The National Science Foundation is giving a Rochester Institute of Technology professor an esteemed award to help him expand the capabilities of artificial intelligence systems using new brain-inspired methods. Christopher Kanan, an associate professor in the Chester F. Carlson Center for Imaging Science, received an NSF Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award and grant for his five-year project.

Pregnant people are often excluded from research without clear justification, even when there is little harm to the fetus in minimal‐risk research. In this issue of Ethics & Human Research, ob/gyn Amina White and colleagues survey current and former institutional review board personnel to find out their interpretations of “minimal risk” to identify factors that might influence IRB decisions to approve research with those who are pregnant. Also in this issue, an ethics review in the Covid‐19 era; designs for an observational toxicology study involving intoxicated patients; and an essay on making metrics meaningful in human research protection programs.

What The Study Did: A simulation model was used in this study to investigate associations between a federal regulation requiring graphic health warnings on cigarette packaging in the U.S. and changes in estimates of smoking-attributable deaths and life-years gained based on implementation in 2022 compared with outcomes if the policy had been implemented in 2012 as originally planned.

What The Study Did: This article provides a legal analysis of whether the First Amendment prohibits the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s requirement of new tobacco warning labels.

ASN Member Catherine Woteki, PhD joins a group of 30 leaders in science and technology appointed by the Biden administration.