Faculty

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

An image of a doctor writing set against a background of code, representing AI

How to Care for Patients in AI-Driven Medicine

Harvard’s Arthur Kleinman reflects on what’s lost when healthcare systems prioritize efficiency.

by Olivia Farrar

Video: see the plants and animals Harvard climatologists encountered in Brazil

In this video, travel to Brazil with Harvard climatologists to see their work and the plants and critters they encountered.

Video tour of a game that helps children with anger issues handle their emotions

Researchers at Children's Hospital Boston develop a video game to help children with anger problems handle their emotions. See how it works.

Matthew Nock sits in his lab’s control room, where researchers record subjects’ behavioral and physiological responses during experiments. For example, they might measure whether people who engage in self-injury show greater emotional distress, in response to frustrating tasks, than people who do not. (Nock’s lab manager and a postdoctoral fellow are seen in the adjoining room through one-way glass.)

Matthew Nock studies suicide and self-injury

Understanding suicide and self-injury

by Elizabeth Gudrais

Bernardo Flores, Rafael Tapajós, and Hannah Horowitz ’11 learn how to analyze data gathered from a weather balloon under the supervision of Professor Steven Wofsy

Harvard scholars study the Amazon rainforest under global climate change

Students grapple with the fate of the rainforest in a changing climate.

by Jonathan Shaw

Kermit "Kim" Roosevelt in 1950

Brief life of Harvard CIA agent who helped install the shah of Iran

Brief life of a Harvard conspirator: 1916-2000

by Gwen Kinkead

A skull session with human evolutionary biologist Daniel Lieberman in the fossil room at the Peabody Museum. Millions of years of natural selection have shaped the human head. From left to right: a Neanderthal; <i>Homo erectus; Homo habilis; Australopithecus africanus; Pan troglodytes</i> (common chimpanzee); <i>Homo sapiens</i> (human). “Gonzo,” a Neanderthal skeleton, stands in the back.

Daniel Lieberman on the Evolution of the Human Head

How the shape of our skulls evolved, and what that reveals about us

by Jonathan Shaw

Amos Doolittle cheekily depicted the passions over ratification in this 1787 engraving with watercolor, with “Federals” (business interests), left, and agrarian “Antifederals,” right, differing over currency and Connecticut’s debts: a mired wagon being pulled in opposite directions.

Jack Rakove reviews Pauline's Maier's "Ratification," on the U.S. Constitution

The great experiment in constitution-making

by Jack Rakove

A screen shot from the therapeutic video game RAGE Control (Regulate and Gain Emotional Control)

A video game for anger management and emotional control

At Children's Hospital Boston, a video game offers emotionally explosive youths methods of self-control.

by Erin O’Donnell

Hyman professor of chemistry Charles Lieber has created a transistor so small it can be used to penetrate cell membranes and probe their interiors, without disrupting function. The transistor (yellow) sits near the bend in a hairpin-shaped, lipid-coated silicon nanowire. Its scale is similar to that of intra-cellular structures such as organelles (pink and blue orbs) and actin filaments (pink strand).

Charles Lieber's nanoscale transistors can enter cells without harming them

Chemist Charles Lieber and his colleagues have developed a nanoscale transistor so small it can enter, probe, and communicate with cells without harming them.

by Jonathan Shaw

When poverty is defined as living on $1.25 or less a day, about 40 percent of both Ethiopians and Uzbekistanis are considered poor. But by multidimensional measures that capture living standards, almost 90 percent of Ethiopians live in poverty, while only a small percentage of Uzbekistanis do.

Amartya Sen proposes a measure of poverty that looks beyond income

A multidimensional poverty index, based on the ideas of Amartya Sen, reveals a different map of the world's poor.