Contrary to conventional wisdom, growing up with a working mother is unlikely to harm children socially and economically when they become adults, new research by a Harvard Business School professor concludes. The “working mother effect” actually improves future prospects, especially for adult daughters of mothers who worked outside the home before their daughters were 14…

In an effort to further the advancement of women leaders worldwide, Harvard Business School (HBS) has launched the Gender Initiative to support research, teaching, and knowledge dissemination that promotes gender equity in business and society. The new initiative will be headed by Robin Ely, the School’s Diane Doerge Wilson Professor of Business Administration and senior…

Ten faculty members have been awarded 2015 Walter Channing Cabot Fellowships for their outstanding publications. The 2015 honorees: Sven Beckert, Laird Bell Professor of History, “Empire of Cotton: A Global History” (Alfred A. Knopf, 2014) Virginie Greene, professor of Romance languages and literatures, “Logical Fictions in Medieval Literature and Philosophy” (Cambridge University Press, 2014) Mary…

When a hospital closes, local residents may worry about who will care for them when they are sick or that more people will die, but a Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health study published May 4, 2015 in Health Affairs found such concerns may be unfounded. “It’s possible that we didn’t see any change…

Overtesting, overdiagnosis, and overtreatment in medical care in the U.S. is widespread, with one recent study suggesting that 30% of care—amounting to roughly $750 billion a year—is wasteful. But there are signs that the Affordable Care Act, which provides financial incentives for doctors to provide better quality care at lower cost, is prompting increasing numbers of…

For many years, experts seeking to quantify the “global burden of disease”—delineating what ails people, when, and where—failed to account for how lack of access to surgery fits into the picture. But in the April 2015 issue of Harvard Public Health Review (HPHR), Paul Farmer wrote that not getting surgery when it’s needed for ailments…

Whether or not a hospital has electronic health records (EHRs) does not mean that stroke patients will have better clinical outcomes or higher quality of care, according to a study led by a Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health researcher and published in the May 2015 Journal of the American College of Cardiology. “We…

Doctors responding to an American College of Emergency Physicians poll released May 4, 2015 report more patients are seeking emergency room treatment since the Affordable Care Act (ACA) went into effect in 2014. One of the ACA selling points was to reduce ER trips, costs, and wait times by directing patients to primary care doctors, who…

The Nieman Foundation for Journalism, training newsroom leaders and fostering journalistic innovation for 78 years, has selected 24 journalists as members of the 2016 class of Nieman Fellows. The group includes reporters, editors, columnists, a political cartoonist, a network producer, bureau chiefs, photographers, digital strategists and news executives who work around the globe in all…

The Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) has appointed Anita Berrizbeitia, M.L.A. ’87, as chair of the Department of Landscape Architecture as of July 1, 2015. Berrizbeitia is currently professor of landscape architecture and director of the Master in Landscape Architecture degree programs at the GSD. Berrizbeitia is a landscape architect specializing in theory and…

Henry Li ’16 was presented with the Joseph L. Barrett Award on May 6, by the Bureau of Study Counsel (BSC). The award commemorates Joseph L. Barrett ’73, by honoring exceptional students who generously give their time to support their peers in developing more meaningful college experiences. Li was honored for developing and coordinating three…

Lydia Gaby, a senior at Harvard College, and Nathanial Erb-Satullo, a Ph.D. candidate in anthropology at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, were recently awarded the Howard T. Fisher Prizes for Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Excellence. Gaby’s prize-winning entry (undergraduate category), titled “Constructing a Storm Surge Risk Profile: Lower East Side and Chinatown,…

Dean James Ryan and the Harvard Graduate School of Education Speakers Committee announced today that Roberto Rodriguez, Ed.M.’98, who serves on the White House Domestic Policy Council as deputy assistant to President Obama for education, will address graduates and their families at the 2015 Convocation ceremony on May 27. “I am delighted that Roberto Rodriguez,…

Typically, when hiring and building workplace teams, leaders prefer people who look like them, but that doesn’t get us innovation, said Amy C. Edmondson, Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management, HBS, at a recent Faculty of Arts And Sciences Diversity Dialogue. “A strong leader’s job is to bring different people together and coordinate” them to…

Within hours of April 25’s earthquake in Nepal, students at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design (GSD) had initiated support and advocacy projects in GSD’s Gund Hall and began collaborating with students and faculty from within the university and beyond. GSD Dave Hampton and Shanika Hettige oversaw the setup of a station in Gund’s lobby for…

The ropes proved to be a challenge. Last week, at the Harvard Innovation Lab (i-lab), Gerardo Ochoa wrapped short white ropes with loops at each end around the wrists of two people, handcuff style, and then looped the ropes so they crossed. The idea, said Songyu Zhu, was for the two people to work together…

Dean James Ryan has announced the launch of the Education Redesign Lab — a new initiative based at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and led by Professor Paul Reville — focused on building a new education “engine” for 21st-century success in schools. A $1 million gift from the Linda Hammett Ory and Andrew Ory…

The HDS Summer Language Program is an eight-week, intensive program in language study designed specifically for the curriculum in theological and religious studies and taught with a focus on translation and reading comprehension in a foreign language. With the deadline for applications looming (May 8), HDS communications asked SLP Director Karin Grundler-Whitacre about an exciting new offering this…

Jane Kamensky will be joining the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study as the new Carl and Lily Pforzheimer Foundation Director of the Schlesinger Library for the History of Women in America. In addition to her institute appointment, she will be a professor in the History Department at Harvard University. Prior to coming to Radcliffe, Kamensky…

The Project on Public Narrative at Harvard University will hold a free community-wide event on gender and Wall Street reform, featuring a roundtable-style discussion with Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, former SEC Chairperson Mary Schapiro, and former FDIC Chairperson Sheila Bair. The event takes place five years after the trio was featured on the cover of…

Harvard University Graduate School of Design has announced Erik L’Heureux, an American architect based in Singapore, as the winner of the GSD’s 2015 Wheelwright Prize, a $100,000 traveling fellowship aimed at fostering investigative approaches to contemporary design. L’Heureux, AIA, LEED AP BD+C, is currently an assistant professor at the National University of Singapore and leads…

Nikolai Vasenin, a Russian soldier who fought with the French Resistance, was born in December 1919 and died in December 2014. His story — courage, sacrifice, and love — is well worth remembering but has not been well publicized until recently. Two Russian filmmakers, Andrey Grigoriev and Pavel Sablin, discovered the story. Inspired, they filmed…

Food production and emergency phone calls may look very different in the near future thanks to the student grand prize winners announced at the 2015 Harvard Business School New Venture Competition (NVC) Finale, which took place April 22 before an enthusiastic audience in Burden Auditorium on the HBS campus. RAPIDSOS plans to use technology to…

Perma.cc, a project that takes on the problem of “link rot” or broken or defunct links in scholarship, has won the prestigious Webby Award for best law site of 2015. Developed by the Harvard Library Innovation Lab, Perma.cc is a Web archiving service that helps authors and publishers create permanent links to their online sources,…

A portrait of Treasurer of the United States Rosie Rios ’87 was unveiled during a special ceremony in Winthrop House, where Rios lived as an undergraduate. It is the first portrait of a Latina to hang on a wall in Harvard College, according to S. Allen Counter, director of the Harvard Foundation for Intercultural and…

On April 11, Harvard College hosted the inaugural Diversity, (In)Equity, and Social Justice Undergraduate Research Conference to 100+ attendees. The purpose of the conference was to bridge both academic and cocurricular learning by giving students a space to have critical conversations about research with their peers at Harvard and beyond. The conference  recognized research on…

Bruce Spiegelman, director of the Center for Energy Metabolism and Chronic Disease at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and professor of cell biology and medicine at Harvard Medical School, has received Belgium’s most important international scientific prize for his contributions to understanding the mechanisms of metabolic disorders. Queen Mathilde of Belgium presented Spiegelman with the 2015 Health…

Nancy Krieger, professor of social epidemiology at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, was named recipient of an American Cancer Society Clinical Research Professor Award on April 2, 2015. It is one of the most prestigious awards offered by the organization. The Clinical Research Professor Award is for mid-career investigators who have made seminal contributions to cancer…

Doctors across the country are taking action against ‘gag laws’ that would prevent then from asking patients if they have guns in their homes. One such law, passed in Florida in 2011, is currently being fought in the courts by a coalition of physicians. Similar laws are pending in 12 other states. In a March…

Laurence Ralph, assistant professor of African and African American Studies and assistant professor of anthropology at Harvard College, is one of 32 inaugural Andrew Carnegie Fellows, the  Carnegie Corporation of New York announced on April 22. Recipients of the new annual fellowship supporting scholars in the social sciences and humanities will receive up to $200,000…