Year: 2012

  • Nation & World

    Harvard’s ties to India

    Over the past several years, Harvard University has been ramping up its involvement in India and South Asia, a trend catalyzed by Harvard’s South Asia Initiative, which was founded in 2003 to foster the University’s engagement in the region. Harvard’s understanding of the region’s importance is highlighted by President Drew Faust’s January visit to India.

  • Science & Tech

    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…

  • Nation & World

    Education’s future, globally

    Students in Harvard’s Graduate School of Education convened last week to examine how to address some of the world’s educational challenges.

  • Health

    Broad Institute awarded $32.5M grant

    The Eli and Edythe L. Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT today announced that it has received a $32.5 million grant from the Boston-based Klarman Family Foundation to support a new collaborative effort focused on deciphering how human cells are wired.

  • Campus & Community

    A great day for Danes

    Claire Danes, who has won back-to-back Golden Globe awards as Best Actress, can now add another trophy to her collection, the Hasty Pudding Theatricals’ Pudding Pot, which she received today following a Harvard tour, parade, and traditional roast.

  • Campus & Community

    Applications to Harvard College stabilize

    Applications have leveled off after five consecutive years of record numbers. A total of 34,285 applications were received, a dip from last year’s record 34,950. Two years ago, 30,489 applied; 10 years ago, 18,932 applied.

  • Arts & Culture

    Marsalis: ‘Meet Me at the Crossroad’

    Wynton Marsalis continues his two-year lecture series at Harvard with an exploration of root styles of American music in Sanders Theatre on Feb. 6.

  • Arts & Culture

    Sounds of the Silk Road

    The Silk Road Ensemble concluded its January Harvard residence with a Learning From Performers concert featuring four newly commissioned works.

  • Campus & Community

    Faculty Council meeting held Jan. 25

    At the Jan. 25 meeting of the Faculty Council, its members approved the 2012-13 faculty meeting schedule.

  • Campus & Community

    The right way to report wrongdoing

    The University’s comprehensive new policy on whistleblowing aims to make reporting legal or ethical breaches both safe and easy for all members of the Harvard community.

  • Arts & Culture

    Arts prove intensive

    Across campus, students participated in a series of arts intensives during January’s Wintersession that let them tap their creative talents.

  • Health

    PFCs may hinder vaccine response

    Perfluorinated compounds (PFCs), widely used in manufactured products such as non-stick cookware, waterproof clothing, and fast-food packaging, were associated with lowered immune response to vaccinations in children in research led by Philippe Grandjean of the Harvard School of Public Health.

  • Science & Tech

    With a little help from our ancient friends

    The social networks of the Hadza, a group of hunter-gatherers in Tanzania, show evidence that many elements of social network structure may have been present at an early point in human history.

  • Campus & Community

    Helen Whitney to deliver Noble Lectures

    Award-winning producer, director, and writer Helen Whitney will deliver this year’s William Belden Noble Lectures at the Memorial Church.

  • Campus & Community

    Straus Center curator recognized

    Francesca Bewer has won the 2012 College Art Association/Heritage Preservation Award for Distinction in Scholarship and Conservation.

  • Nation & World

    North Korea: Country behind a curtain

    Many nations are watching the succession of Kim Jong-un to the leadership of North Korea, hoping a smooth transition will lead to economic reforms and opportunities to limit the further development of nuclear weapons, a Harvard panel said.

  • Science & Tech

    Scourge source

    New research at Harvard explains how bacterial biofilms expand on teeth, pipes, surgical instruments, and crops.

  • Nation & World

    Choice management

    In a paper published last year, Harvard professors David Laibson and Brigitte Madrian argued that employers should design investment menus for their employees that facilitate good choices, “rather than assuming that giving people every option under the sun will lead to the right decision.” The report, co-authored with James Choi of Yale, was recently honored…

  • Campus & Community

    Shorenstein Center welcomes six spring fellows

    Six new fellows will join the Shorenstein Center this spring.

  • Campus & Community

    Jason Segel named Man of the Year

    The Hasty Pudding Theatricals has named Jason Segel as its 2012 Man of the Year.

  • Arts & Culture

    Writing, clear and simple

    Clarity and simplicity are frequent themes in the Harvard College Winter Writing Program, a two-week Winter Break seminar where undergraduate nonfiction writers learn from some of the country’s best authors, teachers, and journalists.

  • Health

    A winter wellness workout

    Dozens of Harvard undergraduates started the year with a new emphasis on wellness, thanks to the Optimal Health program. With presentations from a lifestyle medicine consultant, a nutritionist, a personal trainer, a sleep specialist, and a stress manager, Optimal Health emphasized prevention and fitness.

  • Nation & World

    Your grandparents’ Tea Party

    To conservatives, the Tea Partiers are patriots; to liberals, they’re a scourge on progress and civil society. Theda Skocpol, Victor S. Thomas Professor of Government and Sociology, used different terms to describe the activists to undergraduates: grandma and grandpa.

  • Arts & Culture

    Devoted to the stage

    Anatoly Smeliansky is the founding director of the American Repertory Theater/Moscow Art Theater School Institute for Advanced Theater Training at Harvard University. As part of the program, he is spending the month at Harvard leading a series of classes on the history of theater and drama.

  • Nation & World

    Putting yourself out there

    Sponsored by the Harvard Club of Boston and the Harvard Alumni Association, “Networking NOW: The Learn-How-to-Network Event” was a multifaceted event, underscoring how business networking is a skill that can be learned, practiced, honed, and perfected.

  • Campus & Community

    Danes named Woman of the Year

    The Hasty Pudding Theatricals names actress Claire Danes as its 2012 Woman of the Year.

  • Arts & Culture

    A key to modernity

    Rummaging through worm-eaten layers of parchment at a monastery in southern Germany in 1417, the scribe Poggio Bracciolini discovered a poem titled “De Rerum Natura,” or “On the Nature of Things,” by the Roman philosopher Titus Lucretius Carus. On that day, according to Professor Stephen Greenblatt, history swerved and modernity began.

  • Nation & World

    A symposium on teaching, learning

    The Harvard Initiative for Learning and Teaching, created with a $40 million gift from Rita E. and Gustave M. Hauser, will host a symposium to explore excellence and innovation in the field.

  • Campus & Community

    NAS honors four faculty

    Michael J. Hopkins, Jonathan B. Losos, Andrew H. Knoll, and Jason P. Mitchell have been honored by the National Academy of Sciences for their extraordinary scientific achievements.

  • Campus & Community

    Great Teachers trailer

    A preview of Harvard University’s “Great Teachers” series which will be launched in March of 2012.