Peter Shaw Ashton, the Charles Bullard Professor of Forestry Emeritus and former director of the Arnold Arboretum, has won the prestigious Japan Prize for his “significant contributions towards solving the conflict between human beings and the tropical forest ecosystem.”
In recent years, Harvard scholars have worked energetically and with great success to create bridges between departments and between faculties, the better to share ideas and foster interdisciplinary approaches to tough, complex issues.
In its final year, the Early Action program saw about the same number of applicants and admitted students as in each of the previous three years. A total of 4,008 students applied this year compared with 3,869, 4,214, and 3,889 in the preceding three years. This year 861 students were admitted compared with 813, 869, and 902 for the past three classes.
Following are some of the incidents reported to the Harvard University Police Department for the week ending Jan. 29. The official log is located at 1033 Massachusetts Ave., sixth floor, and is available online at http://www.hupd.harvard.edu/.
The Bureau of Study Counsel (BSC) will be offering morning and afternoon sessions of its spring-term “Reading and Study Strategy” course beginning Feb. 12.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) recently announced its funding of a new multi-institution research initiative in nano- and micro-electro-mechanical systems (NEMS/MEMS) in affiliation with Harvard’s programs in engineering and applied sciences. The three-year program has more than $2 million in total funding from DARPA and industry partners.
The Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America invites Harvard undergraduates to make use of the library’s collections with competitive awards (ranging from $100 to $2,500) for relevant research projects.
The Kokkalis Program on Southeastern and East-Central Europe, Kennedy School of Government, will hold its ninth annual graduate student workshop on Southeastern Europe on Friday (Feb. 2) from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. at Harvard’s Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies.
William Arkin will join the Kennedy School of Government’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy as a policy fellow for the spring semester, it was announced in January.
Owen Gingerich, professor of astronomy and of the history of science emeritus, has been awarded the 2006 Janssen Prize by the Société Astronomique de France (French Astronomical Society).
Rye Barcott, a student at the John F. Kennedy School of Government and founder of a nonprofit that works to improve the quality of life in one of Africa’s largest slums, has been named a 2006 “Person of the Year” by ABC News.
The American Mathematical Society (AMS) awarded the Oswald Veblen Prize in Geometry last month to William Casper Graustein Professor of Mathematics Peter Kronheimer (along with his collaborator Tomasz Mrowka of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology). Given every three years, the Veblen Prize is one of the field’s highest honors for work in geometry or topology.
At its eighth meeting of the year on Jan. 24, the Faculty Council was joined by Christopher Gordon and Kathy Spiegelman of the Allston Development Group for a discussion of the Allston Master Plan, and heard an overview of the report of the Task Force on Teaching and Career Development from Dean Theda Skocpol. The council next meets on Feb. 7. The preliminary deadline for the March 13 faculty meeting is Feb. 26 at 9:30 a.m.
Franklin L. Ford served as a major participant in this Faculty’s business throughout his career, as Assistant and Associate Professor, Allston Burr Senior Tutor of Lowell House, McLean Professor of Ancient and Modern History, and as Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences from fall l962 through spring 1970.
Richard A. Musgrave, widely regarded as the founder of modern public finance and an adviser on fiscal policy and taxation to governments from Washington to Bogotá to Tokyo, died Monday (Jan. 15) in Santa Cruz, Calif.
Betty Ann Orlov Rubinow, 81, formerly of Cambridge, Mass., and Stowe, Vt., died unexpectedly from complications of pneumonia on Jan. 5 at St. Joseph’s Hospital, Tucson, Ariz., where she had lived with her husband, Merrill Rubinow.
Elkan Blout, a former dean for academic affairs at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH), National Medal of Science winner, and a leading contributor to the development of instant film, died on Dec. 20, 2006, at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. The cause was pneumonia. He was 87.
When Andrew Spielman was a graduate student in a malaria lab at Johns Hopkins University in 1952, his future was anything but certain. The use of DDT and other insecticides suggested a dramatic curtailing of the spread of mosquitoes – the carriers of the malaria pathogen and additional diseases. But, true to form, the insects proved remarkably resilient, and Spielman embarked on a career that would make him one of the most prominent experts in vector-borne illnesses, such as malaria, Lyme disease, and dengue, in the world. That career ended on Dec. 20, 2006, when Spielman, professor of tropical public health in the Department of Immunology and Infectious Diseases at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH), passed away after a sudden illness.
Broadcast legend Frank Stanton, longtime president of CBS and a former chair of the Kennedy School’s Visiting Committee, is being remembered by the Kennedy School community following his death Dec. 24, 2006, in Boston. He was 98 years old.
The Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy, located at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, recently announced its spring fellows.
Harvard University’s Institute of Politics (IOP), located at the Kennedy School of Government, has announced the selection of an experienced group of individuals for its spring resident fellowship program. Resident fellows interact with students, participate in the intellectual life of the community, and pursue individual studies or projects throughout an academic semester.
The Kennedy School of Government (KSG) has announced that the 2007 Roy Family Award for Environmental Partnership will go to the Hybrid Systems for Rural Electrification in Africa (HSREA). The HSREA project provides reliable, renewable electricity to rural African villages through a system of solar panel technology combined with modified diesel motors running on pure plant oil from the jatropha nut.
Ten physicians from a cross-section of Harvard teaching hospitals have been awarded a total of $500,000 in grants by CRICO/RMF – the patient safety and medical malpractice insurance company owned by and serving the Harvard-affiliated medical community.
The Roy and Lila Ash Institute for Democratic Governance and Innovation at Harvard University has awarded $245,000 in grants for faculty research and retreat in 2007, director Gowher Rizvi recently announced. Each of the nine projects funded supports the goals of the institute by seeking to advance good government and to strengthen democratic institutions worldwide by studying and fostering creative and effective government problem solving.
The Harvard University Art Museums (HUAM) recently announced the establishment of the Craigen Bowen Fellowship. The new fellowship, made possible through the generous gift of two anonymous donors, is designated to provide the salary, benefits, and a travel/research stipend to a young, advanced-level conservation professional who focuses on works on paper and who is beginning a museum career. The fellowship is also open to a young curatorial professional who specializes in works on paper.
The American Literature Section of the Modern Language Association (MLA) last month presented its highest professional award to Henry Louis Gates Jr., the W.E.B. Du Bois Professor of the Humanities and director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for Afro American Research.
The Malkin Athletic Center (MAC) will close for renovations the week of March 19 and will remain closed through the end of October. This scheduled closing has been set back from the originally published February date to help provide greater flexibility in the relocation of existing programs.
Students looking to study abroad have a new ally as Catherine Hutchison Winnie takes the reins of the Office of International Programs (OIP) this month. No stranger to Harvard, Winnie spent two years of her childhood in Winthrop House as the daughter of former House masters William Hutchison and Virginia Quay Hutchison, and returned as assistant director of study abroad in the early 1990s. She’s back at Harvard after a 13-year absence during which she developed study abroad programs as an associate dean at Smith College, assistant dean at Yale University, and founding director of academic enhancement programs at the Rochester Institute of Technology.
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