Curious by Nature

With AI now able to mimic voices, write convincing messages, and even fake video calls, telling what’s real online is harder than ever.
Sebastian Schuetz is an assistant professor at the University of Colorado Boulder, where he studies how organizations manage cyber risk like data breaches and ransomware attacks.

Eating healthy doesn’t mean spending more money.
We often assume that more expensive food is better for us, but research shows that price has surprisingly little to do with nutrition.
Professor William Masters is an economist at Tufts University’s Friedman School of Nutrition, where he studies how food prices relate to health and environmental impact. His work reveals that it’s possible to eat both nutritious and climate-friendly meals, without spending more.

What if your body is quietly guiding your food choices in ways you don’t even realize?
Jeff Brunstrom is a professor of experimental psychology at the University of Bristol, where he studies how our brains, behavior, and environment shape the way we eat.
His research suggests that we’re not just passively consuming food, we may have “nutritional intelligence,” where our bodies push us toward certain foods to meet our needs. But in today’s world of ultra-processed meals, that system can be disrupted, leading us to eat more without realizing why.

Why is brain cancer so hard to treat, and what if the brain itself is helping it spread? 
Glioblastoma is one of the most aggressive cancers, not because it forms a single tumor, but because it spreads like invisible threads throughout the brain, making it nearly impossible to remove completely. 
Dr. Sheila Singh is a Professor of Neuro-Oncology and Neurosurgery at King’s College London, Co-Head of the School of Cancer (with Pharmaceutical Sciences), and Director of the Comprehensive Cancer Center, while also serving as a part-time Professor of Surgery and Biochemistry at McMaster University. Her research uncovers how brain cells may actually be helping cancer grow and spread, and how existing drugs could be repurposed to stop it.

Every year, researchers publish discoveries that could improve our lives, from health to technology to public policy. But much of that work never reaches the people who could benefit from it. It stays behind paywalls, written in technical language, and shared mostly within academic circles.
Dr. Quan Xie is an associate professor of digital advertising at Southern Methodist University. Her research explores how scholars can better share their work using storytelling, digital platforms, and tools like AI to bring research beyond the journal and into the real world.