On Sept. 23, the United Nations hosted the first-ever Food Systems Summit, which asked world leaders to re-assert their responsibility and commitment to making our food system sustainable. The U.N. outlined 17 Sustainable Development Goals in pursuit of this work, which coalesce in World Food Day, a celebration of the founding of the United Nations…

Seven scientists and engineers are joining the Harvard Computer Science faculty, bringing expertise in a range of areas including emerging frontiers of artificial intelligence, machine learning, quantum engineering and data science. The additions will strengthen and diversify research, teaching, and scholarship in Harvard’s highly interdisciplinary program. The new faculty will have appointments in the Harvard…

Leaders from the Education Redesign Lab (EdRedesign) at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and the William Julius Wilson Institute at Harlem Children’s Zone (HCZ) visited Poughkeepsie, NY and the Dutchess County region to learn more about their efforts to create cradle-to-career systems of opportunity for children, youth, and families. Paul Reville, faculty director of…

Transformative and disability justice activist Mia Mingus is being honored by Phillips Brooks House Association (PBHA) on Friday, Oct. 15 with the 15th annual Robert Coles “Call of Service” Award, named for Robert Coles ’50, a civil rights activist, Pulitzer Prize winner, and retired Harvard professor. Mingus’ work on disability justice, ableism, and access has elevated…

The Office of the Vice Provost for Research is pleased to announce the fourth cohort of Aramont Fellows for Emerging Science Research. Aramont Fellowships are awarded to exceptional early-career faculty and postdoctoral scholars, nominated by the deans of their respective schools across Harvard. Established in 2018 with a gift from the Aramont Charitable Foundation, the…

LabXchange is partnering with scholars from several historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) to develop new digital learning resources on antiracism in education, science, and public health. The new content, which will be freely available and translated into Spanish, is being funded by a $1.2 million grant from the Amgen Foundation to the LabXchange initiative.…

Harvard emeritus professor Benedict Gross was awarded this year’s Fudan-Zhongzhi Science Award by Fudan University and Zhongzhi Enterprise Group, which was founded jointly in 2015. It recognizes scientists who have made fundamental and groundbreaking achievements in physics, mathematics, and biomedicine. Gross, the George Vasmer Leverett Professor of Mathematics and former dean of Harvard College, shares…

The Harvard Alumni Association (HAA) has announced the six recipients of the 2021 HAA Awards: James E. Bowers, J.D. ’70, Harold J. “Hal” Burstein ’86, M.D. ’90, A.M. ’94, Ph.D. ’94, Gustavo A. Herrero, M.B.A. ’76, Jay G. Hooper ’84, Susan Morris Novick ’85, and Deborah A. “Debby” Smullyan ’72. Since 1990, the annual HAA…

Harvard Business School’s Rock Center for Entrepreneurship has announced 35 teams for the 2021-2022 Rock Accelerator. Launched in 2010, the HBS Rock Accelerator is a program designed for second year Harvard Business School students who are founders of early-stage startups. The focus is on building and validating a “minimum viable product (MVP)” that the teams can bring to…

Over the course of its 133-year history, the prestigious Gifford Lectures delivered annually in Scotland have developed deep ties to Harvard University whose faculty — including Professors Diana Eck, William James, and Steven Pinker — have broken new ground in the studies of religion, science, and philosophy. This year, Harvard Divinity School Dean David N. Hempton will further cement…

The Harvard Alumni Association (HAA) has named Fariba Mahmud ’22 of Winthrop House and Courtney Rabb ’22 of Eliot House this year’s David and Mimi Aloian Memorial Scholars. Each year the Aloian Memorial Scholarship is given to two juniors who demonstrate thoughtful leadership and who improve the quality of life in Harvard Houses. The award…

Harvard Radcliffe Institute has selected a new cohort of Exploratory Seminar programs for the academic year. Representing numerous academic disciplines and applying bold cross-disciplinary perspectives, faculty applicants hold appointments in nine Harvard schools. The awardees — all Harvard faculty members or Harvard Radcliffe Institute Fellows — will gather in intensive seminar settings over the course…

The Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) announced today a historic expansion of its Asian American studies program, enabled by a generous community of alumni who together provided more than $45 million in foundational support. The expanded program is part of the broader academic vision of Claudine Gay, Edgerley Family Dean of the Faculty of…

Harvard professor Susan A. Murphy was awarded this year’s Van Wijngaarden Award by the Centrum Wiskunde and Informatica. The prize is named after former Centrum Wiskunde and Informatica director Adriaan van Wijngaarden, who was a prominent Dutch mathematician and computer scientist. He helped introduce the computer in the Netherlands. The prize is awarded every five…

Four sculptures have been installed on Harvard Business School’s (HBS) campus in Boston as part of its ongoing contemporary sculpture program, which began in April 2016. A sculpture by Yinka Shonibare is a new addition to the C. Ludens Ringnes Sculpture Collection, a sculpture by Melvin Edwards, and two works by Thaddeus Mosley are on…

John Ruggie, the Berthold Beitz Research Professor in Human Rights and International Affairs at Harvard Kennedy School and the architect of an authoritative global standard on business and human rights, passed away on Sept. 16. He was 76. A political scientist, Ruggie’s academic work in the field of international relations focused on the impact of…

Military service members, now part of the HKS community, reflect on what the recent withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan means to them. In an emotional program, the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum at the Institute of Politics (IOP) gave the stage to U.S. military personnel who served in Afghanistan and are members of the…

Mather House faculty deans, house administrator, facilities staff, wellness tutors, and Harvard’s mindfulness coordinator recently announced the official opening of the Wellness Corner. Over the summer, the Mather House team renovated and redesigned two adjacent rooms in the House that now constitute the new space. It includes a tranquility room and an aerobics room equipped with…

The Harvard Art Museums have announced a new public safety policy, to go into effect Sept. 28, in a commitment to keep the museums safe for all visitors and staff. The policy requires all visitors to provide proof of vaccination or documentation of a negative COVID-19 test upon entrance to all museums facilities. It applies…

Harvard Business School (HBS) has announced the 2021 recipients of its Horace W. Goldsmith Fellowships. Established in 1988 by the Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation and Richard L. Menschel (M.B.A. ’59), a former director of the Foundation and a limited partner at Goldman Sachs, to encourage students from the nonprofit and public sector to attend HBS,…

The Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation of Harvard Law School (CHLPI) recently reported major wins in the courts for the rights of transgender and gender nonconforming individuals. The first win came from Kadel v. North Carolina State Health Plan for Teachers & State Employees, a lawsuit brought by a small group of transgender…

The Harvard-Yenching Institute (HYI) is pleased to welcome more than 40 Visiting Scholars and Visiting Fellows this fall. Affiliates will spend the 2021-22 academic year in residence at HYI. Established in 1928, the Harvard-Yenching Institute is an independent foundation dedicated to advancing higher education in Asia in the humanities and social sciences, with special attention to…

In 2019, astronomers spotted something incredible in our backyard: a rogue comet from another star system. Named Borisov, the icy snowball traveled 110,000 miles per hour and marked the first and only interstellar comet ever detected by humans. But what if these interstellar visitors — comets, meteors, asteroids and other debris from beyond our solar…

In a recent webinar presented by the Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, Matthew Baum, the Marvin Kalb Professor of Global Communications, and a team of principal investigators with the COVID States Project explained the results of their latest report. A series of 19 surveys conducted from April 2020 to July…

The Venice Architecture Biennale has returned with its 17th installation, “How Will We Live Together?”, featuring 114 participants representing 46 countries and a variety of perspectives on the titular question from curator Hashim Sarkis — a prompt that he had established before the various events that marked 2020. This year’s show commenced with an inaugural…

To achieve the World Health Organization’s goal of helping provide “the highest attainable standard of health” for individuals, it’s time to rethink the divisions between public health and clinical medicine, especially preventive medicine, according to an Aug. 5, 2021, Perspective piece in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) The article, authored by David Hunter,…

The COVID-19 pandemic increased negative emotions across the world. People reported poor mental health and behavior problems including sleeping less, consuming more drugs and alcohol, struggling to concentrate, and fighting more with loved ones. Over the past year, researchers from scores of countries joined together to study whether interventions to mitigate negative emotions and increase…

Knowing the current and previous smoking habits of patients with metastatic non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) could allow clinicians to make better informed treatment decisions, according to new research led by Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. The study looked at data from 644 NSCLC patients, including 375 who were former smokers, 164 who…