Science and Song

Listen to songs written by assistant professor of organismic and evolutionary biology Pardis Sabeti, performed with her alternative-rock band, Thousand Days.

This Web extra supplements the May-June 2009 Harvard Portrait on Pardis Sabeti.

The following tracks are posted here courtesy of Pardis Sabeti.

 

"Coming Up"

Sabeti wrote this song at Oxford, while working on her doctoral dissertation (an analysis of natural selection as seen in resistance to malaria in African populations). She would work in the lab every day for 14 to 16 hours, then come home and pick up her guitar to relax. One day, she says, “out popped the song.”

 

"Absence"

This song expresses the angst Sabeti felt over having to choose between a career in medicine and a career as a research scientist. “It was about not knowing what you want to do in life, and so staying on the fence forever, and essentially losing in the waiting,” she says. Although Sabeti now works as a research scientist at the Center for Systems Biology, she earned an M.D. from Harvard Medical School in 2006 (and in fact was the third woman ever to graduate summa cum laude). She considers her medical training essential to her research work, adding a focus on the whole organism to the focus on individual genes and molecules.

 

"Days Go By"

This song is based on the story of the MIT Blackjack Team, as told in the book Bringing Down the House. Sabeti, who earned a bachelor’s degree in biology from MIT in 1997, knew some of the book’s main characters.

 

"Headlight Waves"

The concept for this song came to Sabeti “as an image,” she says. She describes the scene: “A bunch of people are sitting around a table in an old diner, chewing on chicken, eating in a very greedy, ravenous way, and looking angry and hateful. Then a headlight shining through the window casts a beautiful light on the scene, transforming everyone to reveal great kindness and warmth.” The idea, she says, “is that there is so much darkness in the world, with corruption, violence, selfishness, but every once in a while you see something beautiful and kind that shines through.”

 

You might also like

Ask a Harvard Professor with Caroline Buckee

Anonymized location data can help guide strategies for protecting public health in a pandemic.

Harvard Film Archive

Hidden gem: the Harvard Film Archive

From Harvard to Nashville, Wisewater makes music

A folk trio finds their harmony, on the road.

Most popular

Harvard art historian Jennifer Roberts teaches the value of immersive attention

Teaching students the value of deceleration and immersive attention

How MAGA Went Mainstream at Harvard

Trump, TikTok, and the pandemic are reshaping Gen Z politics.

Jodie Foster Honored at Radcliffe Day 2025

The actress and director discussed her film career and her transformative time at Yale.

Explore More From Current Issue

Catherine Zipf smiling, wearing striped shirt and dark sweater outdoors.

Preserving the History of Jim Crow Era Safe Havens

Architectural historian Catherine Zipf is building a database of Green Book sites.  

Two women in traditional kimonos, one lighting a cigarette, in a scene from Apart from You.

Harvard Film Archive Spotlights Japanese Director Mikio Naruse

A retrospective of the filmmaker’s works, from Floating Clouds to Flowing

Man, standing in small group of people outside the courthouse, holding a sign that reads "HANDS OFF HARVARD" in red letters

Harvard’s Summer in Court

What Columbia’s settlement means for the University