Economist Namrata Kala examines the impact of climate change and other environmental factors on business, agriculture, and workers. “I’m part of a long tradition of trying to understand resilience and adaptation, but now in the face of a changing world,” she says.

Tomás Vega SM ’19 co-founded Augmental, a startup that helps people with movement impairments interact with personal computational devices. Its first product allows users to control a computer, smartphone, or tablet through tongue and head movements.

Surprisingly, some of the earliest adopters of financial discounting were 17th-century English clergy, William Deringer has found. “Most people have assumed these very sophisticated calculations would have been implemented by hard-nosed capitalists,” he says.

A new approach to deep brain stimulation uses ultrasound waves instead of electricity, which could be a safer way to treat Parkinson’s disease. “This device is thinner than a hair fiber, so there will be negligible tissue damage,” Canan Dagdeviren says.

When she earned her sport pilot license, Sheila Xu ’14 became one of about 200 deaf pilots in the U.S. She is now deputy director of development for AstroAccess, which aims to make space travel fully inclusive of people with disabilities. “I want to be a role model,” she says.

A glacier’s flow depends on how tiny defects move through the ice, according to research that may help scientists refine predictions of sea-level rise. “This study really shows the effect of microscale processes on macroscale behavior,” says Meghana Ranganathan PhD ’22.