Nutrition and food policy expert Jessica Fanzo returned to Johns Hopkins in January as the inaugural James Anderson Professor of Food Policy and Climate at SAIS Europe after 2½ years as director of Columbia University's Food for Humanity Initiative. Fanzo—a JHU Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Global Food Policy and Ethics from 2015 to 2023—positions Johns Hopkins as a leading academic partner with global organizations working to evolve food systems to promote healthy, sustainable, and equitable eating.

Benjamin Wandelt, a pioneer at the intersection of cosmology, statistics, and artificial intelligence, has joined the university as the Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Cosmology and Scientific AI with appointments in the Department of Physics and Astronomy in the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences and the Department of Applied Mathematics and Statistics in the Whiting School of Engineering. Wandelt studies the connection between data and theory to transform how we extract fundamental physics from astronomical data. He previously worked at the Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris, Sorbonne University, and the Center for Computational Astrophysics at the Flatiron Institute in New York City.

Materials scientist Younan Xia joined the faculty in February as the Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology. He is at the forefront of revolutionizing the design, synthesis, and use of nanomaterials, investigating how to develop them with precisely tailored properties for medicine, electronics, and energy conversion. Xia has joint appointments in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering in the Whiting School and in the Department of Biomedical Engineering, which spans the Whiting School and the School of Medicine. He previously served on the faculty at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Artist and architect Maya Lin and historian David Nirenberg were selected as the university's first Distinguished Visitors in the Arts and Humanities, an initiative designed to elevate humanistic inquiry and creative practice across Johns Hopkins. The program invites leading artists and humanists to campus for immersive, multiday visits with faculty, students, staff, and the broader community. Lin is an internationally celebrated artist and architect whose visionary work bridges art, science, and landscape. She won a blind national competition to design the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., while still an undergraduate at Yale. A prolific author and director and Leon Levy Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, Nirenberg blends disciplines, cultures, and historical periods, connecting the intimate scale of lived experience with the sweeping arc of intellectual history.

Chemical engineer Ive Hermans joined Johns Hopkins as the Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Sustainable Chemical Transformations, with appointments in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering in the Whiting School and Department of Chemistry in the Krieger School. Hermans focuses on finding cleaner, faster industrial practices that reduce the environmental impact of manufacturing and boost the production of renewable energy. He joins Johns Hopkins from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Ten Johns Hopkins University researchers were elected to the 2025 class of fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the world's largest general scientific society. In the Section on Physics are Emanuele Berti, Collin Broholm, and David DeMille, all professors in the Department of Physics and Astronomy in the Krieger School. In the Section on Biological Sciences are Kalina Hristova, a professor of materials science and engineering in the Whiting School, and Erika Matunis, a professor of cell biology at the School of Medicine. In the Section on Medical Sciences are three professors in the School of Medicine: Jeff Coller, the Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of RNA Biology and Therapeutics, who also has an appointment in the Whiting School; Noreen Hynes, director of the Geographic Medicine Center in the Division of Infectious Diseases; and Chirag R. Parikh, a professor of medicine and director of the Division of Nephrology. In the Section on Engineering are Michael I. Miller, director of the Department of Biomedical Engineering and co-director of the Kavli Neuroscience Discovery Institute, and Rajat Mittal, a professor of mechanical engineering, both in the Whiting School.

In March, Peabody Institute distinguished visiting faculty member of jazz Darin Atwater released "Day of Affirmation (Robert F. Kennedy)," a work with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra and Wynton Marsalis, as part of the album Let Freedom Swing. The premiere was highly acclaimed by The New York Times.

Internationally recognized neuroscientist Ilya Monosov recently joined the university as the Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Curiosity and Intelligence, with appointments in the Mind/Brain Institute at the Krieger School and the Department of Neuroscience at the School of Medicine. He studies how the brain produces and regulates decision-making, learning, curiosity, intelligence, and cognitive control, as well as their breakpoints in psychiatric disorders such as obsessive-compulsive disorder and depression. Monosov previously was a member of the faculty at the Washington University School of Medicine.

Two Krieger School faculty members, Allison Pugh and Mark Christian Thompson, have been named 2026 Guggenheim Fellows, a prestigious award that supports trailblazers in any field as they pursue their scholarship or art "under the freest possible conditions." Pugh, a professor in the Department of Sociology, focuses on how people forge connections and find meaning and dignity at home and at work, and how economic trends can make that harder. Thompson is a professor in the Department of English who specializes in the inter-relatedness of African American expressive culture and European thought, with research spanning African American literature and philosophy, 20th century German philosophy, Kafka, the philosophy of race, and jazz studies.

Synthetic biologist Reza Kalhor, an associate professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering in the Whiting School and the School of Medicine, received the $250,000 President's Innovation Award, which recognizes early- to mid-career faculty at Johns Hopkins who translate breakthrough discoveries into real-world solutions. Kalhor was honored for his work developing genomic recording technologies that address a fundamental challenge in medicine: understanding how early-life biological signals influence disease decades later.

Felipe Lara, composition faculty artist at the Peabody Institute, was selected as a Fulbright U.S. Scholar for 2026–27 for Australia. Lara is known for creating unique musical contexts by reinterpreting and translating acoustical and extra-musical properties of familiar source sonorities into project-specific forces.

Four Johns Hopkins faculty members—historian Richard Kagan, neuroscientist Ulrich Mueller, political scientist and sociologist Vesla Weaver, and biophysicist Sarah Woodson—were elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. All four have appointments at the Krieger School; Mueller, the Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Neuroscience and Biology, holds a joint appointment in the School of Medicine.

Ulrich Mueller and Erika Pearce were elected to the National Academy of Sciences. Mueller's research on the mutations involved in hearing loss holds promise for medical solutions to reverse the process. Pearce, a Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Immunology and Cellular Metabolism with appointments at the schools of Medicine and Public Health, investigates how immune cell behavior is tightly controlled by metabolism.