Multi-university research will focus on innovative materials for the automotive, building and construction, and energy sectors BASF SE, Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst have established a research initiative called the “North American Center for Research on Advanced Materials.” A major goal of this initiative is to…

Harvard faculty members and instructors are invited to attend to a HarvardX Town Hall meeting on course development and research at the Longwood Campus. The Town Hall will take place on Thursday, March 28 from 3:30-5:30 p.m. at the Harvard School of Public Health, Kresge Building Room G2, 677 Huntington Avenue. The Town Hall will be facilitated by…

Italy and South Africa are 5,000 miles apart. But at the annual international party hosted by the Harvard Law School LL.M. Class of 2013 on Feb. 16, the countries were suddenly neighbors, with students from each country handing out their favorite traditional treats while dressed as gondoliers or rugby players. Hundreds of students, faculty, staff…

Harvard Law School Visiting Professor Michael Ashley Stein ’88 was awarded the 2013 Viscardi Award, which honors people living with disabilities for their work and influence in the global disability community. With Harvard Law School Professor William Alford ‘77, Stein co-founded the Harvard Law School Project on Disability, which works to promote the human rights…

Gov. Deval Patrick ’82 has nominated Gloria Tan, a clinical instructor at HLS’s Criminal Justice Institute, to a seat on the Massachusetts Juvenile Court.  A leading national authority in the field of juvenile justice, Tan brings a wealth of experience and expertise to the juvenile bench in Massachusetts. As a judge on the Juvenile Court,…

The Chicago Tribune has won the Nieman Foundation’s 2012 Taylor Family Award for Fairness in Newspapers for “Playing with Fire.” The six-part series revealed how the chemical and tobacco industries for years misled the public with deceptive campaigns that promoted the use of toxic flame-retardant chemicals that don’t work and pose serious health risks to…

The public is very supportive of government action aimed at changing lifestyle choices that can lead to obesity, diabetes, and other noncommunicable diseases — but they’re less likely to support such interventions if they’re viewed as intrusive or coercive, according to a new Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) study. The study also found that…

Throughout history, more women have died in childbirth than men have died in battle, Mahmoud Fathalla, founder of the Safe Motherhood Initiative, told attendees at the recent Global Maternal Health Conference in Arusha, Tanzania, co-sponsored by Harvard School of Public Health’s Maternal Health Task Force (MHTF) and Management and Development for Health (MDH), a Tanzanian nonprofit. Fathalla and other…

Switching to a Mediterranean diet — rich in olive oil, nuts, beans, fish, fruits, vegetables, and wine in moderation — can help prevent about 30% of heart attacks, strokes, and deaths from heart disease in people at high risk compared with those eating a typical low-fat diet, according to a new study. Harvard School of…

There currently is not enough scientific evidence to recommend that healthy postmenopausal women should take low daily doses of vitamin D and calcium to reduce bone fracture risk, the United States Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) reported in guidelines published online February 26, 2013 in the Annuals of Internal Medicine. The federal government’s expert panel on…

David Eisenberg envisions a time when doctors learn not just biology and chemistry—but cooking in an effort to help more patients live healthier lives. Given recent alarming increases in diabetes and other obesity-related ailments, Eisenberg, a doctor, associate professor of nutrition at Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH), and executive vice president of the Samueli Institute,…

The Harvard Leadership Conference is the only conference to be sponsored by the Harvard Graduate Council, the official student government for Harvard’s 12 graduate and professional schools. This year’s conference will be held at Harvard’s beautiful Northwest Science Building on Sat., March 9. The conference has a unique format in that the attendees have a…

A new poll released today shows a large gap between parents’ perceptions of their children’s weight and expert definitions. According to their parents, 15% of children are a little or very overweight, while national data suggest more than twice as many, or 32% of all children, are overweight or obese. The poll was conducted by NPR, the…

Nicholas D. Kristof, columnist for The New York Times, will address an audience of students, faculty, journalists and members of the public on Tuesday, March 5, at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. The program begins at 6 p.m. in the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge, and…

On Feb. 4, more than 70 Harvard Law School students, faculty, and other members of the Harvard community gathered in Wasserstein Hall to hear Enver Hasani, president of the Constitutional Court of Kosovo, speak on “European Self-Determination and the Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice on Kosovo.” The nine-member Constitutional Court of Kosovo…

How do we know if we’re looking at the three-dimensional world or at a kind of trompe l’oeil image painted on the inside of a huge glass sphere? More to the point, how would a robot know? Blessed with brains and the power of biological computation, humans can compute the most likely explanation for what…

Political analyst Michael Tomasky, who writes for Newsweek and The Daily Beast, spoke to the Shorenstein Center about President Obama’s legacy, and how it compares to Reagan’s. There is not a clear comparison yet, Tomasky said, but he acknowledged that as Reagan shifted the “political gravity” to the right, Obama has shifted it back to the…

Nevin Scrimshaw, a nutritionist who pioneered the use of protein supplements to save the lives of children at risk of dying from malnutrition, passed away on February 8, 2013. He was 95. Scrimshaw, M.P.H. ’59, who received HSPH’s Alumni Award of Merit in 1995, devoted his seven-decade career to the field of international nutrition. Soon…

A small girl in Tanzania is getting ready to go to sleep. She is tucked safely in her bed, surrounded by mosquito netting. “Hey mosquito, I hear you, but you can’t get at me,” she says. “My net is treated.” The girl is featured in a short video clip that’s part of Sesame Workshop’s “Killimani…

Today, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study announces that this year’s Radcliffe Medal will be awarded to actor and arts advocate Jane Alexander. Radcliffe Day 2013 will celebrate the arts with a morning panel that unites leaders across the visual arts, writing, music, and theater. It will be immediately followed by the annual Radcliffe Day lunch,…

Curious about the crunching sounds coming from the basement of the Science Center? It’s the Greenbean Recycling Machine—Harvard’s latest recycling solution—hard at work. A redemption center for recycled goods, the Greenbean Machine is also a sorting whiz, gaming fanatic, and energy savings calculator. Created by Shanker Sahai and piloted on MIT’s campus in 2011, Greenbean…

Scholars and social media experts convened at Harvard Law School Feb. 6 to examine the ways in which electronic interactive media can sway human decision-making and behavior. The conference, “Social Media and Behavioral Economics,” was sponsored by Harvard Law School’s new Program on Behavioral Economics and Public Policy and created by the program’s director, Cass…

On Feb. 15, Harvard Law School hosted “Gun violence after the Newtown tragedy: What can legal, public health and other efforts do?” The panel discussion, moderated by HLS Dean Martha Minow, featured David Hemenway, professor of health policy and management and director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center; Clinical Professor Ron Sullivan, director of…

If you’re examining the impact of air pollution control efforts in Denver, how do you statistically account for the fact that air pollution travels east—and that pollution reduction in the western United States could affect air quality in New England? Likewise, if you’re measuring the effectiveness of a particular HIV-prevention strategy in a village in…

Beginning last October, thousands of students from around the globe began studying at Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) in a totally new way. They studied biostatistics and epidemiology, the building blocks of public health research, at home or in cafés, at any time of day or night, for a few minutes at a time…

Biomedical engineer Sujata Bhatia and computer scientist David C. Parkes were honored today with the Capers and Marion McDonald Award for Excellence in Mentoring and Advising at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS). Established at SEAS in 2008 by Capers W. McDonald and Marion K. McDonald, the award recognizes leaders in engineering…

The large antiretroviral treatment (ART) scale-up in a rural community in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, has led to a rapid and dramatic increase in population adult life expectancy—a gain of 11.3 years over eight calendar years (2004-2011)—and the benefit of providing ART far outweighs the cost, according to new research from Harvard School of Public Health…

The national debate about gun violence has focused on mass shootings and assault weapons, but statistics show that most gun deaths are suicides. A number of recent articles and interviews featured Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) experts commenting on the topic. A February 13, 2013 New York Times article reported that nearly 20,000 of the 30,000…

EdX, the not-for-profit online learning enterprise founded by Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), announced today the international expansion of its X University Consortium with the addition of six new global higher education institutions. The Australian National University (ANU), Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland, McGill University and the University of Toronto in Canada,…

The amount of added sugars in soda and other sweetened beverages needs to be regulated, according to a Washington, D.C.-based nutrition advocacy group—and many Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) researchers agree. The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) filed a petition with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration calling for the agency…