Tag: Science

  • Science & Tech

    Unhidden figures

    LaNell Williams wants to encourage more women of color to pursue doctorate degrees in fields such as physics. To help make that happen, she founded the Women+ of Color Project, which last week hosted a three-day workshop that invited 20 African American, Latinx, and Native American women interested in pursuing a career in a STEM…

    Vinothan Manoharan and Lanell Williams
  • Arts & Culture

    A lost Yugoslavia

    A selection of photographs from Nobel laureate Martin Karplus is on display at the Minda de Gunzburg Center’s Jacek E. Giedrojć Gallery until Jan. 13, 2020.

    Three women in Yugoslavia, 1955
  • Science & Tech

    Tiny tweezers

    Using precisely focused lasers that act as “optical tweezers,” Harvard scientists have been able to capture and control individual ultracold molecules – the eventual building-blocks of a quantum computer – and study the collisions between them in more detail than ever before.

    optical tweezers in use
  • Science & Tech

    Break it up

    Researchers at Harvard and Cornell have discovered exactly how a reactive copper-nitrene catalyst could transform a strong carbon-hydrogen bonds into a carbon-nitrogen bond, a valuable building block for chemical synthesis.

    Erving Professor of Chemistry Theodore A. Betley and graduate student Kurtis Carsch
  • Science & Tech

    Lessons in learning

    Study shows students in ‘active learning’ classrooms learn more than they think

    two students looking at notebook together
  • Science & Tech

    Hunters, herders, companions: Breeding dogs has reordered their brains

    Erin Hecht, who joined the faculty in January, has published her first paper on our canine comrades in the Journal of Neuroscience, finding that different breeds have different brain organizations owing to human cultivation of specific traits.

    Researcher with two dogs
  • Science & Tech

    Soft robots for all

    The first soft ring oscillator gets plushy robots to roll, undulate, sort, meter liquids, and swallow.

    Hand holding oscillators
  • Campus & Community

    John H. Shaw steps down

    John H. Shaw, the Harry C. Dudley Professor of Structural and Economic Geology, steps down at the end of June, having served as chair of the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences since 2006.

    John Shaw against a black and rainbow background
  • Health

    Gut microbes eat our medication

    Study published in Science shows that gut microbes can chew up medications, with serious side effects.

    Professor looks over the shoulder of grad student working in the lab
  • Science & Tech

    Beyond the cloud

    Every day, more and more information is filed in less and less space. Even the cloud will eventually run out of space, can’t thwart all hackers, and gobbles up energy. Now, a new way to store information could stably house data for millions of years.

    Brian Cafferty works in the lab.
  • Campus & Community

    Future M.D.’s passion to help comes in many forms

    Cynthia Luo, who’s concentrating in both molecular and cellular biology and English, was inspired by her time in Uganda to become a physician and improve global health.

    Cynthia Luo in front of stairs
  • Campus & Community

    Giving to the next generation

    Professor Catherine Dulac used the money from her endowed position to fund the studies of an overloaded neuroscience undergrad.

    student and professor in the lab
  • Science & Tech

    Solving colibactin’s code

    In an effort to understand how colibactin, a compound produced by certain strains of E. coli, may be connected to the development of colorectal cancer, Harvard researchers are exploring how the compound damages DNA to produce DNA adducts.

    Emily Balskus.
  • Campus & Community

    Breakthrough science recognized

    A series of studies conducted by Alexander Schier, the Leo Erikson Life Sciences Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology, and members of his lab including Jeff Farrell, Yiqun Wang, Bushra Raj, and James Gagnon, and additional work of collaborators from Harvard Medical School, has been featured as the “2018 Breakthrough of the Year” by Science…

    Science image
  • Campus & Community

    Ten from Harvard named AAAS Fellows

    Ten Harvard faculty members are among the 416 scientists who have been named American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Fellows. Election as an AAAS Fellow is an honor bestowed upon AAAS members by their peers.

  • Science & Tech

    Shining a light on quantum bits

    A Ph.D. student working in the lab of Professor Mikhail Lukin, co-director of the Quantum Science and Engineering Initiative, has demonstrated a method for engineering an interaction between two qubits using photons.

    A crystal with lasers going through it
  • Campus & Community

    Christopher Stubbs named dean of science

    Christopher Stubbs, the Samuel C. Moncher Professor of Physics and of Astronomy, has been appointed dean of science by FAS Dean Claudine Gay.

    Christopher Stubbs
  • Science & Tech

    Breaking down backbones

    Harvard scientists are using the fossil record and a close examination of the vertebrae of thousands of modern animals to understand how and when specialized regions in the spines of mammals developed.

    Fossil-vertebrae
  • Campus & Community

    $100M gift will support sciences and math

    A Harvard alumnus and his wife made a gift of $100 million to support the University’s Science Center, enhance mathematics scholarship, and provide unrestricted resources for the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

    The Science Center at Harvard
  • Health

    Study signals a limit to cancer’s complexity

    New findings on cancer driver mutations creates hope for targeted therapy. “It appears there is a limit to cancer’s complexity,” says one of the study’s researchers, Martin Nowak of Harvard University.

    Martin Nowak.
  • Arts & Culture

    Dancing with the future

    A multimedia production incorporates dance, music, and spoken word to explore how humans might cooperate with future generations to try to solve problems like climate change. “Dancing with the Future” will premiere at Farkas Hall on Sept. 25.

  • Science & Tech

    We solved the problem! Now let’s unsolve it.

    Harvard researcher Daniel Gilbert’s “prevalence-induced concept change” speaks to humankind’s conflicted relationship with progress.

    Man looking at globe with magnifying glass.
  • Campus & Community

    Rewarding remarkable studies

    The annual awards created through a gift from James A. Star ’83 fund research unlikely to be funded through other programs — risky studies with the potential to contribute to radical new understandings of our world.

  • Science & Tech

    Two atoms combined in dipolar molecule

    Harvard Assistant Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology Kang-Kuen Ni and colleagues have combined two atoms for the first time into what researchers call a dipolar molecule.

  • Arts & Culture

    Wielding data against doom and gloom

    In his 2011 book, “The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined,” Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker argued that despite common assumptions, violence has dropped dramatically from biblical times…

  • Arts & Culture

    Art and technology explored during region-wide collaboration

    This winter, a dozen cultural organizations throughout Greater Boston — including three from Harvard — are partnering to present an ambitious, region-wide exploration of art and technology.

  • Campus & Community

    A decade of growth at SEAS

    Harvard’s Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences celebrates 10 years of innovative research.

  • Science & Tech

    Advice for scientists: ‘Be vocal’

    Carlos Moedas, European Union Science Commissioner, spoke about the importance of science in the “post-truth” era in a visit to the Harvard Kennedy School.

  • Campus & Community

    Lab opens doors for an undergrad experience

    As part of Harvard’s Wintersession, a handful of freshmen got the chance to experience the reality of lab work by exploring how altering genes in yeast affected the cells’ functions.

  • Science & Tech

    Science, meet YouTube

    Harvard graduate student Molly Edwards is the creator and host of “Science IRL (In Real Life),” a YouTube channel she launched more than a year ago while working as a lab technician at New York University. The show is dedicated to taking viewers inside labs for an up-close-and-personal view of the day-to-day work of scientists.