Scientists at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute are participating as lead investigators in a clinical test of a blood cancer drug in patients infected with the COVID-19 virus. The test follows several case reports indicating that the drug, ibrutinib, may protect against lung damage and respiratory distress caused by the virus. The goal of the randomized trial…

The W.E.B. Du Bois Research Institute at the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research at Harvard University recently announced the 2020-21 class of fellows. According to Director and Alphonse Fletcher University Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., the cohort will be pursuing a broad range of projects, including: Queer visual cultures in the African…

The Center for Jewish Studies at Harvard University announced this week the recipients of the 2020 Selma and Lewis Weinstein Prize in Jewish Studies. Sonia Epstein ’21 of Eliot House and Joshua Moriarty ’21 of Pforzheimer House tied for first place. Epstein’s entry was “The ‘Nitzanim’ of 1948: Recentering Morocco in Moroccan-Jewish Education.” Moriarty’s entry…

Graduate study at Harvard is a full-time job and many students are juggling school, parenting, and homeschooling — all from inside their apartments. Kaitlin Roberson, an Ed.M. candidate at the Graduate School of Education (HGSE), is one of those students. She recently shared her experience at a fireside chat event with HGSE Professor Junlei Li,…

Harvard College’s Advising Programs Office awarded 12 advisers from across the University with the prestigious Star Family Prize for Excellence in Advising. The Star Prizes were established by James A. Star ’83 to recognize and reward individuals who contribute to the College through their exemplary intellectual and personal guidance of undergraduate students. Prizes are awarded each year to…

This week, the Office of the Vice Provost for Research and the Office of the Vice Provost for International Affairs announced the 2020 awardees of the Lemann Brazil Research Fund. “Our research landscape and our world face unprecedented challenges,” said Rick McCullough, vice provost for research and professor of materials science and engineering. “At this…

This week, the Harvard Art Museums announced a new range of free digital offerings, providing audiences at home the opportunity to engage with the museums while temporarily closed. A newly created webpage, Harvard Art Museums from Home, gathers online tools and virtual programs in one location, easily accessible through the museums’ homepage. Each Thursday, the…

Fifteen faculty members have been awarded 2020 Walter Channing Cabot Fellowships for their outstanding publications: Dimiter Angelov, Dunbarton Oaks Professor of Byzantine History, “The Byzantine Hellene: The Life of the Emperor Theodore Laskaris and Byzantium in the Thirteenth Century,” (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019). Jason Beckfield, professor of sociology, “Unequal Europe: Regional Integration and the…

As a follow-up to the “Roadmap to Pandemic Resilience,” which calls for massively scaled up programs of testing, tracing and supported isolation (TTSI) as a means to safely re-open the U.S. economy after COVID-19 closures, Harvard University’s Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics, with support from The Rockefeller Foundation, released a new supplemental report, “Pandemic…

Brandon Terry and Jie Li received the 2020 Roslyn Abramson Award for excellence in teaching undergraduates. The annual award is given to assistant or associate professors and was formally announced at a May 5 faculty meeting. Terry is an assistant professor of African and African American studies and of social studies. In the spring, he…

In mid-March when undergraduate students were preparing to quickly leave campus, most Harvard University Housing residents remained in place. The Graduate Commons Program (GCP) continues to serve them to combat the social isolation that comes along with physical distancing. GCP quickly moved from in person to online programming to maintain social connection and important conversations.…

In celebration of Radcliffe Day 2020 and the 20th anniversary of the founding of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Dean Tomiko Brown-Nagin will be joined by Drew Gilpin Faust, founding dean of the institute and former Harvard president, in a conversation exploring Radcliffe’s strategic direction and the role of an interdisciplinary institute for advanced…

Robert Satcher Jr., an alumnus of the Harvard-MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology and a NASA astronaut, will be this year’s Harvard Medical School (HMS) and Harvard School of Dental Medicine Class Day keynote speaker on May 28. Harvard Commencement and HMS Class Day ceremonies will be held virtually this year to ensure the…

Bryan Stevenson J.D./M.P.P. ’85, a widely acclaimed public interest lawyer, founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative and best-selling author of “Just Mercy,” will be the speaker for the Harvard Law School Class of 2020’s graduation ceremonies. The school’s virtual celebration will occur on May 28, with an on-campus ceremony to take place…

Since the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a Public Health Concern of Global Interest on Jan. 30, more than one million have tested positive for the illness in the United States, and more than 62,000 have died. With no FDA–approved treatments available to date, the anti-malarial drug, hydroxychloroquine, has emerged as a potential therapy for the pneumonia…

When Harvard announced that the remainder of the Spring 2020 semester would be completed online, educators were pressed to alter their carefully-crafted curricula for the digital sphere. For Arvid Bell, lecturer on government at the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, virtual lectures ​in lieu ​of in-person meetings was not a viable option. His course on…

As students and educators struggle with emergency online instruction, and many reluctantly prepare for distance learning in the fall, quality online educational resources have never been more critical. The Pluralism Project’s newly redesigned website, pluralism.org, responds to this urgent need. “The Pluralism Project has long had a wide online presence. But now, with the impact…

Harvard University and Astellas Pharma Inc. have established a three-year strategic research alliance to support multiple, multi-year research projects initiated by faculty at Harvard, focused on the research and development of innovative therapeutics and technologies of mutual interest. The alliance will provide crucial support to future collaborative research efforts when the academic laboratories return to…

As the COVID-19 pandemic evolves rapidly around the globe, the Center for Geographic Analysis at IQSS is hosting an online forum focusing on time-sensitive geospatial research on COVID-19-related topics. The CGA Virtual Forum: Responding to The Covid-19 Pandemic with Geospatial Research and Applications will be held on Friday (May 1), from 10 a.m.–1 p.m. ET…

Long before multiple myeloma becomes a malignant disease, the collection of immune system cells and signal carriers amid the tumor cells undergoes dramatic shifts, with alterations in both the number and type of immune cells, researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, and Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) report in a…

Jason Bell ’21 spent Earth Day helping fight the Trump administration’s efforts to replace the Clean Power Plan — an Obama-era scheme that sets limits on greenhouse gas emissions from power plants — with the new Affordable Clean Energy rule, which relaxes those restrictions. A student in Harvard Law School’s Emmett Environmental Law & Policy…

Harvard Astronomy department chair Abraham Loeb has been nominated to the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST). The council advises the president of the United States on science and technology. Loeb is the Frank B. Baird, Jr. Professor of Science and the longest-serving chair of Harvard’s Astronomy department in the Faculty of…

This year’s dramatically fluctuating temperature cycles from seasonably cold days to atypically warm stretches and back again has affected the life cycles of many species, including plants. At the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University, two scientists are examining how maple trees (Acer) are responding to climate stress and what that means for the future of…

The Initiative for the Science of the Human Past (SoHP) at Harvard and the Climate Change Institute (CCI) at the University of Maine are delighted to announce the renewal of their grant from Arcadia — a charitable fund of Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin. The new grant of $570,000 over three years will continue to support…

This week, a bipartisan group of experts in economics, public health, technology, and ethics from across the country released the nation’s first comprehensive operational roadmap for mobilizing and reopening the U.S. economy in the midst of the COVID-19 crisis. “Roadmap to Pandemic Resilience,” a report released by Harvard University’s Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics…

Strategies to bar the coronavirus (COVID-19) from entering cells — thereby preventing infection and averting transmission of the virus — are among the most promising treatment approaches to COVID-19. Everything from antibodies to specially made snippets of RNA are being mustered in the effort to develop a safe and effective coronavirus blocker. An approach notable…

Cancers whose cells are riddled with large numbers of DNA mutations often respond favorably to drugs called checkpoint blockers that unleash the immune system against the tumor. But a new study shows that malignant brain tumors known as gliomas generally don’t respond to the immunotherapy drugs even when the tumor cells are “hypermutated” — having…

The seventh annual Harrington Prize for Innovation in Medicine has been awarded to Stuart H. Orkin, the David G. Nathan Distinguished Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School. The Harrington Prize for Innovation in Medicine, established in 2014 by the Harrington Discovery Institute at University Hospitals in Cleveland, Ohio, and The American Society for Clinical Investigation…

Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development researchers released the preliminary results of a study on the impact of the COVID‐19 crisis on the economies and governments of the country’s 574 federally‐recognized American Indian nations. Writing to Secretary of the Treasury Mnuchin, researchers Randall Akee, Eric Henson, Miriam Jorgensen, and Joseph Kalt report that the COVID‐19 crisis poses an immediate threat to…