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Tuesday March 3, 2020 vol. CXLIV no. 22
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BEYOND THE BUBBLE
Coronavirus pandemic leaves students scattered, sidelined By Albert Jiang Staff Writer
COURTESY OF JON ORT / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN
The Louis A. Simpson Building, which houses the Davis International Center. STUDENT LIFE
“Justice delayed
As coronavirus (COVID-19) swept across northern Italy last week, Julius Foo ’21, a Woodrow Wilson School concentrator studying abroad at Bocconi University in Milan, found himself in the crosshairs of a pandemic. His primary concern was not the spread of coronavirus itself, but rather being stranded in Italy. Ticket prices were skyrocketing. Flights began to sell out. “Panic was spreading just as quickly as the virus across the city,” Foo said. Foo, along with other students studying abroad at Bocconi University, voluntarily fled the country due to the escalating severity of the coronavirus. Though the University asked students to remain in Milan in a Feb. 25 email, the University later updated their guidelines. By then, many students had already dispersed across Europe. About a week ago, on Saturday, Feb. 22, Bocconi University notified the students that all
classes in northern Italy universities were to be canceled until Friday, Feb. 28. The University reached out to students about the rapidly developing situation in Italy on Feb. 25. On Saturday, Feb. 29, an updated announcement extended the cancelation until Mar. 7. Coronavirus has now impacted several international programs such as South Korea study abroad, Princeton in Beijing, the Novogratz Bridge Year China program, and the International Internship Program (IIP). In light of updated Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) travel guidelines and U.S. Department of State (USDOS) advisories, the University has prohibited all sponsored travel to CDC Warning Level 3 countries, which now include China, South Korea, Italy, and Iran. In addition, recommendations were issued against University-sponsored travel during fall semester 2020 and Wintersession. See COVID-19 page 2
ON CAMPUS
is justice denied”: Students protest violence in India Contributing Writer
On Monday, March 2, around 40 students, University faculty, and Princeton community members gathered on Frist Campus Center’s North Lawn to protest against continued violence in New Delhi, India. Last December, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi enacted a new Citizenship Amendment Bill (CAB) offering citizenship to Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Christians, and Parsis from India’s neighboring countries, specifically Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan. However, this act specifically excludes Muslims, who comprise a majority of the nation’s non-Hindu population. Since the bill’s passage, violence has erupted in India. In the past week, the capital has been hit by riots against Muslim communities which have resulted in over 40 deaths and close to 300 people injured. The government’s exclusion of Muslims is rooted in the nationalist beliefs of the Hindutva movement, explained Assistant Professor of History Divya Cherian in an address to the protesters. “Hindutva is a political philosophy that excludes Muslims & Christians from the Indian nation. It does not translate simply to Hinduness — even though that is a semantic slide that its proponents like to encourage,” Cherian said.
Along with Cherian, Dayton-Stockton Professor of History and Acting Director of the Program in South Asian Studies Gyan Prakash and Emma Thompson GS also gave speeches. Members of the South Asian Progressive Alliance provided a historical context and urged the Princeton community to stay engaged with the matter. Speakers reiterated that their protest was in no way one against Hinduism. On the contrary, they said that they were trying to defend the principles of inclusivity, equality, and democracy upon which the religion is founded. They criticized Hindutva and its targeting of Muslims, claiming that it undermines Hinduism’s most fundamental principles of equal citizenship and nondiscrimination. “This is a fight for all those who stand for pluralism, democracy, […] and that Muslim lives matter,” said Cherian in her address. Prakash took the opportunity to further discuss the Hindutva violence and its relation to Indian democracy. He described the violence of Hindutva as “attack on civic nationalism” and “a diabolical effort to undermine Indian democracy.” One graduate student noted that the recent events have important implications for not only South Asians but also Princeton community members See JUSTICE page 2
COURTESY OF ROHAN SHAH ’20
The Alimtas team with Dr. John Diekman ’65 after pitching to 5AM Ventures in San Francisco, CA.
Student entrepreneurs pitch new U. technology in Silicon Valley By Katie Tam Senior Writer
In 1946, University chemistry professor Edward C. Taylor, then a graduate student at Cornell University, came across an interesting compound whose structure resembled that of pigments found in butterfly wings. The compound, later discovered to be folic acid, was a vitamin essential to the growth of cells — including cancer cells. Taylor thought that targeting folic acid might be an effective way to arrest the growth of tumors. He synthesized a potential therapeutic but didn’t have the resources he needed to rigorously test the product. In the early 1980s, Taylor turned to Eli Lilly, the biopharmaceutical firm for which he consulted, for help. Over the next few years, Taylor collaborated with Eli Lilly to test hundreds of candidate drugs, leading to the breakthrough development of Alimta, now widely used to treat lung cancer and mesothelioma. “Without this kind of collabo-
ration, Alimta would still be a curious compound sitting on a shelf in my lab,” Taylor said in an interview before his death in 2017. The story of Alimta was an inspiration for Rohan Shah ’20, a founder of Alimtas Bioventures, a subteam of the Princeton Entrepreneurship Club focusing on biotechnology and life sciences entrepreneurship. The group partners with the University’s existing Office of Technology Licensing (OTL) to identify promising new technologies coming out of the University’s research labs and develop plans to get them from “bench to bedside,” explained Shah. Alimtas was something of a compromise. Shah and cofounders Niko Fotopoulos ’21 and Avinash Boppana ’21 knew they couldn’t start a biotech company out of their own dorms. At the same time, they didn’t just want to invite speakers and host conferences. They wanted students to get handson experience. “We found this middle ground where we could help
In Opinion
Today on Campus
Contributing columnist Ollie Thakar explains why he prefers wooden pencils to mechanical ones.
1:30 p.m.: Making Maps and Presentations using ArcGIS Pro
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the University build companies around promising, impactful, life science discoveries,” Shah said. Alimtas selects technologies discovered by researchers at the University, develops business plans through “due diligence,” and then pitches these plans to venture capital investors and biotech firms. “It’s like you are test-driving a professor’s business,” Shah explained. The feedback Alimtas gets from investors helps refine methodologies down the road. According to Shah, this partnership between students and professors has significant benefits for both parties. “We are helping faculty, and in the process, we are learning a lot, and they are benefitting as well,” Shah said. “It’s a symbiotic relationship that I think has produced a lot of value both for the students and for the University.” The team’s most recent project is on a hepatitis B drug discovery platform developed by See SILICON page 3
WEATHER
By Christiane Konstantopoulos
HIGH
58˚
LOW
43˚
Rain chance of rain:
80 percent