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University of Virginia: Q&A - How Can New Heart Attack Definitions Improve Care for Women?
CHARLOTTESVILLE, Virginia, Sept. 29 -- The University of Virginia issued the following research news:
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Q&A: How can new heart attack definitions improve care for women?
By Zeina Mohammed, spr2jm@virginia.edu
September 28, 2026
Four major cardiology societies, including the American Heart Association, have endorsed an updated definition of heart attack to improve diagnosis and classification for all patients, with important implications for women.
Dr. Patricia Rodriguez-Lozano leads UVA Health's Women's Heart Health Care program, working to improve cardiovascular care for women. A cardiologist,
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CHARLOTTESVILLE, Virginia, Sept. 29 -- The University of Virginia issued the following research news:
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Q&A: How can new heart attack definitions improve care for women?
By Zeina Mohammed, spr2jm@virginia.edu
September 28, 2026
Four major cardiology societies, including the American Heart Association, have endorsed an updated definition of heart attack to improve diagnosis and classification for all patients, with important implications for women.
Dr. Patricia Rodriguez-Lozano leads UVA Health's Women's Heart Health Care program, working to improve cardiovascular care for women. A cardiologist,clinician and researcher, she develops new therapies for microvascular dysfunction, a problem involving the heart's small blood vessels.
Rodriguez-Lozano spoke with UVA Today about the changing definition and how it could lead to better healthcare for women.
Q. What has changed regarding definitions of heart attacks?
A. The new definition groups heart attacks more clearly according to three causes: a primary heart attack, caused by an acute problem in the heart's blood vessels; a secondary heart attack, when another serious illness is affecting the heart's oxygen supply; or a complication of a cardiac procedure.
Another important change, particularly for women, is in the (definition) of a term called MINOCA. Previously, MINOCA referred to myocardial infarction with non-obstructive coronaries, and the new document changed that definition to myocardial injury with non-obstructive coronary artery.
Let me explain in simple words why that matters. Imagine a woman comes to the hospital with chest pain, and her blood test shows that she has some kind of injury to the heart muscle, but when they look at the coronary arteries, they don't find any major blockage. Further testing, such as a cardiac MRI, can help determine whether she had a heart attack or another cause of heart injury, such as inflammation of the heart muscle. So that change from heart attack to heart injury reinforces that MINOCA is a working diagnosis, not a final diagnosis. Finding no major blockage does not mean the evaluation is finished.
Q. When was the change made?
A. A new document was released in August called the Fifth Universal Definition of Myocardial Infarction, which is the medical term for heart attacks. The document was developed jointly by the European Society of Cardiology, the American College of Cardiology, the American Heart Association and the World Heart Federation. It gives physicians around the world a common language for diagnosing and classifying heart attacks.
The basic definition of a heart attack is the same, still referring to part of the heart muscle that has been damaged because it hasn't received enough oxygen-rich blood. But there are different reasons it can happen, aside from a blocked artery, (such as) a problem within the artery wall, an artery spasm or a clot traveling into the heart circulation.
Q. How can heart attacks manifest differently for women than men?
A. For many women, their symptoms are different. It's important to know that the most common symptom is chest pain or chest discomfort, but many times women also present with other symptoms like shortness of breath, nausea, unusual fatigue or discomfort in the back, both arms and jaw.
So many times, providers, and even the women, don't necessarily recognize these symptoms are related to heart disease, and there is delay in diagnosis and then treatment. Traditional risk factors like diabetes, smoking and high cholesterol affect everyone, but women have specific risk factors, like reproductive history, (polycystic ovary syndrome) and onset of menopause.
Women are also more likely than men to have a heart attack without a major blockage in what they call the main coronary arteries, the big coronary arteries. Women are also disproportionately affected by certain conditions, such as spontaneous coronary artery dissection or scar, where a problem develops within the artery walls and interferes with blood flow.
Now, women absolutely develop cholesterol-related blockages, too, so we don't want people to hear this and think that women only have a small vessel disease or tears or other conditions.
Another important part of the definition involves the blood test we use to detect heart injury, called troponin. The reference limit for that test is generally lower in women than in men. So, a result that doesn't look particularly high using one cutoff may actually be abnormal for women. This updated document reinforces using reference limits that account for those biological differences.
Q. What work is your program doing to improve heart care for women?
A. We care for women across the entire spectrum of cardiovascular disease. We know 80% of heart disease is preventable. We have different clinics for all these different diseases that most of the time affect women. We have a special clinic for SCAD, the spontaneous coronary artery dissection; that is a heart attack that affects mostly young women. We have another clinic called a cardio-obstetric clinic for pregnant women with heart disease or high risk for heart disease, or people looking to get pregnant who are high risk.
Last year, working with our interventional cardiology colleagues, we introduced a comprehensive coronary function testing, or CFT, program at UVA. An angiogram shows us what the larger coronary arteries look like. CFT helps us understand how both the large and small blood vessels work.
During a cardiac catheterization, we use a thin wire with sensors and carefully administered medications to assess how much blood flow can increase and whether the vessels tighten abnormally or go into spasm. This helps us identify small-vessel dysfunction and spasm involving the large or small vessels, which may not be apparent on a standard angiogram. It is a specialized test for selected patients, not something everyone with chest pain needs.
This really matters because many of our patients are told that nothing is wrong with their heart and their symptoms are maybe related to something different, like stress or hormones. Knowing whether the problem is small-vessel dysfunction, spasm or both helps us tailor treatment. For example, when we identify spasm, we can use medications to help relax the arteries. These problems can cause chest pain without a heart attack. Our goal is to give patients a clearer explanation and a treatment plan that improves their symptoms and quality of life.
We're also studying potential treatments through NIH-funded research focused on women with coronary microvascular dysfunction. We want to improve not only how we diagnose these conditions, but also how women feel and function in their daily lives.
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Original text here: https://news.virginia.edu/content/qa-how-can-new-heart-attack-definitions-improve-care-women
UPMC Hillman Breast Cancer Scientist Receives Grant, Gives Keynote Lecture at 10th Anniversary of Symposium She Founded
PITTSBURGH, Pennsylvania, Sept. 29 -- The University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine issued the following news:
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UPMC Hillman Breast Cancer Scientist Receives Grant, Gives Keynote Lecture at 10th Anniversary of Symposium She Founded
Ten years ago, Steffi Oesterreich launched a symposium for one of the most difficult-to-detect forms of breast cancer, gathering researchers, patients and advocates together in Pittsburgh to bring attention to a disease she knew was woefully understudied.
The first Invasive Lobular Carcinoma (ILC) Symposium attracted an international audience, along with
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PITTSBURGH, Pennsylvania, Sept. 29 -- The University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine issued the following news:
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UPMC Hillman Breast Cancer Scientist Receives Grant, Gives Keynote Lecture at 10th Anniversary of Symposium She Founded
Ten years ago, Steffi Oesterreich launched a symposium for one of the most difficult-to-detect forms of breast cancer, gathering researchers, patients and advocates together in Pittsburgh to bring attention to a disease she knew was woefully understudied.
The first Invasive Lobular Carcinoma (ILC) Symposium attracted an international audience, along withdozens of patients whose attendance was, at the time, unusual at a scientific conference.
On Sept. 25, at this year's ILC Symposium in San Francisco, Oesterreich gave the keynote lecture in honor of one of those patients, Leigh Pate, who died in 2022 from cancer complications. She also accepted a grant for a high-risk, high-reward research project that she hopes will lead to clinical trials for therapies specifically targeted at the cells of one of ILC's most aggressive variants.
"After the symposium, Leigh and I became really good friends," said Oesterreich, coleader of the Hillman Cancer Center Cancer Biology Program and professor of pharmacology and chemical biology at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. "She was a force for advocacy, getting the patients together and starting the Lobular Breast Cancer Alliance with me and others. It has grown significantly and is now also able to give grants. I'm so proud of her and all that we've accomplished."
ILC is the most common special histological type of breast cancer, representing 10% to 15% of all breast cancer diagnoses--accounting for 48,000 individuals diagnosed in the United States each year. Despite its prevalence and rising incidence, ILC remains underfunded and understudied, receiving less than 1% of dedicated breast cancer research funding.
Unlike more common forms of breast cancer, ILC exhibits distinct biology and growth patterns. Rather than forming discreet, easily palpated lumps, lobular cancer cells typically spread in single-file strands through surrounding tissue. This characteristic makes ILC notoriously difficult to detect through standard screening mammography and challenging to track when it metastasizes. Consequently, tumors are frequently discovered at later stages.
At the symposium, the Lobular Breast Cancer Alliance Inc awarded $1 million for ILC research, with half going to Oesterreich for a study to map genes and gene expression pathways with the goal of discovering key drivers of pleomorphic ILC, a particularly aggressive form of breast cancer with high recurrence rates.
"This generous funding from the Lobular Breast Cancer Alliance--made possible by a gift from lobular breast cancer survivor Dr. Shannon Klingman--is critical to enabling high-risk, high-reward research. We hope our studies will lead to impactful discoveries in pleomorphic ILC that can be translated from the laboratory into clinical trials and ultimately bring life-saving therapies to thousands of patients," Oesterreich said. "It provides me and my fellow scientists with the unique opportunity to think outside the box and find innovative approaches to identify targets on the pleomorphic lobular cancer cells that we can exploit to destroy the cancer with novel therapies."
Multiple trainees in the Lee-Oesterreich Lab also earned travel grants to attend and learn at this year's ILC Symposium. Lab codirector Adrian Lee, Pittsburgh Foundation Professor of Precision Medicine and professor of pharmacology and chemical biology at Pitt, presented on the many new ILC models the team has generated that will allow ILC researchers all over the world to study the disease better. Other Hillman Cancer Center scientists and clinicians presented research, as did several of Oesterreich's proteges, who have since gone on to join and launch their own research programs at other academic medical centers.
Reflecting on the decade since launching the symposium, Oesterreich is thrilled with the advances that have been made in the ILC field, while also feeling the weight of all that still needs to be accomplished.
"ILC used to be a bit of an afterthought, but now it has a visible presence at all breast cancer symposium meetings and Programs of Excellence for research and treatment--including at UPMC Hillman Cancer Center--have been established," she said.
"But we're still far from reaching the final goal, which is true precision medicine for patients with ILC. We need tailored detection techniques and dedicated drugs, neither of which exist yet," Oesterreich said. "They're coming, though--there are now multiple clinical trials running specifically for patients with ILC and far, far more companies are interested in getting drugs tested. The future looks bright."
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Original text here: https://www.medschool.pitt.edu/news/upmc-hillman-breast-cancer-scientist-receives-grant-gives-keynote-lecture-10th-anniversary
UAlbany Faculty, Staff Honored With SUNY Chancellor's Awards for Excellence
ALBANY, New York, Sept. 29 -- SUNY University at Albany issued the following news:
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UAlbany Faculty, Staff Honored with SUNY Chancellor's Awards for Excellence
By Amy Geduldig
ALBANY, N.Y. (Sept. 28, 2026) -- University at Albany faculty and staff were recognized for their outstanding contributions in teaching, scholarship, faculty service, librarianship, and professional service at the SUNY Chancellor's Awards for Excellence on Sept. 17.
The SUNY honor recognizes superior professional achievement and encourages the continued pursuit of excellence across the State University of New York
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ALBANY, New York, Sept. 29 -- SUNY University at Albany issued the following news:
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UAlbany Faculty, Staff Honored with SUNY Chancellor's Awards for Excellence
By Amy Geduldig
ALBANY, N.Y. (Sept. 28, 2026) -- University at Albany faculty and staff were recognized for their outstanding contributions in teaching, scholarship, faculty service, librarianship, and professional service at the SUNY Chancellor's Awards for Excellence on Sept. 17.
The SUNY honor recognizes superior professional achievement and encourages the continued pursuit of excellence across the State University of New Yorksystem.
UAlbany Provost Carol Kim praised the 16 recipients for the impact of their work on students.
"I want to thank today's awardees for the ways their outstanding work has enhanced UAlbany. Each of you has helped elevate the academic experience for our students through your unique contributions to our university," Kim said.
SUNY Chancellor John B. King Jr. congratulated the recipients and thanked them for their contributions to their campuses, students and the broader SUNY community.
"The individuals we honor ... all share a deep dedication to their institutions, commitment to excellence, and to going above and beyond in all that they do," King said. "The thing I value most about our awardees is actually not just their impressive CVs or their expertise. It's that at the same time they are some of SUNY's finest public servants, teachers and librarians too. ... Thank you all for your service to our system, for leading in the pursuit of excellence, knowledge and service."
UAlbany's Chancellor's Awards for Excellence recipients are:
Excellence in Scholarship and Creative Activities
* Paolo Forni -- Department of Biological Sciences, College of Arts & Sciences
* Annalisa Scimemi -- Department of Biological Sciences, College of Arts & Sciences
* Barbara Sutton -- Department of Women's, Gender & Sexuality Studies, College of Arts & Sciences
Excellence in Teaching
* Elise Andaya -- Department of Anthropology, College of Arts & Sciences
* Susan Cumings -- Writing and Critical Inquiry Program
* Jennifer Dodge -- Department of Public Administration & Policy, Rockefeller College of Public Affairs & Policy
* Teniell Trolian -- Department of Educational Policy & Leadership, School of Education
Excellence in Faculty Service
* Bret Benjamin -- Department of English, College of Arts & Sciences
* Ellen Rubin -- Department of Public Administration & Policy, Rockefeller College of Public Affairs & Policy
Excellence in Librarianship
* Lauren Puzier -- University Libraries
Excellence in Professional Service
* Laura Barron -- Information Technology Services
* Jameelee Ford -- Residential Life
* Melissa Powers -- Registrar's Office
* Elana Stein -- UAlbany in the High School, College of Arts & Sciences
* David VanVranken -- Office of Facilities Management
* Renee Wallingford -- Rockefeller College of Public Affairs & Policy
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Original text here: https://www.albany.edu/news-center/news/2026-ualbany-faculty-staff-honored-suny-chancellors-awards-excellence
Stanford University Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies: Hidden Economics of Police Repression in India's Tea Country
STANFORD, California, Sept. 29 -- Stanford University Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies issued the following news:
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September 28, 2026
The Hidden Economics of Police Repression in India's Tea Country
A spatial analysis of Assam's plantations reveals that policing rises sharply in the zones where owners' authority over workers ends.
Khushmita Dhabhai
In Brief
* New research from Emily Russell, Gerhard Casper Postdoctoral Fellow in Rule of Law at CDDRL, finds that police repression in Assam's tea plantations acts as a state substitute for private labor control.
* Policing
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STANFORD, California, Sept. 29 -- Stanford University Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies issued the following news:
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September 28, 2026
The Hidden Economics of Police Repression in India's Tea Country
A spatial analysis of Assam's plantations reveals that policing rises sharply in the zones where owners' authority over workers ends.
Khushmita Dhabhai
In Brief
* New research from Emily Russell, Gerhard Casper Postdoctoral Fellow in Rule of Law at CDDRL, finds that police repression in Assam's tea plantations acts as a state substitute for private labor control.
* Policingrises sharply in "catchment" areas just beyond plantation boundaries, where owners' direct authority ends.
* The effect is strongest among descendants of indentured laborers -- but only within catchment zones, distinguishing it from ethnic bias alone.
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During the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law's (CDDRL) first Fall 2026 Research Seminar, Emily Russell, the 2026-27 Gerhard Casper Postdoctoral Fellow in Rule of Law at CDDRL, presented her research on why police selectively target certain minorities within particular regions of India. She began by situating her work within the literature on common explanations of police repression. These explanations often include crime and political dissent that the police seek to curtail, or racial and ethnic biases within policing institutions. Russell, however, argues that police may also target vulnerable groups in order to enforce an economic order and maintain and enable conditions of extraction that sustain production and hierarchy.
Russell contextualizes this through the broader literature on coercion, taxation, extraction, and labor control. Existing work already shows how coercion can be used to restrict workers' outside options and prevent laborers from leaving. Acemoglu and Wolitzky's 2011 paper, for example, models coercion as force or the threat of force that employers use to influence workers' participation decisions. Russell adds another layer to this literature by focusing on how coercion can be exercised through the state, rather than only directly by employers.
Russell situates this argument in the context of Assam's tea plantation economy. Plantation owners have incentives to control labor, prevent dissent, and discourage laborers from leaving. Within the plantation, they can engage in private coercion directly. Beyond the plantation, however, private coercion becomes more difficult. At that point, landowners may rely on the state, particularly the police, to exercise coercion on their behalf. This produces a clear testable implication: where plantation owners retain incentives to control labor but private coercion can no longer easily reach workers, policing should increase, particularly against the relevant labor population. This is where Assam's plantation geography becomes useful.
Russell distinguishes between plantations themselves, plantation catchments, and more distant rural areas. Catchment areas are the residential zones surrounding plantations where laborers can still live within commuting distance while remaining beyond employers' direct control. She then uses a spatial regression discontinuity design across plantation boundaries and catchments to estimate whether policing increases in these areas.
To measure policing and police abuse, Russell draws on GDELT-type media data to capture visible policing events, and legal and human-rights records help capture forms of abuse that may be less visible in media reporting. The broader project also incorporates qualitative evidence from more than 60 interviews.
What she finds is that policing increases sharply in plantation catchment areas relative both to plantations themselves and to more remote rural areas. This increase is especially important in areas with larger populations descended from indentured laborers (Adivasis). Measuring this population is difficult using conventional demographic data, so Russell constructs a surname-based measure based on fieldwork with interviews of elders from indentured communities and geocoded voter records. This allows her to estimate where populations historically connected to plantation labor are concentrated.
The heterogeneity result is particularly important. Policing increases with the concentration of Adivasi populations within plantation catchment areas, but not beyond that geographic zone. This matters because it helps distinguish her argument from a purely ethnic-bias explanation. If repression were driven only by generalized discrimination against Adivasis, one might expect policing to increase wherever these populations are concentrated. Instead, the increase appears specifically where these communities remain economically connected to plantation production but are beyond employers' direct private control.
The broader point is therefore that the state can use coercion to maintain inequalities that sustain production. Police repression may not only reflect attempts to control crime, political dissent, or ethnic minorities. It can also function as a state-supplied mechanism of labor control, particularly where private coercive authority becomes insufficient.
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Original text here: https://fsi.stanford.edu/news/hidden-economics-police-repression-indias-tea-country
St. Louis University: Chaifetz Students Create Supply Chain Solution for Wellness Drink Company
HILLSBORO, Missouri, Sept. 29 -- St. Louis University issued the following news:
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Chaifetz Students Create Supply Chain Solution for Wellness Drink Company
By Maggie Rotermund
09/28/2026
A Partnership with Alum Angela Zeng (Med '01) Provides Real-World Experience for Students
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ST. LOUIS - A good supply chain system is like water or air - necessary to function but something one doesn't think about when it is working well.
"That is the role supply chain plays in our lives, that without it being interrupted, it just helps us in ways we do not feel or we take as a given," said Tiancheng
... Show Full Article
HILLSBORO, Missouri, Sept. 29 -- St. Louis University issued the following news:
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Chaifetz Students Create Supply Chain Solution for Wellness Drink Company
By Maggie Rotermund
09/28/2026
A Partnership with Alum Angela Zeng (Med '01) Provides Real-World Experience for Students
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ST. LOUIS - A good supply chain system is like water or air - necessary to function but something one doesn't think about when it is working well.
"That is the role supply chain plays in our lives, that without it being interrupted, it just helps us in ways we do not feel or we take as a given," said TianchengZhao, Ph.D., assistant professor of operations and IT management in Saint Louis University's Richard A. Chaifetz School of Business. "It connects us all together."
Students in Zhao's class in supply chain management in Spring 2026 had the opportunity to compete to take a system that contained interruptions and find ways to make it run smoothly. The winning proposal was chosen at the end of the semester and the three-member team spent the summer perfecting their app, which they presented to the leadership of Karviva on Sept. 18.
St. Louis-based wellness beverage company Karviva, known for its line of plant-based wellness drinks inspired by traditional Asian herbal nutrition, was founded by Angela Zeng, Ph.D. (Med '01). Zeng connected with Jintong Tang, Ph.D., the Mary Louise Murray Endowed Professor of Management, who leads both the Chaifetz Center for Entrepreneurship and the Emerson Leadership Institute, to form a new collaboration between SLU and a local business, connecting student learning with real entrepreneurial challenges.
For Zhao, it allowed him to take a course that was once based in abstract of coordinating people, data and resources and ground it in practical learning with a company seeking to improve its internal processes.
Zeng shared Karviva company data with graduate student teams for strategic analysis, allowing them to build a system based on the real growth decisions facing the expanding company.
"With this experience with Karviva, the students learn that the real world is not what is simply those several lines of formulas in the textbook," he said. "It is much more than that."
From Zhao's class, the team of Kuan-Wei Chao, Wei-Chen Lin and Kuan-Ju Chen, all students working towards a master's degree in supply chain management, was chosen to move forward with their design. They spent the summer pulling together an integrated Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system that allows Karviva to track orders, production and inventory.
"This system is very user friendly," Lin said. "It takes human error out of the input and with the click of a button, you can see the orders you have, your inventory and where in the process your orders are."
Following the presentation, the ERP system was handed off to the Karviva team to evaluate and begin to make suggested improvements based on its real-world functionality.
Chen added that the system they designed for Karviva standardizes the company's data, so it should be something that Karviva can employ across its sales and production teams.
Once it is beyond beta testing, the team envisions an app that will also let those outside the company track their orders.
"Our hope is to take this further by giving the suppliers direct access to their own order or shipment status, improving the transparency across the supply chain," Chao said.
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About the Richard A. Chaifetz School of Business
Founded in 1910, the Richard A. Chaifetz School of Business at Saint Louis University has shaped the future of industry for more than a century. As one of the oldest business schools west of the Mississippi, the Chaifetz School has built a reputation as a leader in business education committed to innovation, inclusion and impact and recognized with eight undergraduate and graduate programs nationally ranked by U.S. News & World Report.
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About Saint Louis University
Founded in 1818, Saint Louis University is one of the nation's oldest and most prestigious Catholic research institutions. Rooted in Jesuit values and its pioneering history as the first university west of the Mississippi River, SLU offers more than 13,300 students a rigorous, transformative education that challenges and prepares them to make the world a better place. As a nationally recognized leader in research and innovation, SLU is an R1 research university, advancing groundbreaking, life-changing discoveries that promote the greater good.
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Original text here: https://www.slu.edu/news/2026/september/karviva-project.php
FAU Blends AI and Human Coaching to Make Students Day One Career Ready
BOCA RATON, Florida, Sept. 29 -- Florida Atlantic University, a component of the state university system in Florida, issued the following news:
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FAU Blends AI and Human Coaching to Make Students Day One Career Ready
By Joshua Glanzer | 9/28/2026
As higher education institutions face increasing scrutiny over workforce outcomes, student success, return on investment and graduate employability, Florida Atlantic University's Career Center is pairing artificial intelligence with evidence-based career coaching to help students graduate "Day One Career Ready."
Through a combination of personalized
... Show Full Article
BOCA RATON, Florida, Sept. 29 -- Florida Atlantic University, a component of the state university system in Florida, issued the following news:
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FAU Blends AI and Human Coaching to Make Students Day One Career Ready
By Joshua Glanzer | 9/28/2026
As higher education institutions face increasing scrutiny over workforce outcomes, student success, return on investment and graduate employability, Florida Atlantic University's Career Center is pairing artificial intelligence with evidence-based career coaching to help students graduate "Day One Career Ready."
Through a combination of personalizedcareer coaching, strategic use of AI, employer partnerships and career readiness programming, Florida Atlantic is helping students develop the essential success skills employers seek, strengthen the return on investment of their education and successfully transition from college to career.
"Artificial intelligence can accelerate access to information, but effective career coaching remains fundamentally human-centered," said Melanie Cormio, senior director of career pathways and coaching. "Many students don't struggle because they lack information. They need help interpreting options, overcoming challenges, developing professional confidence and translating decisions into action. That's where career coaching creates a lasting impact."
AI-powered tools, such as Steppingblocks, help students explore career pathways, identify emerging opportunities and understand labor market trends. Other tools like Big Interview and Big Resume provide AI-assisted resume reviews and interview practice, while LinkedIn Learning helps students build industry-relevant skills and close competency gaps.
By using AI to support occupational research, career exploration and skill development, career coaches can dedicate more time to helping students build confidence, navigate complex decisions and create actionable career plans.
The career center's adoption of AI-powered tools builds on its history of industry-leading practices. For nearly two decades, Florida Atlantic has grounded its career services model in Cognitive Information Processing Theory, a nationally recognized framework that helps students develop self-awareness, explore career options, make informed decisions and take meaningful action toward their goals. The model allows career coaches to identify barriers to career decision-making and tailor support to each student's needs and circumstances.
Students access support through a two-dimensional model measuring capability and complexity, which assesses readiness for career problem solving and decision making and allows the Career Center to match the level of intervention to a student's career gap. The scalable approach ensures students receive timely support while promoting equitable access to career services.
"Our goal is to help every student understand the connection between their academic experience, career aspirations and long-term success," Cormio said. "Career coaching and AI together create powerful opportunities for students to make informed decisions, build essential success skills and confidently enter the workforce as 'Day One Career Ready' professionals."
The career center's work directly supports the university's five-year strategic plan, "2031FAU: Where Tomorrow Begins," by ensuring students graduate with the knowledge, experiences and essential success skills needed to thrive in a rapidly changing workforce while maximizing the value of their educational investment.
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Original text here: https://www.fau.edu/newsdesk/articles/careercenterpreparesstudents.php
Columbia University School of Engineering & Applied Science Hosts Alumnus Rao on Data Streaming and Real Time AI Architectures
NEW YORK, Sept. 29 -- The Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science of Columbia University issued the following news:
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Unlocking the Possibilities of Data Streaming
Data streaming is helping make information more accessible when it matters.
September 28, 2026
Bernadette O. Young
Columbia Engineering's Lecture Series in AI returned for its third year Sept. 11 at the University's Morningside campus. Previous lectures explored artificial intelligence (AI) architectures and computing systems. The first lecture of this school year turned to what all of those systems depend on.
"The
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NEW YORK, Sept. 29 -- The Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science of Columbia University issued the following news:
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Unlocking the Possibilities of Data Streaming
Data streaming is helping make information more accessible when it matters.
September 28, 2026
Bernadette O. Young
Columbia Engineering's Lecture Series in AI returned for its third year Sept. 11 at the University's Morningside campus. Previous lectures explored artificial intelligence (AI) architectures and computing systems. The first lecture of this school year turned to what all of those systems depend on.
"Theone thing that really is at the core of any AI system is data," said Vishal Misra, vice dean of computing and AI at Columbia Engineering.
That idea framed a talk by featured speaker, Engineering alumnus Jun Rao PhD '00, who traced the evolution of data streaming from a problem he encountered at LinkedIn to a technology he believes will play an important role in generative and agentic AI.
Solving a data problem with a data streaming platform
When Rao joined LinkedIn in 2010, the company stored data across multiple databases and systems, and a growing number of applications needed access to it. Engineers often built custom connections between individual data sources and applications, but Rao said that he and his colleagues quickly saw that the approach would not scale. Their solution was Apache Kafka, an open-source common platform where users could publish data as continuous streams and applications could subscribe to the information they needed. The system helped simplify LinkedIn's data architecture while making data more accessible to developers, data scientists, and product teams.
As Kafka gained wider adoption, Rao saw an opportunity to take the idea further. In 2014, he co-founded Confluent with fellow Kafka creators Jay Kreps and Neha Narkhede to build a more complete data-streaming platform. The team developed tools that made it easier to connect databases, data warehouses, and other systems, and to continuously clean, transform, and enrich data as it arrived.
Generative and agentic AI have made real-time data even more important, Rao said during the talk held in Davis Auditorium. Unlike traditional machine learning, which often relied on batch processing and historical data, AI agents increasingly make decisions and take actions in the moment.
While foundation models are powerful, they do not automatically have access to a company's latest transactions, customer activity, or other proprietary information. To make these systems more useful, he stressed that organizations need to provide relevant business context at inference time, and the fresher that context is, the more useful it can be. Data streaming supplies that contextual layer by continuously capturing and delivering the information to the applications and agents that need it.
Improving customer service with AI
Rao pointed to one of their clients, Trust Bank, a digital bank in Singapore, as an example. The bank used an AI chatbot for customer service but also ran a second large language model to analyze customer sentiment in real time. If an interaction appeared to be going poorly, the system could alert a human representative to follow up with the customer.
The bank also used data streaming to give the chatbot more context about each customer, including the services they used and their recent interactions with the bank, which let the chatbot give more concise and relevant responses. According to Rao, the system eventually handled about 50 percent of incoming customer requests while customer complaints fell fourfold.
Building on the fundamentals
After earning his computer science PhD at Columbia, Rao joined IBM Research. Following IBM's acquisition of Confluent in March 2026, he has now returned to the company that jumpstarted his career. Although his work has shifted from databases to data streaming, Rao said the computer science fundamentals he learned while studying database systems, including designing reliable software and evaluating performance, continue to apply.
For students entering a field that is rapidly being reshaped by AI, Rao underscored the importance of those fundamentals. AI assistants may change how students learn and build software, he said, but they still need to master the skills to evaluate what those tools produce. He also stressed the importance of gaining practical experience while in school to prepare for the challenges of their careers.
"The ability to ask the right question," said Rao, "and the critical thinking needed to determine whether the answer is correct or not, remain essential."
View Jun Rao's Lecture in AI (https://youtu.be/Wp93KwnUlLI?si=MCRunJVjPV6fS1DY).
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Original text here: https://www.engineering.columbia.edu/about/news/unlocking-possibilities-data-streaming
