Campus & Community

Harvard University officially launches the Harvard Innovation Lab today with a ribbon-cutting ceremony and remarks by President Drew Faust, Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino, and Business School Dean Nitin Nohria. The ceremony will be followed by an open house and self-guided tours of the Allston facility.

“The Swerve: How the World Became Modern,” Harvard Professor Stephen Greenblatt’s book describing how an ancient Roman philosophical epic helped pave the way for modern thought, has won the National Book Award for nonfiction.

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.

Harvard’s Associate University Organist and Choirmaster Christian Lane was recently named the winner of the prestigious 2011 triennial Canadian International Organ Competition.

The Institute of Politics at the Harvard Kennedy School has announced the fall visiting fellowship of Richard M. Daley, mayor of Chicago from 1989 to 2011.

The Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering hosted an inaugural biomolecular design competition on Nov. 5.

Harvard History Professor Maya Jasanoff has been named the winner of a Recognition of Excellence Award as part of the 2011 Cundill Prize in History at McGill University for her book “Liberty’s Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World.” The prize recognizes history books that have a profound literary, social, and academic impact.

Norman Ramsey, Harvard physics professor since 1947 and Nobel laureate in 1989, died at age 96 on Nov. 4, 2011.

Beginning Dec. 1 Phillips Brooks House will launch Harvard’s annual holiday gift drive — an effort to collect more than 1,500 gifts for children in Boston and Cambridge.

The Forward has recognized the efforts of Rebecca Kantar ’14 to stop the sex trade of children into the United States.

The Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at Harvard Kennedy School on Nov. 9 announced the finalists for the Innovations in American Government Award.

A memorial service for composer and conductor James Yannatos will be held on Dec. 10 in Harvard’s Sanders Theatre.

To keep the Harvard community informed about its operational response to the camp set up by protesters in the Yard, the University has created a new Web page.

The Harvard football team clinched its 14th Ivy League championship — its sixth under Tim Murphy — with a 37-20 win against Penn Saturday afternoon at Harvard Stadium.

Harvard is launching a University-wide staff survey for the first time since 2008. The brief questionnaire will gauge employees’ opinions on Harvard as a workplace.

At the Nov. 9 meeting of the Faculty Council, its members discussed the undergraduate research programs BLISS, PRIMO, and PRISE and the work of the Harvard University Committee on the Arts. They also approved updates to the Memorial Minute guidelines.

Among the top Harvard stories of 2011 was the return of the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) to campus after an absence of 40 years. In March, the University signed an agreement with the Navy. By September, offices had opened in Hilles Hall for the Naval ROTC’s Old Ironsides Battalion.

Siddhartha Yog, M.B.A. ’04, founder and managing partner of The Xander Group Inc., has given Harvard $11,000,001 to establish two professorships, fellowships and financial aid, and an intellectual entrepreneurship fund.

A message to the Harvard community from Executive Vice President Katie Lapp and Provost Alan M. Garber regarding safety measures being taken following the decision by students and other members of the Harvard community to erect tents in the Yard to demonstrate their support for the Occupy movement.

Harvard undergraduates from many faiths will gather at the Student Organization Center at Hilles on Nov. 20 to package meals for hungry Boston-area children. The interfaith community service event is part of the Values in Action program launched this fall by Harvard’s Humanist Chaplaincy.

Harvard Kennedy School students train to be leaders in the public sector — with the emphasis on public. A popular program makes the spotlight, whether in front of a camera, an audience, or a keyboard, less intimidating.

Statistics Professor Joseph Blitzstein teaches the art of teaching, while making a complex subject accessible.

Growing up in a home of 14, David Davidson was used to big Thanksgiving dinners. As the new managing director of Harvard’s Dining Services, he’s now preparing to feed hundreds.

In Cabot House, a new café quickly becomes a familiar gathering place.

In the Year Up program, high school graduates and GED recipients are provided with six months of training in professional skills and education, followed by six-month internships at their corporate partners, including Harvard.

The news of Ihor Ševčenko’s death, on the day after Christmas 2009, elicited a spontaneous international reaction that befitted his stature as a towering intellect and hugely admired scholar in the fields of Byzantine and pre-modern Slavic studies.

Nearly 150 Harvard undergraduates spent 10 weeks last summer learning the nuts and bolts of academic research — from ethnography to techniques for culturing living tissue — with faculty in three immersive programs.

After winning a share of the Ivy League championship last season and setting a program record for wins, Harvard’s men’s basketball team looks to build on its success when the season starts Nov. 11 against M.I.T.

The WATCH Portal, a new online child-care service, aims to connect Harvard parents with a vast pool of potential babysitters, from undergraduates and graduate students to the teenage children of employees.

Former Harvard student and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg stopped by his old stomping grounds to answer a few questions.