The Kempner Institute announced Monday the appointment of Qianqian Wang, who will join Harvard as Kempner Institute investigator and assistant professor of computer science at the John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS). At Harvard, Wang will explore the future of human vision: how machines can learn to see, understand, and interact with the…

Harvard mathematicians are making an important addition. The Department of Mathematics launched the Benedict H. Gross Distinguished Visitors Program earlier this year thanks to a new gift from William R. Hearst III ’72. Each year, the department will invite a prominent mathematician from another institution to teach, give lectures, and engage with students and faculty.…

The Harvard Art Museums are pleased to announce the gift of “Light-Relief” (1960), a large-scale sculpture by internationally renowned artist Heinz Mack (b. 1931). The work — a generous gift made by the artist’s recently established Mack Foundation in Germany — has entered the collection of the Busch-Reisinger Museum, one of the Harvard Art Museums’ three constituent…

Harvard University Information Technology’s Digital Accessibility Services hosted the third annual University-wide Accessibility Summit on June 17. The event brought together Harvard faculty and staff for a day of learning and connecting accessibility practitioners to celebrate progress made and highlight work being done to drive disability inclusion across the University. In both the physical and…

British Columbia’s Burgess Shale is renowned for its exceptional preservation of soft tissues in fossils, including limbs and guts. While trilobites are abundant in the fossil record thanks to their hard exoskeleton, their soft limbs are rarely preserved and poorly understood. However, Olenoides serratus, a particularly abundant and well-preserved Burgess Shale trilobite, offers a unique opportunity…

Building upon its already ambitious sustainability goals, Harvard Campus Services has released the first comprehensive plan to help the University transition to zero waste. Accelerating a Zero Waste Future: A Framework for Waste Stewardship aligns with Harvard’s Sustainability Action Plan, and includes guiding objectives and actionable strategies that will empower schools and departments to carry out…

Francis Schüssler Fiorenza, a towering figure in theology and longtime faculty member at Harvard Divinity School (HDS), died recently at the age of 84.   He was the Charles Chauncey Stillman Research Professor of Roman Catholic Theological Studies and a mentor to students and scholars across the globe.  Fiorenza joined the Harvard Divinity School faculty in…

The Carr-Ryan Center for Human Rights at Harvard Kennedy School has launched their new Human Rights & U.S. Foreign Policy Fellowship — a bold new initiative designed to preserve human rights as a cornerstone of American diplomacy and global leadership.  At a time of deep geopolitical uncertainty and rising authoritarianism worldwide — and amid growing…

The Kempner Institute for the Study of Natural and Artificial Intelligence announced the names of 13 students chosen as the incoming 2025 cohort of Kempner Graduate Fellows. The 2025 recipients of the Kempner graduate fellowship are: Alex Cai, Jonathan Geuter, Cristine Kalinski, Aayush Karan, Hang Le, Mary Letey, Sarah Liaw, Clara Mohri, Pranav Nair, Jorin…

Bharat Anand, vice provost for Advances in Learning and Henry R. Byers Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, is departing Harvard on July 31 to become dean of NYU’s Stern School of Business, following an announcement earlier this spring. Anand has led the Office of the Vice Provost for Advances in Learning (VPAL)…

This month, Harvard University welcomed its second cohort of presidential fellows from historically Black colleges and universities to participate in the Seminar for New Presidents. The presidential fellows represent the next generation of HBCU legacy leaders and comprise 10 of the 55 participants of the seminar. They join as participants in Clark Atlanta University’s HBCU Executive Leadership Institute…

As we honor Disability Pride Month (July), it’s essential to recognize how the accelerating climate crisis disproportionately affects people with disabilities and why climate justice must include disability rights at its core. According to The Lancet Planetary Health (2024), more than 1 billion people with disabilities, 80% of whom live in low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs), are…

Jill Kravetz has been named the Bruce and Bridgitt Evans Executive Director of the Harvard Innovation Labs — a University-wide hub that inspires, connects and advances entrepreneurial leaders and innovators. Kravetz brings decades of experience in starting, building and advising companies across industries and stages. After graduating from the Wharton School with an M.B.A. in…

Gita Gopinath will resume her place on the Harvard faculty this fall, returning from a long-term public service leave of absence. In 2018, she was named the first female chief economist at the International Monetary Fund. She was promoted to the IMF’s first deputy managing director in 2022. “I now return to my roots in…

American Repertory Theater (A.R.T.) at Harvard University has commissioned nationally acclaimed Boston-based muralist Rob “ProBlak” Gibbs to partner with the theater and lead the creation of a 200-foot-long mural for its new home. It will be the prolific Boston artist’s first work in Boston’s Allston-Brighton neighborhood. The mural design will be inspired by conversations facilitated…

Harvard Kennedy School is launching the American Service Fellowship — a new initiative that will provide full scholarships for at least 50 public servants and military veterans to enroll next fall for a one-year, fully funded master’s degree. The fellowship, which was announced Thursday, is the largest single-year scholarship program in HKS history, and it…

The Kempner Institute for the Study of Natural and Artificial Intelligence at Harvard has named the recipients of its 2025 Kempner Institute Research Fellowships. The 2025 recipients are Elom Amemastro, Ruojin Cai, David Clark, Alexandru Damian, William Dorrell, Mark Goldstein, Richard Hakim, Hadas Orgad, Gizem Ozdil, Gabriel Poesia, and Greta Tuckute. The 11 fellowship recipients are all…

Seven exceptional instructors have been named as the recipients of this year’s Anya Bernstein Bassett Award for Excellence in Teaching. Established last year, the award celebrates excellence in evidence-based teaching, pedagogical innovation, and fostering inclusive learning environments by non-ladder faculty members such as preceptors, lecturers, and senior lecturers. The recognition, which honors the former director of undergraduate studies for Social…

As of July 1, Terrence L. Johnson, M.Div. ’00, has assumed the role of director of Religion and Public Life (RPL) at Harvard Divinity School (HDS), a program that promotes the public understanding of religion.  “I’m deeply honored to lead Religion and Public Life at this pivotal moment,” said Johnson. “This is a unique opportunity to…

Lauren Kaminsky has been appointed the inaugural assistant dean for Arts & Humanities Education, Sean Kelly, dean of Arts and Humanities announced Monday. The new role, which began last week, is part of Kelly’s efforts to revitalize the arts and humanities at Harvard, and implement key recommendations from the recent Arts & Humanities Strategic Planning…

Jason D. Buenrostro and Tara K. Menon have been named as winners of the 2025 Roslyn Abramson Award, given annually to faculty members for excellence in teaching undergraduates.   “Tara Menon and Jason Buenrostro both bring exceptional energy, rigor, and dedication to their teaching,” said Hopi Hoekstra, Edgerley Family Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. “Their…

Four years ago, Rowan Flad, the John E. Hudson Professor of Archaeology, wrote a piece for the Washington Post calling attention to the lavish media attention given to ancient Egyptian finds versus the utter silence surrounding equally spectacular discoveries in China. “At the time I was teaching a world archaeology class at Caltech,” remembered Bridget…

Electrons play many roles in solid materials. When they are weakly bound and able to travel – i.e., mobile – they can enable electrical conduction. When they are bound, or “heavy,” they can act as insulators. However, in certain solid materials, this behavior can be markedly different, raising questions about how these different types of…

The Kempner Institute for the Study of Natural and Artificial Intelligence at Harvard is pleased to announce the appointment of Venkatesh Murthy and Stephanie Gil as associate faculty members.  Murthy and Gil are both current Harvard faculty members whose pioneering research advances the Kempner Institute’s core scientific mission to understand the basis of natural and artificial intelligence. The…

Where does the human brain even start when faced with a new task? It immediately checks with a mental library of solutions that worked pretty well in the past. A recent study, published in the journal PLOS Biology, used neuroimaging to find similarities between human intelligence and a decision-making process developed by AI researchers. The…

The Healthcare Policy Program at Harvard Kennedy School has named Alisha Yi as the 2025-2026 recipient of the Jerome H. Grossman M.D. Graduate Fellowship. The fellowship, made possible by a generous gift from the Grossman family, honors the life and legacy of Jerome Grossman, who dedicated his career to strengthening healthcare delivery in the United…

For more than a century, scientists have puzzled over a fundamental mystery in our evolutionary history: how did mammals go from sprawling like lizards to striding like cats and dogs? This transition to an upright posture marked a pivotal moment in mammal evolution. The earliest non-mammalian synapsids, ancestors of living mammals, had a sprawling posture,…

The Harvard Global Health Institute announced its Summer Research and Internship Program for 2025, which officially commenced this month. This summer, HGHI will support 53 exceptional students as they begin immersive experiences across the U.S. and around the world tackling some of the most pressing challenges in global health. These internships and research placements are part of HGHI’s commitment…

Mahzarin R. Banaji, Richard Clarke Cabot Professor of Social Ethics in the Department of Psychology, accepted a prestigious BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Bilbao, Spain, this week. Established in 2008, the annual prize recognizes excellence in science and the arts, with a focus on people making highly original contributions that achieved widespread impact.…

The Weatherhead Center for International Affairs announces its research clusters for academic year 2025–2026, including two new collaborative clusters that will operate from fall 2025 to spring 2028. The Research Cluster on Global LGBTQI+ Human Rights will add a new research-focused element to the work currently underway at the Carr-Ryan Center for Human Rights at…