Science & Tech

Graduate student Alice A. Chen received the prestigious $30,000 Lemelson-MIT Student Prize on Wednesday (March 9) for her innovative applications of microtechnology to study human health and disease.

Scientists can finally look at circuits in the brain in all of their complexity. How the mind works is one of the greatest mysteries in nature, and this research presents a new and powerful way for us to explore that mystery.

Three technology proposals from the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have been selected for presentation at the University Research and Entrepreneurship Symposium (URES).

The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) today (March 9) named Leslie G. Valiant the winner of the 2010 ACM A.M. Turing Award for his fundamental contributions to the development of computational learning theory and to the broader theory of computer science.

A new research paper by Harvard geophysicists Brendan Meade and Jack Love-less says that the earth sciences principle of plate tectonics is applicable on a continental scale.

Only 39 percent of the nearly 10,000 North American plant species threatened with extinction are being maintained in collections, according to the first comprehensive listing of the threatened plant species in Canada, Mexico, and the United States.

Fueling America’s war effort is an expensive proposition, costing not only money but lives, since supply convoys are routinely attacked. The constraints imposed by an energy-hungry military prompted the Defense Department to investigate conservation techniques.

A new history of science course on the environment moves past the fictions of an unspoiled earlier time of discovery and settlement.

Professor Gu-Yeon Wei explores energy-efficient computing devices that are fast but draw minimal power.

Harvard graduate student Wonyoung Kim has developed and demonstrated a new device with the potential to reduce the power usage of modern processing chips.

Michael Brenner, Glover Professor of Applied Mathematics and Applied Physics at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, has been awarded the George Ledlie Prize by the President and Fellows of Harvard College.

On February 15, 2001, a decade ago, the first draft sequence and analysis of the human genome—the blue print for a human being—was published in the journal Nature. On the tenth anniversary of that transformative moment, Harvard hosted an interdisciplinary, multi-institutional forum on the genome project’s origins, promise, and significance to society.

Two insiders view the BP oil spill as a failure of management — but also as an incident that revealed deep regulatory and safety failures.

Harvard-led research has found that migrating tissue flows very much like colloidal glass. The research advances scientists’ understanding of wound healing, cancer metastasis, and embryonic development.

To mark the 10th anniversary of the publication of the Human Genome Map, Harvard President Drew Faust will host a panel discussion on the project next week (Feb. 22) in Sanders Theatre.

Engineers and scientists collaborating at Harvard University and the MITRE Corp. have developed and demonstrated the world’s first programmable nanoprocessor.

Research by physicists from Harvard’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Princeton, and Brandeis shows that clay vesicles provide an ideal container for the compartmentalization of complex organic molecules. The discovery opens the possibility that primitive cells may have formed inside inorganic clay microcompartments.

Bruce Sohn, president of the power company First Solar, says that reducing the cost of solar energy is on the horizon, but solar power has to grow dramatically if it is to replace fossil fuels.

Five recent graduates of the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences talked to current students about life beyond Harvard in the first of a series of engineering-themed career events hosted by the FAS Office of Career Services.

Harvard’s Office of Technology Development tries to ensure that the public sees the benefits of Harvard’s research by licensing new technology to companies.

From oddities like breathable chocolate to history-making devices with profound societal effects, like the heart pacemaker, Harvard’s combination of questing minds, restless spirits, and intellectual seekers fosters creativity and innovation that’s finding an outlet in new inventions and companies.

Psychologists at Harvard University have found that infants younger than a year old understand social dominance and use relative size to predict who will prevail when two individuals’ goals conflict.

With little more than a conventional photocopier and transparency film, anyone can build a functional microfluidic chip.

Using a new form of laser imaging device, Brooke Flammang and colleagues at Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology have discovered that “the dorsal and the anal fin make a great contribution to the caudal [tail fin] wake,” and thus are additional propellers, and not just stabilizers. A cichlid swims in the particles that the laser illuminates.

Physicists and bioengineers have developed an optical instrument allowing them to control the behavior of a worm just by shining a tightly focused beam of light at individual neurons inside the organism.

Harvard researchers have discovered that Bacillus subtilis biofilm colonies exhibit an unmatched ability to repel a wide range of liquids — and even vapors. The finding holds promise for developing better ways to eliminate harmful biofilms that can clog pipes, contaminate food production and water supply systems, and lead to infections.

Undergraduates in Engineering Sciences 51: “Computer-Aided Machine Design” spent a semester learning to design gadgets in SolidWorks, building candy-flinging catapults, and mastering the use of the soldering iron. Then came the final assignment: Transform a cordless power screwdriver into a functional all-terrain vehicle.

Using digitized books as a “cultural genome,” a team of researchers from Harvard, Google, Encyclopaedia Britannica, and the American Heritage Dictionary, unveil a quantitative approach to centuries of trends.

Thanks to the digital revolution, Harvard is developing a legion of cyberspace fans in the world of social media.

Across the University, digitization is rapidly changing the nature of scholarship, opening doors to information and collaboration, and redefining research and education.