What began as a wartime necessity evolved into a profit-driven industry built on super-sized portions, synthetic additives, and relentless marketing. Today, these hyper-engineered products comprise more than 73 percent of the U.S. food supply, according to Northeastern University’s Network Science Institute.

The long list of speakers included Mark Gottlieb, executive director of Northeastern University School of Law’s Public Health Advocacy Institute, which has worked extensively on tobacco policy and clinical addiction, as well as Harvard doctors and professors, select board members and Reading residents. 

“To be effective, the global plastics treaty must address the real world architecture of the plastics economy, where trade is the connective tissue,” said Professor Maria Ivanova, Northeastern University. 

Malcolm F. Purinton, an assistant teaching professor at Northeastern University who studies the history of beer and alcohol, is skeptical.

Secondly, experiential learning can help individuals bolster their “human literacy,” or ability to understand context and culture and communicate nonverbally, Northeastern University President Joseph Auon said.

Meanwhile, Northeastern University has long recognized that academic fit includes professional fit. Its renowned co-op program integrates paid, full-time work placements with classroom learning, producing graduates who are more likely to land jobs quickly—and often with the very companies where they completed co-ops.

A Northeastern law professor who helped take on Big Tobacco, Richard Daynard, said he sees parallels in how cigarettes and online betting products are sold.

Phil Brown, a Northeastern University sociology professor and a co-director of the PFAS Project Lab, said the medical community “doesn’t know a lot about occupational and environmental health,” adding that “it’s a very minimal part of the medical school curriculum” and continuing education.

Electrochemical reduction of CO2 to make long-chain hydrocarbons is challenging, according to Magda H. Barecka, an expert in carbon conversion and electrochemistry at Northeastern University in Boston.

AI researcher David Bau, director of Northeastern University’s National Deep Inference Fabric, a project that aims to help researchers understand how large language models work, said these findings show how AI models could be vulnerable to data poisoning, allowing bad actors to more easily insert malicious traits into the models that they’re training.

As Barbara Larson, professor of Management at Northeastern University, points out , “The smartest way to take advantage of artificial intelligence is to limit its role to that of an enthusiastic but somewhat naive assistant .”

Cansu Canca, the director of responsible A.I. practice at Northeastern University in Boston, said there would be a risk to individual agency and privacy by normalizing the technology.