Faculty & Research

Insights into groundbreaking faculty research, innovative projects, and academic thought leadership across Harvard’s schools and institutes.

Space shuttle view outside the Earth

Videos |

This Astronomer is Sounding a Warning on 'Space Junk'

As debris accumulates in low Earth orbit, the danger of destructive collisions continues to rise.

by Olivia Farrar

Part of the Perseus molecular cloud, as seen through the Smithsonian’s MMT telescope in Arizona. Self-gravitating structures—dense areas where stars are forming—appear as dark spots. The L1448 region is located in the upper-right quadrant of the image.

Right Now | May-June 2009

Perseus in 3-D

New three-dimensional PDF technology allows Harvard astronomers—and you—to explore worlds hundreds of light-years away.

by Elizabeth Gudrais

Particulate matter that is 2.5 microns or less in diameter (PM2.5), the kind emitted from smokestacks and tailpipes, is known to be especially harmful. Reductions in such pollution lead to increased life expectancy. In Boston between 1980 and 2000, for example, as PM2.5 concentrations dropped from 18 to 11 micrograms per cubic meter, local average life expectancy climbed four years. Of that increase, four-tenths of a year—or 10 percent of the total gain—was attributable to improved air quality.

Right Now | May-June 2009

Clean Air, Longer Life

Controls on fine particle pollution extended average lifespan in the United States by five months between 1980 and 2000.

by Jonathan Shaw

A scanning electron microscope image reveals the porous nature of a bioengineered disk where immune cells can reside and be programmed for vaccination.

Right Now | May-June 2009

Fighting Disease in Situ

A new technique aims to boost the body’s ability to seek out and destroy cancer cells.

Right Now | May-June 2009

"Dissing Evolution"

Energy is the key to understanding human evolution—and to saving ourselves and our planet, says Daniel Lieberman.

by Elizabeth Gudrais

A human fibroblast—part of the body’s connective tissue—sits on a bed of vertical nanowires in this image from a scanning electron microscope. Hongkun Park and his colleagues hope that the nanowires, which penetrate the cell without harming it, can be a way to introduce genes into cells without the use of an engineered virus or invasive delivery method. One application could be adding a set of genes to fibroblasts that “reprogram” them to act like stem cells.

Features | May-June 2009

Untangling the Brain

Three Harvard scholars trained in chemistry and physics pursue innovative approaches and tools that address problems in neuroscience.

by Courtney Humphries

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On the Medicalization of Our Culture

In a Humanities Center symposium, scholars outlined how the concepts of disease and diagnosis pervade ever more facets of our lives.

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Harvard Economists' Take on the Financial Crisis

A new webpage aggregates the views of professors including Martin Feldstein, Gregory Mankiw, Kenneth Rogoff, and many others.

This map shows soil types for all of Africa. A researcher might use it with other map layers to study agricultural productivity among countries with similar soils, comparing, for example, the agrarian practices of Francophone and Anglophone countries.

John Harvard's Journal | March-April 2009

Mapping Africa

Africa Map, a project of Harvard’s Center for Geographic Analysis, brings GIS capabilities to research on the entire continent.

John Harvard's Journal | March-April 2009

Decisionmaking, Measured

A new interdisciplinary decision-science lab will host experiments from psychology, economics, and beyond.

Right Now | March-April 2009

Our Psychotropic Lives

History professor Daniel Lord Smail explores the role of psychotropic mechanisms in human evolution and history.

by Elizabeth Gudrais