Science

Discover the scientific breakthroughs and engineering innovations being pioneered across Harvard’s labs and centers.

Illustration of diverse healthcare professionals around a central medical cross symbol.

AI Outperforms Doctors in Emergency Room Tasks, New Harvard Study Shows

Researchers say the technology could help physicians with triage, diagnosis.

by Jonathan Shaw

From a vantage point south of Western Avenue in Allston, looking northeast toward Harvard Square, the unfinished science complex dominates the foreground. Beyond it lie athletic fields that may yield to expansion by the School of Public Health, the Graduate School of Education, or other academic enterprises. A business “enterprise research campus” is envisioned south of Western Avenue, across from the high-rise graduate-student housing at One Western Avenue.

Allston work team recommendations endorsed by Harvard Corporation

A multiyear process of planning, community engagement, and prospective development is outlined.

Daniel Lieberman

Run barefoot, says Daniel Lieberman, human evolutionary biology professor

Study finds that runners who land on their forefeet are more efficient than their heel-striking counterparts.

High-Tech Art Sleuthing

Conservators are using laser-assisted pigment analysis to identify and authenticate the work of modern artists.

Kevin Kit Parker, the Thomas D. Cabot Associate Professor of Applied Science and Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering, is researching traumatic brain injury (primarily from his experience in the military)

Kit Parker uncovers mechanics of traumatic brain injury

Bioengineering professor’s discovery offers new hope for injured soldiers.

Lakshminarayanan Mahadevan

Jackson Pollock's painting technique explained by Harvard physicist

Harvard mathematician Lakshinarayan Mahadevan and colleagues have gleaned insights into the artist's painting technique.

Carl Schoonover

Carl Schoonover and "Portraits of the Mind" merge science and aesthetics

Carl Schoonover ’06 merges science and aesthetics.

by Sarah Zhang

An <i>Atta sexdens</i> forager shears off a fragment.

E.O. Wilson is coauthor of two new ant books

In two new books, E.O. Wilson and his coauthors introduce pioneer myrmecologist José Celestino Mutis, and the ants that are "the most complex socially of all animals, except for humans."

by Spencer Lee Lenfield

George Whitesides and colleagues have discovered that they can extinguish a flame by pushing it off its fuel source, using an electric field that emanates from the tip of a wire.

George Whitesides lab snuffs small flames with electricity

Harvard scientists have discovered how to extinguish flames by pushing them off their fuel source with an electric field.

by Jonathan Shaw

Shelly F. Greenfield

Shelly Greenfield's research finds gender differences in recovery from addiction

Studying the differences in addiction and recovery between men and women

by Elizabeth Gudrais

Elkhorn coral, Carysfort Reef South, Florida, 2010

Photographer David Arnold and others document coral reefs in decline

The world's most fragile marine ecosystems are in decline.

by Jonathan Shaw