Conductor John Eliot Gardiner has been appointed the Harvard Music Department’s inaugural Christoph Wolff Distinguished Visiting Scholar in the Music Department, supported by the Christoph Wolff Fund for Music. Gardiner—an English conductor, early music expert, and Bach biographer—is on campus to participate in a series of events February 2-8, including an open rehearsal with Harvard…

More than half of people living in four of the world’s poorest countries could be newly at risk for malnutrition if bees and other pollinating animals continue to decline, according to a new study by researchers from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the University of Vermont. Pollinators help improve crop yields, and…

Everyone is invited to a CS50, “Introduction to Computer Science,” AMA (Ask Me Anything) with David J. Malan, Robert Bowden, Zamyla Chan, Jason Hirschhorn, and team. The AMA will take place on Wednesday, February 18, from noon-7 p.m. (EST). http://www.reddit.com/r/iama “Basically, /r/IAmA is a place to interview people, but in a new way. ‘IAmA’ is the traditional way of beginning the…

A drug already approved for treating other diseases may be useful as a treatment for cerebral malaria, according to researchers at Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health. They discovered a novel link between food intake during the early stages of infection and the outcome of the disease, identifying two molecular pathways that could…

Some insurers offering health plans through the new federal marketplace may be using drug coverage decisions to discourage people with HIV from selecting their plans, according to a new study from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. The researchers found that these insurers are placing all HIV drugs in the highest cost-sharing category in…

Anthony Saich, Daewoo Professor of International Affairs and faculty director of the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, has been named to Foreign Policy’s Pacific Power Index, a list of 50 of people shaping the future of the U.S.-Chinese relationship. Saich is considered a top scholar in the field of U.S.-Chinese relations, having first…

Six finalists for the Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting have been announced by the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. The winner of the Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting will be announced at an awards ceremony on March 3, 2015, at the Kennedy School. The Goldsmith Prizes…

If you want to lose weight or maintain a proper weight, eat a healthy breakfast, Eric Rimm, professor of epidemiology and nutrition at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, advised in the Boston Globe January 13, 2015. Breakfast should make up 25%–30% of the average individual’s daily calorie intake, and has been shown in…

Research on extremely dangerous pathogens — on “pause” in the U.S. as scientific panels consider whether or not to continue federal funding for such work — should be stopped altogether, says Marc Lipsitch, professor of epidemiology and director of the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Research on…

For the second year in a row and the third time in four years, Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs has been ranked the best university-affiliated research center in the world. The ranking appears in the Global Go To Think Thank Index, produced annually by James McGann, director of the University…

Michael Hart may not be a household name, but in 1971, he made history when he hand-keyed the text of the Declaration of Independence into a computer mainframe and made it available for public download. The act was arguably the first documented instance of the digital preservation of cultural heritage, which has become an immense…

Although a recent article in the journal Science and a subsequent press release about the article led to a spate of headlines implying that most cancer is due to “bad luck,” David Hunter, Vincent L. Gregory Professor in Cancer Prevention, wrote in a January 15, 2015 Boston Globe op-ed that, in fact, most cancers are preventable. How…

Gökhan S. Hotamisligil, J.S. Simmons Professor of Genetics and Metabolism, chair of the Department of Genetics and Complex Diseases, and principal investigator of the Sabri Ülker Center at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, has been selected to receive a 2015 Laureate Award from the Endocrine Society. The Roy O. Greep Award for Outstanding…

Melvil Dewey may be seen as the father of the library classification system, but he certainly wasn’t the first to conceptualize such a thing; Harvard librarians beat him out by more than 200 years. Today most Harvard libraries use the Library of Congress call number system, but before the adoption of today’s widely used standards,…

Houghton Library has seen a 200% rise in demand for object-based teaching with its special collections since 2000, a trend that is mirrored to some degree across the University and educational institutions around the country. “Teachers and students are hungry for the experience of working with objects, touching them, handling them, seeing their markings,” said…

Günther Fink, a health economist with expertise in child health and development, thinks that all countries should aim to reduce neonatal mortality by 70 percent by the year 2030. In a recent paper for the Copenhagen Consensus, he argues that this goal should be part of the new UN Sustainable Development Goals, which will be set…

In the spring of 2014 HarvardX and the Harvard Alumni Association launched HarvardX for Alumni. If HarvardX is new to you, as it was to many of our alumni, it is a University-wide strategic initiative to enable our faculty to build and create online learning experiences that would also transform residential learning and enable groundbreaking research in online…

Consuming a healthy diet was associated with reduced risk for type 2 diabetes among women in all racial and ethnic groups but conferred an even greater benefit for Asian, Hispanic, and black women, according to a new study by researchers at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Brigham and Women’s Hospital. “This study…

Eating more whole grains is associated with up to 15% lower mortality—particularly cardiovascular disease (CVD)-related mortality, according to a large new long-term study from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. The study also found that bran, a component of whole grain foods, was associated with similar beneficial effects. Bran intake was linked with up to 6% lower overall…

Between 1,500 and 2,100 U.S. Air Force reservists who trained and worked on C-123 cargo planes that were used during the Vietnam War to spread the toxic defoliant Agent Orange may have been exposed to potentially dangerous levels of the carcinogenic chemical, according to a new Institute of Medicine (IOM) report. The IOM’s findings may…

This spring, alumni can vote for a new group of Harvard Overseers and Harvard Alumni Association (HAA) elected directors. Ballots will be mailed no later than April 1 and must be received in Cambridge by noon on May 22 to be counted. Results of the election will be announced at HAA’s annual meeting on May…

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the 2015 Crafoord Prize in Biosciences to Richard Lewontin, professor of biology, emeritus, and Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology in the Museum of Comparative Zoology, Emeritus. The award was given for his pioneering analysis and fundamental contributions to the understanding of genetic polymorphism. Lewontin shares the prize with Tomoko Ohta…

Michael Mitzenmacher and Stuart Shieber, faculty members at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), are among 47 leading computer scientists named 2014 fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). The 2014 ACM fellows have been selected by their peers on the basis of their contributions to key computing fields, including database…

The Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School is pleased to announce the appointment of their spring 2015 fellows. “The line-up of Shorenstein Fellows for the spring semester is a group of all-stars – every one of them,” said Alex S. Jones, the center’s director. Shorenstein Center Fellows spend the…

The Gary Michelson Found Animals Foundation has awarded Harvard bioengineer David Mooney a three-year grant totaling more than $700,000 to pursue development of a vaccine technology that would provide a nonsurgical method for spaying and neutering dogs and cats. Mooney is the Robert P. Pinkas Family Professor of Bioengineering at the Harvard School of Engineering…

In the largest and most comprehensive study of heat-related illness to date, Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) researchers have identified a handful of potentially serious disorders—including fluid and electrolyte disorders, renal failure, urinary tract infections, sepsis, and heat stroke—that put older Americans at significantly increased risk of winding up in the hospital during periods…

Richard McCullough, Harvard’s vice provost for research and a professor of materials science and engineering in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), has been named a fellow of the National Academy of Inventors, along with two of his Harvard colleagues. David A. Evans, a research professor and former chairman of the University’s Department…

Women with post-traumatic stress disorder are nearly twice as likely to develop type 2 diabetes compared with women who don’t have PTSD, according to researchers at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University. The longitudinal cohort study provides the strongest evidence to date of a causal…

Women exposed to high levels of fine particulate matter specifically during pregnancy—particularly during the third trimester—may face up to twice the risk of having a child with autism than mothers living in areas with low particulate matter, according to a new study from Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH). The greater the exposure, the greater…

Radhika Nagpal, the Harvard computer scientist whose self-organizing swarm robotics are today’s state of the art in collective artificial intelligence, has been named among Nature’s 10, the ten scientists and engineers who “made a difference” in 2014. Nagpal is the Fred Kavli Professor of Computer Science at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences…