Tag: Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences

  • Nation & World

    Self-assembly as a guide

    Vinothan Manoharan, an assistant professor of chemical engineering and physics at the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, wants to make self-assembly — when particles interact with one another and spontaneously arrange themselves into organized structures — happen in the laboratory to treat life-threatening diseases or manufacture useful objects.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Size matters in drug delivery

    A new study led by researchers at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and Massachusetts General Hospital has found that normalizing blood vessels within tumors, which improves the delivery of standard chemotherapy drugs, can actually block the delivery of larger nanotherapy molecules.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Nurturing the seeds of innovation

    The bond between Harvard and Silicon Valley is a close one. The region is home to a powerful network of alumni willing to offer mentorship to students and recent graduates who are dreaming big. Taking advantage of that network, SEAS and HBS recently came together to organize the trip to Palo Alto.

    6 minutes
  • Nation & World

    A peek into Harvard classrooms

    The Faculty of Arts and Sciences is launching a new video series, called “Harvard’s Great Teachers,” which will highlight Harvard’s world-class faculty and offer a sampling of the exciting and innovative teaching experienced by Harvard students.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Buckling under pressure

    Inspired by a spherical toy that expands and collapses, researchers at Harvard and MIT have created a new type of engineered capsule, called a “buckliball,” that exploits the phenomenon of buckling. The buckliball is the first morphable structure to incorporate buckling as a desirable engineering design element.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Wood to receive Alan T. Waterman Award

    Harvard engineer Robert J. Wood has been named one of two recipients of the Alan T. Waterman Award from the National Science Foundation (NSF).

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    ‘Pop!’ goes the robot

    A production method inspired by children’s pop-up books enables rapid fabrication of tiny, complex devices. Devised by engineers at Harvard, the ingenious layering and folding process will enable the creation of a broad range of electromechanical devices.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Designing in the human context

    For a week in January, 40 students from a variety of backgrounds — comparative literature to computer science — engaged in a “design thinking” workshop led by IDEO, an internationally renowned design consulting firm. Throughout, the human element was key — How do people actually use a product? — as was a certain amount of…

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Physics at 2,500 feet

    In 1934, a group of enterprising young Turks pooled their money and bought construction plans for a glider. Pioneers in the infancy of aviation, they built it by hand, out of wood and fabric, and when the time came for its maiden flight, they drew straws.

    6 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Early-stage venture fund launches

    Today, the Experiment Fund, a new seed-stage investment fund, opens its doors with backing from storied venture capital firm New Enterprise Associates (NEA). Designed specifically to support student start-ups and nurture novel technologies and platforms created in Cambridge (or by innovators educated in Cambridge), the Experiment Fund will eventually include additional strategic angel investors and…

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Dealing with data

    A computer program developed by brothers David and Yakir Reshef, together with Professors Michael Mitzenmacher and Pardis Sabeti, enables researchers to scour massive data sets for meaningful relationships that might otherwise have been missed.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Creative pursuits

    Projects on display at the CS 50 Fair ranged from a tool that limits procrastination, to a website that displays longitudinal market capitalization data, to an application that helps with music composition.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    To stop and say thanks

    A series of open houses will give staff in Harvard’s Central Administration, Business School, Law School, School of Public Health, Kennedy School of Government, School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, and Graduate School of Design the chance to thank their colleagues with personal notes and share messages of appreciation.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Tailored to fit

    The dramatic diversity of columbine flowers can be explained by a simple change in cell shape. To match the pollinators’ probing tongues, the flowers’ cells in floral spurs elongate, driving rapid speciation.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    SEAS brings good things to light

    By nestling quantum dots in an insulating egg-crate structure, researchers at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences have demonstrated a robust new architecture for quantum-dot light-emitting devices (QD-LEDs).

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Crowdsourcing nutrition in a snap

    Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences’ PlateMate project proves that a well-managed crowd can play the role of a trained nutritionist.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    A better view of heart disease

    In clinical settings, simple 2-D displays of human arteries are more effective than traditional 3-D rainbow models, according to Harvard researchers.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Fewer drops to drink

    With water scarcity a growing worldwide worry, Harvard programs, faculty, staff, and students are exploring ways to protect precious supplies, both globally and on campus.

    10 minutes
  • Nation & World

    You’re not so anonymous

    Prescription data stripped of identify information seems not so anonymous after all. Researcher Latanya Sweeney aims to make such personal data more secure and to provide recourse for people who are harmed by privacy breaches.

    8 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Next big thing: Improved tiny tweezers

    Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences have developed a new device that creates strong forces more efficiently than traditional optical tweezers and eliminates a problem that caused earlier setups to overheat.

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    What’s behind the predictably loopy gut

    Between conception and birth, the human gut grows more than two meters long, looping and coiling within the tiny abdomen. Within a given species, the developing vertebrate gut always loops into the same formation — however, until now, it has not been clear why.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    What’s in a liquid

    New 3-D nanostructured chip identifies unknown liquids instantly, offering a litmus test for surface tension.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Transforming from within

    Ela Bhatt, a lead women’s organizer in India, spoke about social change and personal transformation on Radcliffe Day.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Deep knowledge

    For their capstone project in the course ES 96: “Engineering Design Seminar,” 16 SEAS students conducted an analysis of the geothermal heating and cooling system that serves Radcliffe’s Byerly Hall.

    6 minutes
  • Nation & World

    National Academy of Engineering elects Narayanamurti

    Venkatesh (Venky) Narayanamurti, Benjamin Peirce Professor of Technology and Public Policy at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, has been elected as a foreign secretary of the National Academy of Engineering.

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    Young pioneers of science

    Four hundred eighth-grade students from the Cambridge public schools visited campus to discuss their science experiments with the Harvard community.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Targeting leftover land mines

    Computer scientists at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences have designed an elegant system that assists humanitarian mine hunters by augmenting the information from their metal detectors.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Honors among women

    Tina Tchen ’78, chief of staff to first lady Michelle Obama, encouraged young women to be part of a “vanguard of change,” and Harvard College senior Madeleine Ballard touted everyday leadership during the 14th Annual Women’s Leadership Awards.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Ethics and genetics in the digital age

    Two panel discussions, organized by the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, examined the “promise and perils” of creating digital repositories of genetic records and considered the policy implications of an individual’s right to access, control, and interpret his or her own genetic data.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    I Am My Filter and more

    Students presented projects Wednesday (April 13) from the Idea Translation Lab, which pushes students to turn ideas into reality and sets them up to take the next steps in project development.

    3 minutes