Working with a CRC research faculty consultant, Pitt Economics Professor Stefania Albanesi processed a large panel of anonymous data on debt and defaults. Her findings shift the accepted narrative that the credit crisis was caused by subprime borrowers defaulting on mortgages. Albanesi found instead that the biggest growth in mortgage debt actually came from borrowers with high and medium credit scores, not those with low scores. “It was the borrowers with higher credit scores who also represented a disproportionate number of defaults," explains Albanesi. Find out more about her work in the April 17 National Public Radio story "A Decade After The Bubble Burst, House Flipping Is On The Rise." 

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The video at left accompanies a paper by the Lillian Chong Group that was recently published in Nature Communications - "Large enhancements of response times of a protein conformational switch by computational design." This displays a molecular simulation of the switching process for a protein-based calcium sensor, with music written and performed by graduate student Alex DeGrave. Computational resources were provided by the Center for Research Computing. 

Read more about the Lillian Chong Group at News & Features

Lillian Chong, Associate Professor in Chemistry, combines her passions for science and writing. She works at the forefront of expanding the possibilities of molecular dynamics simulations while also founding Pitt’s Creative Science Writing Program. Her workshops on science and creativity bring together students from Chemistry and English – a crowd that customarily doesn’t intermingle.

“Science is creative,” Chong tells the students. “Science and writing can reinforce each other.”

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