Science

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

Smiling woman stands beside a large skull in a display cabinet.

Don’t Call Stephanie Pierce A Paleontologist

From competing in youth gymnastics to studying tetrapods, the Harvard curator has always chased her curiosity.

by Laurel M. Shugart

Sue Goldie, Daniel Lord Smail, George Whitesides featured in New York Times

Professors Goldie, Smail, and Whitesides all work on topics featured in one day’s New York Times

A student using a "Tapminder" device in the men's bathroom

The Lab @ Harvard’s fall exhibition featured innovative ideas

The Lab @ Harvard’s fall exhibition featured innovative ideas from students across the globe.

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.

Illustration by Bruno Mallart

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