people to move up and down? Or is it rickety, leaving most people stuck where they are? Psychologists at Princeton University and Memorial University of Newfoundland have found that how Americans view social mobility affects their willingness to defend the basic underpinnings of American society — such as social and economic policies, laws, and institutions.

Researchers at Princeton University and the University of California-Los Angeles have found that the moon is at least 4.51 billion years old, or 40 million to 140 million years older than scientists previously thought.

In August 2015, a dust storm blanketed large areas of seven Middle East nations in a haze of dust and sand thick enough to obscure them from satellite view. At the time, the storm’s unusual severity was attributed to the ongoing civil war in Syria.  Now, a team of researchers including Elie Bou-Zeid, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at Princeton has found that it was caused not by human conflict, but a combination of climatic factors and unusual weather.

The technique that the hepatitis E virus — an emerging liver virus historically found in developing countries but now on the rise in Europe — uses to spread could present a weak spot scientists can exploit to treat the disease, according to a new study.

Six new technologies — from a method that enhances X-ray images to a strategy that eliminates cybersecurity threats — will receive University funding aimed at helping to transform promising discoveries from the laboratories at Princeton into widely available products and services for the benefit of society.

Princeton University’s Office of Admission launched a new interactive website on Jan. 5, providing prospective students and others with engaging and useful information about the quality and affordability of a Princeton education.

Princeton University has a substantial impact on the New Jersey economy, generating an annual total of $1.58 billion in economic output as an employer, research and innovation leader, sponsor of construction projects, purchaser of goods and services, and financial and civic contributor to local communities. That total supports an estimated 13,450 jobs with $970.7 million in earnings.

One hundred years ago, Italian chemist Giacomo Ciamician predicted a future society that would run on sunlight. Ciamician’s vision has not yet arrived, but a handful of Princeton researchers have succeeded with one part of his legacy: they are harnessing light to perform previously impossible feats of chemistry.

Princeton University President Christopher L. Eisgruber has received the U.S. Navy’s Distinguished Public Service Award, the highest civilian honor given by the Secretary of the Navy. The award is given to someone who has “demonstrated exceptionally outstanding service of substantial and long-term benefit” to the Navy.

Banding together as a nation is often lauded for getting through challenging times, but a new study published by Princeton University and global collaborators finds that both harmony and conflict unify nations’ identities.

This fall, a Princeton instructor charged students with brainstorming some highly creative improvements to the Palmer Square shopping district. They were warned to avoid the commonplace. Almost all of them failed.

A committee to establish a marker at the Woodrow Wilson School for Public and International Affairs that “educates the campus community and others about the positive and negative dimensions of Wilson’s legacy” welcomes input from Princeton students, alumni, faculty and staff through a new website.