The Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation of Harvard Law School (CHLPI) recently reported major wins in the courts for the rights of transgender and gender nonconforming individuals. The first win came from Kadel v. North Carolina State Health Plan for Teachers & State Employees, a lawsuit brought by a small group of transgender…

The Harvard-Yenching Institute (HYI) is pleased to welcome more than 40 Visiting Scholars and Visiting Fellows this fall. Affiliates will spend the 2021-22 academic year in residence at HYI. Established in 1928, the Harvard-Yenching Institute is an independent foundation dedicated to advancing higher education in Asia in the humanities and social sciences, with special attention to…

In 2019, astronomers spotted something incredible in our backyard: a rogue comet from another star system. Named Borisov, the icy snowball traveled 110,000 miles per hour and marked the first and only interstellar comet ever detected by humans. But what if these interstellar visitors — comets, meteors, asteroids and other debris from beyond our solar…

In a recent webinar presented by the Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, Matthew Baum, the Marvin Kalb Professor of Global Communications, and a team of principal investigators with the COVID States Project explained the results of their latest report. A series of 19 surveys conducted from April 2020 to July…

The Venice Architecture Biennale has returned with its 17th installation, “How Will We Live Together?”, featuring 114 participants representing 46 countries and a variety of perspectives on the titular question from curator Hashim Sarkis — a prompt that he had established before the various events that marked 2020. This year’s show commenced with an inaugural…

To achieve the World Health Organization’s goal of helping provide “the highest attainable standard of health” for individuals, it’s time to rethink the divisions between public health and clinical medicine, especially preventive medicine, according to an Aug. 5, 2021, Perspective piece in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) The article, authored by David Hunter,…

The COVID-19 pandemic increased negative emotions across the world. People reported poor mental health and behavior problems including sleeping less, consuming more drugs and alcohol, struggling to concentrate, and fighting more with loved ones. Over the past year, researchers from scores of countries joined together to study whether interventions to mitigate negative emotions and increase…

Knowing the current and previous smoking habits of patients with metastatic non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) could allow clinicians to make better informed treatment decisions, according to new research led by Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. The study looked at data from 644 NSCLC patients, including 375 who were former smokers, 164 who…

Professor Cornell William Brooks leads the Harvard Kennedy School’s (HKS) William Monroe Trotter Collaborative for Social Justice, which he calls a think-and-do tank for Harvard students committed to social justice advocacy and rigorous applied research. Named for an early-20th-century civil rights pioneer, African American newspaper editor, and distinguished Harvard graduate, the Trotter Collaborative runs a…

Appearing before a special House panel this week, Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) Professor Jason Furman called the growing economic divide, fueled by the pandemic, “the fundamental challenge our economy, and perhaps our society, faces.” Furman, the Aetna Professor of the Practice of Economic Policy jointly at HKS and the department of Economics at Harvard University,…

Sociology and Social Studies Assistant Professor Christina Ciocca Eller will join the Biden Administration as the assistant director of evidence and policy in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). She will also serve as senior advisor for social and behavioral science at the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC). “I just…

How does a first-year medical student learn to distinguish between two likely causes of a patient’s shortness of breath? By using a method similar to one birders use, believes Rose Goldman, Harvard Medical School associate professor of medicine at Cambridge Health Alliance. “Finding those differentiating features to get to a medical diagnosis is similar to looking at…

From an airplane or satellite, Picher, Oklahoma, appears as an anomaly in the endless green grid of agricultural land at the center of the United States. Huge irregular gray blots and dark pools interrupt the geometric precision of roads, and the colorful smear of Tar Creek runs diagonally through the town. Abandoned a decade ago…

Harvard Graduate School of Design’s (GSD) Loeb Fellowship is pleased to announce its Class of 2022, a cohort of 10 innovators who work across fields that engage with the built environment and social outcomes. In addition to marking the program’s 51st class of fellows, the Loeb Fellowship’s 2021-2022 cycle will inaugurate a collaborative fellowship between…

Harvard University researchers will take leading roles in a new National Science Foundation (NSF) artificial intelligence research institute housed at the University of Washington (UW). The UW-led AI Institute for Dynamic Systems is among 11 new AI research institutes announced today by the NSF.  Na Li, the Gordon McKay Professor of Electrical Engineering and Applied…

A team of researchers have discovered a “layer Hall effect” in a 2D topological Axion antiferromagnet. The work, published in the journal Nature, is believed to be the first experimental evidence of this type of quantum state and can one day help generate a magneto-electric effect that can lead to the next-generation of electronic devices, sensors,…

Cuban artist Tania Bruguera will join Theater, Dance & Media (TDM) as a senior lecturer in media and performance. Her tenure begins August 1, and she will be on campus to teach this fall. “Tania Bruguera is an artist whose work brilliantly engages the sociopolitical conditions of our time. We are thrilled to welcome her…

Drinking sugar-sweetened beverages may raise the risk of early-onset colorectal cancer, according to new research led by Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. The study examined data from 96,000 participants in the Nurses’ Health Study II and found that women who consumed more than two sugar-sweetened beverages a day had more than double the…

“How can we help you?” Andrew Bentley, M.P.A. ’20 had no idea how powerful this simple request would be. Bentley said it started with the need to do something during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in the U.S. A resident of Minneapolis, Minnesota, Bentley had met neighboring St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter in 2019…

Harvard Management Company (HMC) announced that it plans to make its facilities and operations net-zero of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for the current fiscal year (which began on July 1, 2021), a first among higher education endowments. This effort builds off of the University’s emissions reductions plans for its campus that began in 2006 and…

In Japan, more COVID-19 cases and deaths have occurred in prefectures with lower household incomes and a higher unemployment rate, among other socioeconomic factors, according to Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health’s Yuki Yoshikawa and Ichiro Kawachi. Their study, published in JAMA Network Open on July 14, 2021, was the first to investigate the association between…

The Harvard Art Museums have announced plans to reopen to the public on Saturday, Sept. 4, 2021. Advance reservations will be required for visitors and will be available up to three weeks in advance. Reservations can be made on the museum website beginning August 20. A limited number of tickets may also be available each…

The Harvard Innovation Labs has opened applications for Launch Lab X GEO (LLX GEO), a virtual program designed to help early-stage Harvard alumni-led ventures grow into sustainable and disruptive businesses.   “Over the first three years of running Launch Lab X GEO, we’ve seen Harvard alumni founders make extraordinary progress on their ventures — advancing their product development, scaling their teams, growing their…

Life expectancy in Brazil declined by approximately 1.3 years in 2020 as a result of COVID-19, reversing decades of progress in the country, according to a new study in Nature led by Marcia Castro, Andelot Professor of Demography and chair of the Department of Global Health and Population at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public…

With outdated funding models and questions about whether riders care more about fares or service, opinions are divided on the future of public transportation. With companies addressing how their employees will return to the office as the pandemic recedes, public transportation is a key part of the policy dialogue. Would free ridership keep autos off the…

It was evident soon after the onset of COVID-19 that it disproportionately harmed Black and Latino communities in the United States — hardly the great equalizer that some predicted the pandemic would be. Now three health economists have measured those inequities by analyzing and comparing death rates over the first year of the pandemic, and their results are especially stark, with challenging implications for health care policymakers. One…

The Harvard Innovation Labs (i-lab) has announced that 278 student-led ventures have been accepted into its 2021 Summer Venture Program. “Summer is a time when Harvard students have an opportunity to focus more deeply on a project or pursuit about which they’re passionate, and I am thrilled that hundreds of students with entrepreneurial aspirations will…

To prepare and support a new generation of education leaders seeking to expand their impact at a critical time for learners of all ages, the Harvard Graduate School of Education today announces the launch of a transformative online master’s degree for professionals advancing in the field of education. The online Master’s in Educational Leadership is a two-year,…

When grocery shopping online, people tend to spend more money and purchase more items than when they shop in person, according to a new study led by researchers from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. The researchers also found that participants spent less money on candy and desserts when shopping online. Spending on sugar-sweetened…