All articles


  • Health

    Probiotic hydrogels heal gut wounds that other treatments can’t reach

    Harvard researchers have developed hydrogels that can be produced from bacterial cultures and applied to intestinal surfaces for faster wound healing.

    Microscopic image of bacterial hydrogel at work.
  • Campus & Community

    Harvard recommits $20M to create local affordable housing

    Greater Boston is facing a housing crisis that is hitting lower-income and working-class residents particularly hard. To combat the crisis, Harvard University is recommitting $20 million toward local affordable housing.

  • Health

    At the corner of med and tech

    Undergraduate Michael Chen, who created an extraordinary program to help treat TB, also works with a student program to treat ordinary patients.

    Michael Chen.
  • Work & Economy

    The story of how you came to buy that car

    HBS branding expert Jill Avery on the stories that marketers create to get today’s consumers to buy

    Jill Avery holds a toy car and a bottle of Snapple.
  • Campus & Community

    Passing the barre

    A photo gallery captures the hard work leading up to Harvard Ballet Company’s recent performance.

    Feet of a dancer in the “B-Plus” position.
  • Campus & Community

    Planting herself in the right career

    Recently, Harvard Law School grad Nisha Vora released her debut cookbook, “The Vegan Instant Pot Cookbook,” which builds on her success as a chronicler of vegan recipes and photos on her popular site, Rainbow Plant Life. 

  • Science & Tech

    Predicting the strength of earthquakes

    Scientists will be able to predict earthquake magnitudes earlier thanks to new research by Marine Denolle, assistant professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Harvard.

    Professor and students looking at earthquake chart.
  • Science & Tech

    Mercury levels in fish are on the rise

    A new study concludes that while the regulation of mercury emissions have successfully reduced methylmercury levels in fish, spiking temperatures are driving those levels back up and will play a major role in the methylmercury levels of marine life in the future.

    Fish swimming in ocean
  • Nation & World

    Want to stop mass shootings?

    In the wake of mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, the Gazette spoke with David Hemenway, professor of health policy at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center, and author of the 2006 book “Private Guns, Public Health.” Hemenway has spent much of…

    Woman mourns at memorial
  • Campus & Community

    Remembering Anne Monius, 54

    Anne E. Monius, professor of South Asian religions at Harvard Divinity School, passed away Aug. 3, at the age of 54. An Oct. 11 memorial gathering will be held at Loeb House.

    Professor Anne Monius
  • Health

    What fuels prejudice?

    A postdoctoral fellow working in the lab of Psychology Professor Matt Nock,Brian O’Shea is the lead author of a study that suggests racial tension may stem not from different groups being exposed to each other, but fear of a different sort of exposure — exposure to infectious diseases. The study is described in a July…

    Brian O'Shea
  • Campus & Community

    Funding promising scientists

    Associate Professor of Physics Cora Dvorkin and Associate Professor of Computer Science Stratos Idreos will each receive at least $150,000 a year for the next five years through the Department of Energy Early Career Research Program.

    Matter in space
  • Nation & World

    Given support and a choice, families move to where children do best

    A collaboration between Harvard’s Opportunity Insights and public housing agencies in Washington state found that giving support and advice about housing options to families with housing choice vouchers led to significantly more of them moving to areas where children have higher recorded rates of upward mobility.

    Child on swing
  • Nation & World

    Digging up the past

    Harvard archaeology Professor Matthew Liebmann sat down with the Gazette to talk about his research, how his field has reckoned with the past, and how both influence his teaching.

    Matt Liebmann
  • Health

    CBD rollout shines light on Wild West of supplements

    A marijuana derivative called cannabidiol, or CBD, has begun making its way into supplements and even into foods, a use that runs afoul of an FDA designation of the compound as a prescription drug. A Harvard Medical School associate professor says CBD’s tangled legal status may provide an opportunity not only to clear up its…

    Pieter Cohen sitting in front of a laptop
  • Arts & Culture

    Research and everyday life

    Harvard students are keeping busy with summer research projects across multiple disciplines.

    student in a red dress in the library
  • Arts & Culture

    Connecting with a masterpiece

    A small installation on view through November will feature one of the museums’ recent Rembrandt acquisitions, “Four Studies of Male Heads.”

    Four Studies of Male Heads,
  • Science & Tech

    Giving teachers a DNA refresher

    Mansi Srivastava’s lab worked with middle school teachers in an education workshop on DNA and evolution.

    teachers participating in a workshop
  • Nation & World

    No visible bruises

    Rachel Louise Snyder spoke with Diane Rosenfeld, a lecturer and director of the Gender Violence Program at Harvard Law School, about her book “No Visible Bruises: What We Don’t Know About Domestic Abuse Can Kill Us.”

    broken glass
  • Science & Tech

    The Mesoamerican attraction to magnetism

    Led by Assistant Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences Roger Fu, a team of researchers has shown that the makers of ancient Mesoamerican statues found in Guatemala intentionally carved the figures to place the magnetic areas over the navel or right temple — suggesting not only that they were familiar with the concept of magnetism,…

  • Health

    How biology affects behavioral decisions

    Researchers have found that when making decisions that are important to the species’ survival, zebrafish choose to mate rather than to flee from a threat.

    Zebrafish
  • Science & Tech

    Electrifying insights into how bodies form

    A researcher is reviving the study of bioelectricity to learn how cells communicate with each other to form tissues and organs, and how harnessing those signals could one day lead to truly regenerative medicine, in which amputees could simply regrow limbs.

    Mike Levin
  • Nation & World

    Portrait of the revolutionary as a young man

    Jonathan M. Hansen’s biography of Fidel Castro’s early years aims to “get past the demonization and celebration and recover the complex person in the middle.”

    Young Fidel Castro in 1957.
  • Campus & Community

    One thing to change: Question that status quo

    I. Glenn Cohen explains the dangers of assuming that the way things are is how they should be.

    I. Glenn Cohen in his office
  • Science & Tech

    Visual forensics that can detect fake text

    Researchers at the SEAS and IBM Research developed a better way to help people detect AI-generated text.

    Typewriter with word fake typed out
  • Campus & Community

    Perfection in miniature

    Time and knowledge may be the most powerful fertilizers for the Arnold Arboretum’s Bonsai and Penjing Collection, which houses 43 miniature — and ancient — trees.

    Steve Schneider walking out of bonsai greenhouse at the Arnold Arboretum
  • Work & Economy

    Social spending on kids yields biggest bang for the buck

    Opportunity Insights, a Harvard-based institute of social scientists and policy analysts, looked at a range of social programs to determine which provided the most bang for the government buck, and spending on children came out on top — particularly in the case of disadvantaged kids.

    Illustration of financial flower being watered
  • Science & Tech

    Using body heat to speed healing

    To speeding up wound healing, researchers have developed active adhesive dressings based on heat-responsive hydrogels that are mechanically active, stretchy, tough, highly adhesive, and antimicrobial.

    Hand with tough gel adhesive bandage
  • Nation & World

    Message in the dust

    An unusual find during a Harvard Summer School program archaeological dig teaches students the fundamentals at one of Peru’s most important sites.

  • Health

    Want to quit smoking? There’s the e-cigarette

    A new study provides critical population-level evidence demonstrating that using e-cigarettes daily helps U.S. smokers to quit smoking cigarettes.

    Man smoking a cigarette