Jonathan Rothberg’s groundbreaking biotech exploits could revolutionize medicine, much like the advent of the x-ray machine. The Carnegie Mellon alumnus and trustee has plenty of people who’ve provided him with inspiration along the way. Steve Jobs for starters. But it was his newborn son’s life-and-death moment that fueled his motivation.

Carnegie Mellon alumnus Josh Gad stars in Disney’s latest box office smash, “Beauty and the Beast.” Learn more, in a previous Carnegie Mellon Today profile, how the careers of Gad and his CMU roommate Rory O'Malley came perilously close to ending before they really began.

The two men grew up in different countries,yet with much in common. Both of them, Paul Browning and Kerem Metin, even graduated from Carnegie Mellon. But they never met; they never knew the other existed until plans for a revolutionary power plant made their lives intersect in a dramatic way.

Recreational drugs and their impact on society have been grabbing headlines for decades—everything from their effect on users to whether they should be legalized. For Carnegie Mellon professor Jonathan Caulkins, drugs have been more than headlines; analyzing drug policy has been a large part of his career.